Loescher & Petsch, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
RULDOLF VIRCHOW
One of the most venerated
tales about an intellectual using his brains to triumph over a blowhard bully
concerns the aborted duel between Rudolf Virchow and Otto von Bismarck.
Rudolf Virchow was a leader in medicine and pathology in 19th Century Germany. He was also a public health activist, social reformer, politician, and anthropologist. Otto von Bismarck was the Minister President of Prussia at the time. In 1865, he challenged Virchow to a duel after Virchow had publicly criticized Bismarck's military budget. Virchow, as the challengee, got to choose the weapons. Virchow obtained two identical-looking raw sausages--one normal and one filled with deadly trichinosis worms--and offered Bismarck his choice to pick one to eat while Virchow would eat the other. Bismarck wussed out of the duel.
At least, that has been the story for over a hundred years. Unfortunately, the Skulls in the Stars blog has a pretty convincing argument that the sausage portion of the duel was fabricated in 1893 by a journal devoted to homeopathic medicine, and it has been accepted as the truth ever since. What apparently did happen was that Virchow (very wisely) apologized to Bismarck and was actually the one who evaded the challenge.
Truth is not always stranger
than fiction, nor is it necessarily more entertaining.
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| OTTO VON BISMARCK |
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