John Goodsir and local opposition to Rudolf Virchow’s election to Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1868
In 1869 Rudolf Virchow, the distinguished Prussian pathologist who pioneered the modern concept of cellular pathology, was offered an honorary Fellowship of The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE). However, the Rev. Joseph T Goodsir, Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE), the brother of Professor John Goodsir FRSE, the famed Edinburgh anatomist who had died two years previously, mounted a campaign to stop the award.