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THE STERN fathers at the Latin school in Jaca were agreed: Santiago Ramon y Cajal
probably wouldn’t amount to much. According to their report, he was a poor
student; he didn’t use his memory; his flair for art was used more often as
on outlet for his resentments than for studious purposes; he seemed stubborn and
inflexible: no amount of flogging or denial of suppers would change his ways. So,
bruised and half-starved, the boy was returned to his father, a country surgeon
who eked out a precarious living in the Spanish Pyrenees village of Ayerbe. The
busy doctor was both furious and frustrated. He had hoped his body would become
a physician, too; but perhaps, as teachers predicted, he was destined only to be
a tradesman.
From such boyhood experiences came the young man who was destined to become Spain’s
leading scientist, histologist, neuroanatomist, and a personage revered equally
by contemporary scientists, by politicians, by educators, and by peasants.
Santiago had been born eleven years earlier, on May 1, 1852, in Petilla, a tiny
village high in the Pyrenees. He was the eldest of the rapidly growing family of
Don Justo Ramon Casasus and Dona Antonia Cajal. In the Spanish custom, the boy’s
surname was compounded of both father’s and mother’s family names –
Ramon y Cajal. Young Santiago early learned the advantages of solitude to one whose
mind runs in channels other than those locally considered conventional. He was interested
in the outdoors; in natural history; and, most of all, in art. He devised many unusual
pranks to further his interests, much to the consternation of his father and his
neighbors. Repeatedly, the boy was placed in formal schools; repeatedly he was turned
out of them as a failure. He preferred painting and hiking in the hills. In between
courses, as disciplinary measures, his father had him apprenticed once to a barber,
and once to a shoemaker. Finally, Don Justo sent his son to Zaaragoza University
and enrolled him in the premedical course.
Fortunately, in the following year, 1869, the elder Ramon received appointment as
professor of anatomy on the Faculty of Medicine at Zaragoza. He was at once filled
with zeal to train his son as a skilled dissector. Thus, father and son finally
found a common interest, and Santiago’s artistic abilities at last were compatible
with his father’s ambitions. Together, they studies the anatomy of bones and
bodies structures their studies revealed. Proudly, Don Justo thought of publishing
his son’s sketches and water colors as an atlas of anatomy; but local facilities
in graphic arts were not developed sufficiently to assure satisfactory reproductions.
In 1873, Santiago reached his majority, received his degree as licentiate in medicine,
and was drafted into the Spanish army. After service in the medical corps during
several strategic but nonsanguine Spanish counterrevolutionary campaigns, he was
promoted to a rank equivalent to captain, and was assigned to service overseas in
rebellious Cuba. He was placed in charge of an inadequately supplied infirmary at
Vista Hermosa, on the edge of swamplands. Santiago soon was suffering along with
his patients, from a combination of malaria, dysentery, and poor nutrition. By the
spring of 1875, when his request for resignation finally was granted, he was a very
sick man. In addition to his infirmities, he had been paid but once during his Cuban
service.
After a period of recovery at home, Sangiago Ramon y Cajal was appointed assistant
instructor in anatomy at the Faculty of Medicing, University of Zaragoza. In Juna,
1877, he went to Madrid to take examinations for his doctorate in medicine. While
in Madrid, he had an experience that was to change his life: one of the professors
at the University showed him a microscope and some microscopic preparations. Intensely
intrigued, Ramon y Cajal spent his savings for a microscope, a microtome, and a
few supplies. Thus, in Zaragoza, he possessed the only good microscopic equipment
of which the University could boast.
Life was not to be smooth for the young teacher, however. Weakened by malarial attacks,
in 1878 Ramon y Cajal experienced symptoms of active tuberculosis. Another long
period of convalescence was necessary. In the course of treatment in Panticosa,
nursed by his sister Paula, Santiago took to hiking in the mountains, pursuing his
hobby of photography. The combination of fresh air, adequate food, and renewed zest
for life helped bring about recovery.
Returning to Zaragoza, Ramon y Cajal received an advancement in faculty position,
becoming director of the Anatomical Museum. With this assurance of modest security,
the young professor married Dona Silveria Fananas Garcia – much to his family’s
consternation. Despite their misgivings, the marriage proved beneficial both to
his health and the stability of the young professor’s career. Senora de Ramon
y Cajal encouraged her husband’s scientific work while exercising great care
over their growing family.
His teaching of anatomy at Zaragoza readily led Ramon y Cajal to develop interesst
in histology – the study of tissues. His microscope revealed to him secrets
of minute structures hidden from the unaided eye. His equipment consisted of his
beloved microscope, a few text-books of doubtful authority, and one or two foreign
journals. But to these were added an insatiable curiosity and an ability to concentrate
and to work with almost frenzied dedication. His progress in this field is the more
amazing in view of the facts: his university appointments up to this time had been
undistinguished; he had not met any of the great medical investigators of the day.
In his own words, by language and by tradition he was isolated from the main stream
of science.
In 1884, Ramon y Cajal was appointed professor of anatomy at the university in Valencia.
A cholera epidemic in 1885 diverted his attention temporarily to the study of bacteriology,
and his work in this new field attracted some favorable governmental attention.
However, he chose to return to the study of histology: and in 1887, he was called
to accept the professorship of histology at the University of Barcelona.
In Barcelona, Ramon y Cajal, then 35 years of age, seriously began the work that
was to give him distinction and to strengthen his position as a medical researcher.
At the beginning, he noted that nearly every published finding on histology was
incomplete, and needed further study. This intrigued his curiosity. Also, he had
learned from a Valencian neuropsychiatrist, Dr. Luis Simarro, of the chrome silver
stain for nerve tissues developed by Camillo Golgi, of Pavia, Italy. Dr. Dimarro,
like many other workers, including, eventually, Golgi himself, had ceased using
the method, having found it unreliable. Ramon y Cajal’s first important step
was to draw upon his experience with photography to make improvements in methods
of using Golgi’s stain. Then he began a systematic study of the entire nervous
system, staining cells and tissues with a clarity which never had been achieved
before. Further, he discovered that far better results were obtained by staining
nerve cells of specimens form chick embryos, birds, and young animals, before myelin
sheaths formed about axis cylinders of nerve cells, hiding them from the revealing
stains. To these techniques he added his other great talent: drawing. His skillful
illustrations made it possible for him to demonstrate what he saw. He began, rather
timidly, to publish his findings and to disagree with the opinions of histologists
in off histologists in other countries. The reaction was skepticism of the validity
of his work; and questioning, by some of his own countrymen, as to his audacity
in challenging the pronouncements of foreign professors of histology.
To equalize this development, Ramon y Cajal launched upon another phase of his life
with intensity equal to his scientific investigation: he joined the German Society
of Anatomists; he undertook to learn the German language, so that he could read
German medical literature, and communicate in German.
Ramon y Cajal determined to demonstrate his work to his German colleagues. From
his meager savings, he took enough to finance attendance, in October, 1889, at a
meeting of the German Society of Anatomists at the University of Berlin. Into his
bag went the best of his prized microscopic slide specimens and his sketches.
Met only with curiosity and more skepticism, Ramon y Cajal patiently awaited opportunity
to demonstrate his findings. First of all, to have a Spaniard among them was regarded
by members of the society as without precedent. Spain had no recognized histologists.
Further, most of those present were smugly sure of their own concepts. However,
the opportunity finally came. With assistance of two or three microscopes, Ramon
y Cajal, in broken French, sought to explain his preparations. It was not long before
the few men who had been courteous enough to attend the demonstration had shaken
off skepticism and were congratulating their courageous Spanish colleague. How,
they asked, had be been able to get such results, when they had experienced only
failures? He explained his methods. His demonstrations won Ramon y Cajal the support
and lifelong friendship of Alber von Kolliker, dean of German histologists; and
through him, of Waldeyer, His, van Gehuchten, Bardeleben, Schwalbe, and the Swedish
histologist Retzius. Said Killiker: “I am glad that the first histologist
Spain had produced is a man as distinguished as you, a man worthy of the nobility
of science”.
Ramon y Cajal’s work, now recognized internationally, gained acceptance and
appreciation at home. In 1892, he was called to assume the chair of Normal Histology
and Pathological Anatomy at the University of Madrid. His new findings received
wide publications, and from one country after another came honors. In 1894, he received
the highest recognition English scientists could bestow: Sir Michael Foster, secretary
of the Royal Society of London, invited him to deliver the Croonian Lecture before
that body; and Cambridge University conferred a doctorate upon him.
There was no lack of appreciation of these honors on Ramon y Cajal’s part;
he chose, however, to regard them as honors accruing to his homeland rather than
to him personally. For himself, he asked only to be allowed to continue his work
– and life was to grant him another 40 years of productive activity. He was
concerned that his work should continue after him; and indeed it did, in the researches
of his more renowned students, among whom were del Rio Hortega, Nicholas Achucarro,
Tello, de Castro, Villaverde, Sanchez, his own son Jorge Ramon y Cajal Fananas,
and his brother Pedro.
The record of scientific work achived by Ramon y Cajal during his long, active life
is most impressive. In 1888, he increased the applicability of Golgi’s stain.
In 1903, he worked out his own formula for a silver nitrate stain that demonstrated
nerve cells and nerve fibers with clarity. In 1913, he employed a gold sublimate
stain for astrocytes that brought another portion of nerve tissue under observation.
Subsequently, his pupils carried these studies further with application of a silver
carbonate stain. “For the world of the infinitely little,” wrote Garrison,
“he was better visioned and consequently had better luck from the start than
most investigators; and here, his artistic skill with pencil and brush was a powerful
aid.”
Among Ramon y Cajal’s greater contributions to medical knowledge, and to the
fields to neurology and psychiatry, according to Garrison, were elucidation “of
the developmental and structural basis of the dynamics of the neuron; of transmission
of impulse; of localization of function; and of degeneration and regeneration in
the nervous system . . . His encyclopedic treatises on neurohistology and on degeneration
and regeneration in the nervous system are his master-pieces . . .” He published
over 250 scientific papers, edited a journal in his field, and wrote a number of
books, including the three-volume Texture of The Nervous System of Man and of the
Other Vertebrates(1897-1904), of which a French edition was issued in 1911; Degeneration
and Regeneration In the Nervous System, in two volumes (1913-1914); and a two-volume
autobiography. These publications have given to medical men and to neurosurgeons
an understanding of the cell structure and mode of function of every part of the
nervous system, and a better concept of brain structure and of characteristics of
brain tumors by which they can be guided in meeting the needs of their patients.
The great scientist was not unaware of the need for balancing the rigors of the
laboratory with other interests. His family, grown to include six children, received
love and attention. His fascination with photography intrigued him to develop advanced
methods, and in 1912 to write a book on color photography. He found much relief
and recreation in long walks through Madrid’s parks and suburbs; and in the
Spanish custom, nearly every afternoon he visited a favorite café, frequented
by his friends, for relaxation and conversation. Out of the philosophic discussions
over coffee came an interesting volume of anecdotes and aphorisms, entitled: Coffee-House
Chatter.
Despite feelings aroused by the Spanish-American War in 1898, Ramon y Cajal was
invited to the United States of America the following year to participate in a celebration
at Clark University and to receive an honorary doctorate. In 1900, he received the
Moscow prize at the International Medical Congress in Paris; and in 1904, the Helmholtz
medal from the Royal Prussian Academy. In 1906, the Royal Caroline Institute of
Sweden awarded the Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine jointly to Ramon y Cajal
and to Golgi. It was the first time a histologist had been so honored. The medal
was presented to him by the Swedish King, Oscar II, at a ceremony in Stockholm.
With this recognition came a substantial financial award that was much needed.
In 1922, at age 70, Ramon y Cajal retired from the University of Madrid, closing
a 30-year tenure there. But he continued to work, to write, and to guide students
from his table in the café. In 1932, a new laboratory was built at government
expense and named after him – EI Instituto Ramon y Cajal. He was invited to
work in it; however, the rooms seemed too grand and the ceilings too lofty; he preferred
the cramped little laboratory in his home at Avenida Alfonso XII. Though deafness
and feebleness slowed his pace in his last years, according to Penfield, a former
student who visited him, Santiago Ramon y Cajal continued to work with a fierce
impatience, elaborating a final defense for the first child of his researches, the
neuron doctrine. Also, during his last years, he wrote another significant work,
entitle: The World as Seen at Eighty. Death overtook Ramon y Cajal in his eighty-third
year, on October 17, 1934.
An insight into the philosophy that drove him on to greater and greater achievements
throughout his life is revealed by Ramon y Cajal’s words, in Coffee-House
Chatter: “When facts are faced squarely, we must admit that it is not so much
the thought of our own death that grieves us as the realization that by it we are
snatched from the bosom of humanity and thus robbed forever of hope of seeing the
unfolding of the heroic struggle constantly being waged between the mind of an and
the blind energy of natural forces.”
Ramon Y Cajal would have liked the Spanish government’s final tribute to his
memory: it undertook a complete republication of his written works.
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