El aprendizaje histológico inicial de Santiago Ramón y Cajal: notas acerca de sus investigaciones sobre la inflamación

Abstract

Cajal attained the histological training which was the starting point for his brilliant work on the structure of the nervous system during the decade from the middle of 1877 to the end of 1887. More exactly, his initial histological training began to develop blossom once he did his Ph. D. with Aureliano Maestre de San Juan and he graduated with his thesis on the Pathogenesis of inflamation, which would be the subject of his first publication three years later. This first stage of Cajal's scientific career has been, on the whole, forgotten, as his full time work on histology did not take place till the Autumn of 1885, when he was Professor of Anatomy at Valencia. Therefore, the bibliography of a more or less panegyrical nature on this figure has led largely to the underrating, in most cases, of this decisive period in his scientific career. In study we aim, therefore, to attempt to fill this gap in «Cajalian» historiography, by firstly looking at the above mentioned Doctorate thesis of 1877, and subsequently the first micrographical essays wich he worked on for the following three years, as a resultt of the writing of his thesis and which became his first published monograph.