Luis Simarro Lacabra [1851–1921]: From Golgi to Cajal Through Simarro, via Ranvier

Abstract

Knowledge of cerebral structure and function in its modern form can be traced to the neurone doctrine based largely on the work of Santiago Ramón y Cajal [1852–1934] and his lifelong exploitation of the Golgi method. Cajal openly acknowledged his debt to the neuropsychiatrist Luis Simarro Lacabra [1851–1921] who introduced him to the method in 1887, and recalled that the sight of the silver-impregnated nerve cells was the turning point which led him to abandon general anatomy and concentrate on neurohistology. Simarro, who dissipated his free time in trying to improve not only the scientific but also the political world around him, was able to produce exciting Golgi preparations of the cerebral cortex after he returned from voluntary exile in Paris from 1880 to 1885. Certainly it was there that he learned the methods of experimental histology from Louis-Antoine Ranvier [1835–1922] whose laboratory exercises, in the guise of lectures, he attended assiduously.