Nervous system Golgi’s method Naming parts of the body Commentary

Camillo Golgi, Santiago Ramón y Cajal neuroscience

Nervous system

• Even given
• the doctrine that all life is composed of cells
• gray matter—
• the tissue of the brain and spinal cord—
• was difficult to explain.
• Nerve cell bodies and their delicate and intricate dendrites and axons
• are more branched than bushes, are more
• interwoven the fibers of the thread of a spider web.
• How the parts worked, how they connected,
• and whether they were all parts of cells
• could not be distinguished using a microscope.
• Camillo Golgi discovered a means of staining
• a limited number of cells in animal tissue
• at random
• and in their entirety,
• so that their soma and their branches
• are in strong contrast with the background tissues.
• Santiago Ramón y Cajal used Golgi’s method
• and experimentally proved nerve cells were not fused together
• but communicated across touching branches.

Golgi’s method

• “fixing silver chromate
• to the neurilemma
• by causing silver nitrate to react
• with potassium dichromate”
• to stain random cells black.
• Why this works for cells at random
• has not been explained.
• Why some things work sometimes
• and not others
• remains a mystery
• even though, theoretically,
• the universe is deterministic.

Naming parts of the body

• Golgi discovered a sensory organ
• named the Golgi receptor
• and the intracellular reticular
• Golgi apparatus.
• Cajal discovered a new type of cell—
• the interstitial cell of Cajal.
• The Sharp crater on the moon
• is not named after me,
• nor is any part of your body,
• so far as I know.