Santiago Ramon Y Cajal

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Born May 1, 1852 in Petilla de Aragon, Navarre, Spain, Santiago Ramon y Cajal was a rebellious and devious child and through his early years of life, but he eventually metamorphosed into a striving adult that contributed immensely to the fields of medicine and anatomy, even going as far as to contribute to the founding of the field of modern neuroscience as it is known today. (biography.com) Although Santiago is no world renowned super-star, he attributed his life work to the betterment and advancement of human knowledge, earning him a place in many people's hearts and minds.
From the perspective of Santiago's father, Santiago was a promising and talented son with a wealth of untapped potential just waiting to be used. Santiago was fairly athletic …show more content…

However, Santiago had not served long before he contracted both malaria and tuberculosis, for which he was consequentially discharged from the army and returned home to recover from his diseases and resume his studies. On his return he became an assistant in the School of Anatomy in the Faculty of Medicine at Saragossa and later, he obtained the degree of Doctor of Medicine at Madrid and was appointed Professor of Descriptive and General Anatomy at Valencia. (nobelprize.org) The first thing that propelled Santiago to the pioneering level of his medical field of interest, neuroscience, was his uncanny ability to draw. With a state of the art microscope he had attained as a gift from the University of Madrid for achieving his masters and a new technique for staining random nerve cells, Santiago was the first person ever to observe and record – with his artistic abilities – the cellular level of not only the human body but many species under the kingdom animalia that were just too small for cameras at that time. (scholarpedia.org) Throughout his career Santiago made many astounding discoveries and resolutions that revolutionized the field of medicine and anatomy and which are still held true even today. One of which major discoveries is the neuron doctrine, which is the concept that the …show more content…

... I felt more profoundly than in any other subject of study the shuddering sensation of the unfathomable mystery of life." (azquotes.com) In short, Santiago had been a Darwinist for some time until observing the marvelous ingenuity of not only large vertebrate animal's retinas (which contain eccentric nerves), but even the smallest of bug's retinas, which is when he formally declared himself an agnostic to some degree. (biography.com) Santiago was actually quite the well-rounded man and did not only stick to his studies of medicine, for throughout his lifetime he had become an expert in gymnastics, chess, philosophy, hypnotism and photography. Of the latter, Cajal was notably one of the first Spanish photographers to use color photography. (brainconnection.brainhq.com) Of this, it is notable how well thought out Santiago was, and how he logically applied his thinking strategies to define the most specific things in life like, "In my own view, some advice about

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