Images Dated 16th July 2004

Santiago Ramon y Cajal, histologist

Santiago Ramon y Cajal (1852-1934), Spanish histologist. Ramon y Cajal was apprenticed to a barber and a shoemaker before taking up medicine. From 1885 he became interested in the microscopic structure of the brain. By using and improving Camillo Golgi's recently-invented staining methods, Ramon y Cajal studied the brain, spinal cord and retina. He showed the great complexity of the system and argued that the cells in the nervous system were discrete, having no physical continuity between them. He also studied the degeneration and regeneration of nerves. In 1906, he shared the Nobel Prize for medicine with Golgi. Photograph taken circa 1906

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Charles Richet, French physiologist

Charles Robert Richet (1850-1935), French physiologist. Richet studied medicine in Paris and was appointed professor of physiology at the University of Paris, Sorbonne, in 1887. He initially explored various avenues of research, and in 1890, gave the first human injection of anti-tuberculosis serum. The growing use of antisera for the treatment of infectious diseases highlighted the problem of allergic reaction to injections. Richet studied this hypersensitivity in dogs. He concluded that repeated injections of foreign proteins over time eventually resulted in a fatal reaction, which he termed anaphylaxis. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1913

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Albrecht von Haller, Swiss scientist

Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777), Swiss anatomist and physiologist. Von Haller studied medicine under the Dutch physician Boerhaave. After founding a medical school at Gottingen, Haller returned to his native Berne. He worked on the nervous system, and recognised the tendency of muscle fibres to contract when stimulated, or when the attached nerve is stimulated, and he named this irritability'. He showed that only the nerves can transmit sensation, and that they are gathered into the brain. He wrote the first physiology textbook and worked on the circulation, respiration and digestion. He was also a poet, bibliographer, botanist and writer on politics

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