Abstract

LOPEZ SANCHEZ, José María. One School, two Laboratories: Neurosciences in the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios. Rev. Asoc. Esp. Neuropsiq. [online]. 2012, vol.32, n.116, pp.805-825. ISSN 2340-2733.  https://dx.doi.org/10.4321/S0211-57352012000400010.

The Laboratory of Histopathology of the Nervous System and the Laboratory of Brain Physiology were created by the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas -JAE- in the first third of the twentieth century in order to consolidate a scientific experimental Medicine which needed the State's support to ensure its development. Since the foundation of the Santiago Ramón y Cajal's Laboratory for Biological Research, in 1900, experimental works could be undertaken in a privileged background where a school of researchers could be formed. The birth of the JAE enhanced the practice of experimental Medicine. The arrival of Nicolás Achúcarro to Cajal's Laboratory caused the rising of a renewed interest in Pathological Histology inside the histological Spanish school, which was able to achieve interesting results in a short time. This new line of research grew with Achúcarro's disciples, specially the histopathologist Pío del Río-Hortega, whose findings continued Santiago Ramón y Cajal's legacy, and the psychiatrist Gonzalo Rodríguez Lafora, whose works on brain physiology were used in clinical psychiatry. Both of them incarnate the way how biology has accomplished its greatest progress during the twentieth century, starting from technical abilities which lead to significant findings in the research. That's how it was possible for Río-Hortega's and Rodríguez Lafora's laboratories to expand the research of their masters.

Keywords : History of Medicine; 20th Century; Anatomy & histology; Histological Techniques; Brain Pathology; Neuropsychiatry.

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