Main description:

This book is a complete biography of Camillo Golgi one of the most prominent European researcher between the Nineteenth and the Twentieth century, a period of dramatic scientific development. The life of Golgi was an extraordinary intellectual adventure in three major fields of biology and medicine, namely the neuroscience, the emerging cell biology and the new science of medical microbiology.
In 1873 Golgi published the description of a revolutionary histological technique which allowed, for the first time, to visualize a single nerve cell with all its ramification which could be followed and analyzed even at a great distance from the cell bodies, the so called "black reaction" (later named the "Golgi method"). This invention provided the spark to a truly scientific revolution which allowed the morphology and the basic architecture of the cerebral tissue to be evidenced in all its
complexity, thus contributing to the foundation of the modern neuroscience. It has been written that, in the same way Galileo Galilei was able to find new stars observing with his telescope any sky region, Golgi was able to find new nervous structures and nerve cells by applying his black reaction to
any brain region. Finally, the details of the most complex structure in the known universe, the brain, could be characterized.
Golgi also strongly contributed to the development of cell biology with the discovery of one of the major organelles of the cell, the "internal reticular apparatus" (later named the "Golgi apparatus" or the "Golgi complex" or simply "the Golgi") and to medical microbiology with his description of the human malaria parasitic development inside the red blood cells (Golgi cycle).
He was also a prominent political figure who deeply influenced the Nineteenth century development of science in Italy.

Contents:

1 Introduction: Between revolution and conservatism

2 "He who studies German is a traitor"

3 The Reborn Athens

4 The histological path to the secrets of the brain

5 A rudimentary laboratory in a small kitchen

6 Like a tree in the forest

7 Globules, granules and fibers

8 Finding a way out of the labyrinth

9 The Professor is in love

10 Sensory corpuscles, funnels and transfusions

11 Neuroanatomical investigations

12 Controversies and various studies

13 The secret of the intermittent fevers

14 A duel for Anna Kulischioff

15 The Malaria of the Polemics

16 The prophets of the neuron

17 Seemingly a matter of priority

18 Protoplasmic pantheism

19 Golgi versus Ramon y Cajal: Holism versus reductionism at the dawn of the neurosciences

20 The historical paradox of neurosciences

21 An intense laboratory life

22 The threat from Milan

23 An Elegant Reticulum "Hidden in the Cell Body"

24 The laboratory where a discovery is made every day

25 Beauty and Cold in Stockholm

26 Back to Research

27 Years of sorrow

28 The veil of Isis

29 Working unto death

Appendix

Publications by Camillo Golgi

Bibliography

Index of Names

Index