Ramón y Cajal: First Part

Think of other famous "visionaries" or inspirational people.

Santiago Ramón y Cajal

( Petilla de Aragón, Navarra, On the First of May , 1852 to Madrid, On the Seventeenth of October ,1934) was a spanish doctor specialise in histology and anatomic pathology microscopic. He won the medicine nobel prize in 1906 to discover the mecanics that led the morfology and conective process in the nerve cell, a new and revolutionary theory that it began to be designated "the neuron doctrine" based on that the cerebral tissue are formed of individual cells. He is the leader of the called " eighties generation" or "wise generation".
Chillhood and Youth

He was born in Petilla de Aragón (Navarra). His family roots are in Aragón. His parents were Justo Ramón Casasús and Antonia Cajal. He lived his childhood among continous house changes through different aragon's villages, accompanying his father who was doctor-surgeon. In childhood, Ramón y Cajal and his family left Petilla de Aragón and moved to the village where his father was born: Larres (1854), from there throught Luna (1855), Valpalmas (1856) y Ayerbe (1860). Althought he was born in Navarra, because this was his father's temporarily labor place, Petilla de Aragón is administratively part of Navarra, however Santiago Ramón y Cajal felt completely of Aragón. His feelings, his roots, his education, his character and, of course, his deep emotional link with Aragon's land are a trial of this. With a really naughty character and a great determination, Santiago showed, since he was a child, aptitude for the plastic arts, especially for the drawing.

His inteligence and constancy didn't display, however, in his live like student, as he hated to memorize. His rebel spirit brought about troubles between the friars who tought him, who often used violent and authoritarian methods. He coursed his primary studies with the piarist in Jaca and the secondary studies in the highschool in Huesca in a time of social agitation, the Isabel II exile and the first republic what has been proclaimed just when he finished his secundary studies in Huesca.

Adulthood and career

He study medical degree in Saragossa, where thue whole of his family moved in 1870. Cajal focused in his college successfully and, after his graduate was called to the army.

Doctor at Cuba's war (1873-1876)

The first months at the militia he passed in the regiment in Burgos .He remained in Lérida and his misión was defending Llanos de Urge against the carlista army.

During this time, Cuba , that at this moment was part of Spain, fighted a war for his independence, called like " The ten years war". In 1874 Santiago was elected through a draw for a work at the spanish army's militar healthcare, with a captain rank and destined to the caribean island.

Cajal felt attracted by the wonderful parks and gardens in "La Habana", as well as by the tropical vegetation in general, so he had been fascinated for it through his readings. It took little time to him to check, nevertheless, that the admired and dreamed jungle was annoying for the europeans. The lank of lush wildlife and vegetation that he had imagined besides the ubiquitous mosquitoes, spreader of the feared malaria, got break completly the romantic and aventure dream that Cajal had constructed.

His father had gotten to him a few of letters of recommendation for get a better destination, that he rejected to use , that gave rise to sent to the worse posible destination: The Nursing in Vistahermosa, at the centre of provice of Camagüey , one of more dangerous in the island. This work, in the middle of the marshy jungle, full of sick soldiers with malaria and disentery, led to Cajal to the physical exhaustion and to suffered the same diseases that his soldiers. Cajal felt the illness in his own body and, after a first convalescence in "Puerto Principe", finished appearing in a San Isidro's nursing that it was worse than Villahermosa. He was moved from a side to another side, untill finally got back to Spain in June of 1875.