Abstract
A full account of the history of the Golgi method has not been written. In his Recollections of My Life, Ramón y Cajal (1937) tersely summarized the discovery of this method when he wrote: “It was discovered by C. Golgi, the famous histologist of Pavia, through the favor of chance, the muse who inspires great discoveries.” A bit more detail is given in a brief passage in Retzius’ autobiographical reflections (Ramón-Moliner, 1970). According to Retzius, Golgi was investigating the pial covering of the brain and studied sections of brains that had been hardened in potassium dichromate and subsequently put in a solution of silver nitrate. Golgi’s genius consisted in the fact that, at a time when knowledge about neuronal structure was very imperfect, he recognized nerve cells in his preparations.
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© 1981 Plenum Press
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Millhouse, O.E. (1981). The Golgi Methods. In: Heimer, L., Robards, M.J. (eds) Neuroanatomical Tract-Tracing Methods. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3189-6_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3189-6_9
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