Cajal''s Histology of the Nervous System of Man and Vertebrates

An English translation of the text written nearly a century ago. The two volumes contain over 1000 original illustrations and provide useful information about the anatomical organization of the nervous system structure-function correlates, and the history of neuroscience.

In terms of breadth, depth, and originality, this work ranked Cajal with Pasteur and Darwin as giants of 19th century biology. Summarizing almost 20 years of intense research, Cajal systematically described the cellular organization of almost every part of the nervous system in all five classes of vertebrate, and provided a synthetic account of their embryogenesis as well. This revolutionary work laid a broad foundation for modern neuroscience. Neuroscientists, neurologists, psychologists, computer and cognitive scientists, and nonspecialists will find this work of great use. Modern neuroanatomical terminology is used wherever possible, while attempting to preserve the style of the original text. Summarizing almost 20 years of intense research, Cajal systematically described the cellular organization of almost every part of the nervous system in all five classes of vertebrate, and provided a synthetic account of their embryogenesis as well. This work was revolutionary and laid a broad foundation for modern neuroscience because two new concepts - the neuron doctrine and the law of functional polarity - were used to interpret the data, and because the resulting interpretations opened vast new fields of research with profound clinical implications in neurology and psychiatry. In terms of breadth, depth and originality, this work is second only to that of Vesalius in the history of anatomy, and ranked Cajal with Pasteur and Darwin as the giants of 19th century biology. In many ways, the Histology is as valuable today as when it was written, and these volumes will be of use to a broad spectrum of neuroscientists, neurologists, psychologists, and computer and cognitive scientists. To make this work accessible to non specialists, the translators have used modern neuroanatomical terminology wherever possible, while attempting to preserve the style of the original text. They have also provided extensive cross-referencing of synonyms in the index, and notes to clarify difficult passages.