Nerve Endings: The Discovery of the Synapse
Richard Rapport
WW Norton, May 2005
224 pages
A remarkable tale of how a lone researcher in the Spanish countryside discovered how brain cells communicate.
Two doctors, the Spaniard Cajal and the Italian Golgi, were racing against each other to find out what brain cells looked like and how they managed to communicate with one another. Both did their most important research in labs set up on their kitchen tables, for lack of better facilities; and both made landmark findings that led to their jointly receiving the 1906 Nobel Prize. Yet one man would find that neurons communicated over a gap, later named the "synapse," while the other would die convinced that every brain cell connected to the next. From Parkinson’s to neurosurgery, from the mechanics of memory to clinical depression, modern medicine is ever indebted to the one who interpreted the elusive—and rather extraordinary—anatomy of the nerve cell. This is the story not only of one of the nineteenth century’s greatest discoveries but also of the frailty, perseverance, and creativity of human beings. 13 illustrations
About the author:
Richard Rapport, M.D., is a neurosurgeon in Seattle, Washington. He is the author of Physician: The Life of Paul Beeson.
From Publishers Weekly
Like Dava Sobel’s Longitude, this slim, engaging volume (part biography, part history) chronicles the discovery of a singular fact that revolutionized a whole field of scientific inquiry. In this case, it was the simple observation that brain cells don’t always connect. A space exists between the end of one cell’s axon and another’s dendrites, and it is across this gap, or synapse, that our nerves communicate. These days the existence of the synaptic gap is taken for granted but, as neurosurgeon Rapport details, at the end of the 19th century, it was the source of great scientific debate-and the cause of a great rivalry between histologists Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramón y Cajal, who shared a Nobel Prize for their work in 1906. Golgi first discovered the method for staining neurons so they could be observed under a microscope, but Cajal perfected the method and argued for the synaptic gap (against "reticulists" who claimed that neurons connected in a seamless web). While detailing a background of science and European history, Rapport focuses on the brilliant and affable Cajal, who labored most of his life in "isolation from the scientific mainstream with no real teachers of stature and few contemporaries with whom he could debate his ideas." For fans of science and medical history, the story of how this determined Spaniard conducted his revolutionary investigations and finally brought his findings to the attention of the rest of Europe will make for fascinating, and occasionally moving, reading.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–This is a fascinating account of how two isolated and unknown individuals overcame significant obstacles and revolutionized the study of the nervous system more than 100 years ago. Work by Santiago Ramón y Cajal, a Spaniard, and Camillo Golgi, an Italian, led to the identification by Cajal of entities now called synapses that permit communication between nerve cells. Golgi invented a staining procedure, refined by Cajal, that unlocked many secrets of the nervous system. Golgi believed in a reticular structure in which all nerve cells were connected to each other; Cajal demonstrated that this was not correct and established the neuronal theory, the foundation of the current understanding of nervous-system function. The book includes illustrations of nerve-cell structures produced by Cajal and is an excellent introduction to how neural science advanced at the end of the 19th century. Personal considerations and conflict, national and international prejudice, and cultural differences are set against the evolving geopolitical background as Europe slipped toward the First World War. Cajal, Golgi, and others used primitive light microscopes. The volume describes how the earlier work is being continued with such modern techniques as electron microscopy and how current research is examining the role of synaptic dysfunction in Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. Students of the history of science and cultural change should find Nerve Endings interesting and informative. Teens studying biology and medicine will find that the book provides an accessible introduction to understanding the structure and function of the nervous system.–Ted Woodcock, George Mason University, Arlington, VA
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From Booklist
Santiago Ramon y Cajal, in his posthumously published Advice for a Young Investigator (1999), wrote of the lure of science and the mental discipline required for notable achievement in it. Rapport’s biography of Cajal gives ample example of his precepts, for his outstanding discovery of the synaptic gap between neurons arose from nowhere, as far as the medical establishment of the day was concerned. Spanish doctor Cajal made this breakthrough as much by being unencumbered by preconceived notions as through diligent observation of neural anatomy. As neurosurgeon Rapport explains, in the 1880s the "reticular" theory reigned and held that neurons physically touched; otherwise, how could neurons communicate? Unconcerned by orthodoxy, Cajal ditched chess and took up histology, the science of staining and studying tissue. Improving a staining technique devised by Camillo Golgi, the antagonist in Rapport’s account, Cajal revealed as never before the axons and dendrites of the neuron. His focused personality and modesty, as evoked by Rapport, will make an indelible impression on and prove inspirational to science fans. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Peter Galison, author of Einstein’s Clocks and Poincaré’s Maps
Rapport has elegantly and compactly told this story...opens both the scientific and the personal to a wide audience.