Background
Camillo Golgi was born in July 1843 in the village of Corteno, in the province of Brescia (Lombardy), Italy. The village is now named Corteno Golgi in his honour. His father was a physician and district medical officer.
biologist pathologist physician scientist
Camillo Golgi was born in July 1843 in the village of Corteno, in the province of Brescia (Lombardy), Italy. The village is now named Corteno Golgi in his honour. His father was a physician and district medical officer.
Golgi read medicine at the University of Pavia, where, together with Giulio Bizzozero and Enrico Sertoli, he studied under Eusebio Oehl, distinguished as the first in Pavia to develop systematically studies of microscopic anatomy and histology. After obtaining a degree in medicine in 1865, he worked for a short time in the psychiatric clinic directed by Cesare Lombroso, but his main interest was in the histological research he was conducting in the laboratory of experimental pathology directed by Bizzozero.
Golgi’s first publications, which appeared between 1868 and 1871, included some works on clinical topics but were mainly devoted to the anatomy and pathological anatomy of the nervous system.
In his papers on neurology he described the morphological features of the glial cells and showed the relationships between their prolongations and blood vessels. In 1871 he gave a private course on clinical microscopy, but in 1872 financial difficulties forced him to interrupt his scientific career temporarily and accept the modest post of principal doctor of the Pio Luogo degli Incurabili at Abbiategrasso.
Even there he managed, although with difficulty, to continue his microscopic research on the structure of the nervous system; later he was able to publish the results in important papers. Having gained a certain degree of fame, he became in 1875 a lecturer in histology at the University of Pavia.
Around him flourished a group of notable scholars and researchers. In 1906 he shared the Nobel Prize for medicine or physiology with Santiago Ramon y Cajal, famous also for his studies on the fine anatomy of the nervous system. Golgi became a senator in 1900 and took an active part in public and university life, especially in Pavia, where he was dean of the Faculty of Medicine and president of the university.
Golgi invented a completely original method based on the coloration of cells and nerve fibers by means of the prolonged immersion of samples, previously hardened with potassium bichromate or ammonium bichromate, in a 0. 5 to l percent solution of silver nitrate.
This technique brings out clearly the features of the nerve elements.
Under controlled conditions, based on the length of the period of hardening in the bichromate, the “black reaction” permits the controlled staining of certain nerve elements (for example, either the nerve fibers with their fine branches, or only the nerve or connective cells) or even only certain parts of one (fibers) or the other (cells), thus allowing a better study of their interrelationships. From 1873 Golgi published many articles on the results of his systematic observations, using his new technique, on the fine anatomy of the various organs of the nervous system (the gray matter of the brain, the cerebellum, the olfactory lobes, etc. ).
On the basis of his observations Golgi formulated a theory based on the following fundamental points:(1) The function of the nerve extensions, or axons, is exclusively one of transmission of nerve impulses.
(2) The function of the protoplasmic extensions, or dendrites, is predominantly trophic, as can be deduced, for example, from their frequent relationships with the pia mater.
(3) There are two types of nerve cells, differing according to the characteristics of the nerve extension of each: nerve cells of the first type are those with an axon that, although serving a more or less large number of lateral fibrils, nevertheless preserves its individuality and continues directly into the cylindraxis of a medullary fiber.
Nerve cells of the second type are those with an axon that within a relatively short distance of its origin subdivides within an indeterminate distance, and with no demonstrable spatial limit.
The cells of the first type probably have a motive or psychomotive function; those of the second, hypothetically a sensorial or psychosensorial function.
(4) In the gray matter of the nerve centers there is a diffused nerve network of extreme fineness, continuous over the entire nerve substance and made of nerve fibrils finely and thickly interlaced.
(3) the correspondence of the cyclic development of the malaric parasites with the periodic succession of the fever fits; (4) the constant relationship of the single fits with the development, maturing, and reproduction of one generation of parasites; (5) the correspondence of various species or varieties of malaric parasites with the various fundamental classical types of intermittent fever. From this knowledge Golgi immediately derived results capable of practical application: by the examination of the blood of malaria patients carried out with methods that he suggested, it was possible to diagnose the different forms of the disease and to establish the sequence in the appearance of the fever fits.
Also basically important for diagnosis was the observation that the entire nosogenic process of malaric fevers sometimes occurs not in the circulating blood but in the internal organs, so that it is only later that the parasites spread in the blood.
Golgi was irreligious in his later life and became an agnostic atheist.
In 1913 he became foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.