Louis-Antoine Ranvier

anatomist histologist neurohistologist pathologist physician scientist

October 2, 1835 (age 86)

Lyons, France

After receiving his medical degree in 1865, shortly thereafter Ranvier and a friend, Victor Cornil, founded a small private laboratory where they offered a course in histology to medical students. Continuing the work of the Paris clinical school on the microscopical level, Cornil taught pathological anatomy while Ranvier taught normal anatomy. From this collaboration resulted the Manuel d'histologie pathologique, a unique work in France, where the leading pathological anatomists still disdained the microscope. Ranvier’s collaboration with Cornil ended in 1867 when Ranvier became preparateur for Bernard at the College de France. Ranvier made his lodgings there into a small histology laboratory, which in 1872 was annexed to Bernard’s chair of experimental medicine and given official recognition as the Laboratoire d'Histologie of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes. In 1875, through Bernard’s influence, Portal's defunct chair of anatomy at the College de France was recreated for Ranvier as the chair of general anatomy; and for a time the histology laboratories at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes and at the College de France were combined. But eventually, the laboratories were separated, with Ranvier’s student Louis Malassez becoming director of the laboratory at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes. Ranvier’s teaching, which he conducted mainly in the laboratory, tended to be dryly technical and focused on his own research. He, therefore, attracted only a small audience, but his printed lemons were widely read. For several decades his Traite technique d'histologie (1875-1882) was a leading textbook in the field. At the beginning of his career, Ramon y Cajal took Ranvier’s text as his scientific “Bible.” From 1875 until about 1890 Ranvier’s laboratory was a center of activity for a large number of students, both French and foreign, including Malassez, Louis de Sinety, Maurice Debove, Renaut, William Nicati, and E. Suchard. After 1890 biological research moved away from morphology to chemistry, physical chemistry, and microbiology. For several years thereafter (until 1895) Ranvier continued his work, producing particularly important studies on cicatrization and on the development of the lymphatic vessels. In 1897 he and Balbiani founded the Archives d'anatomie microscopiqtie, the first journal in France devoted exclusively to microscopical studies. By 1900 Ranvier felt isolated from the scientific community in France and retired to his estate in Thelys, where he spent the next twenty-two years almost totally removed from the scientific scene. When Ranvier began his career, histology was well established in Germany but little pursued in France. Because he inherited the physiological tradition established by Bernard, Ranvier’s work was not as strictly morphological as much of the work in Germany. He supplemented histological techniques with those of physiological experimentation, namely, ligation, excitation of nerves and muscles by electricity, nervous section, and graphical registration of movements. His biographers have looked upon his work as an extension into histology of Bernard’s method. Ranvier’s work embraced all organic systems, but he is best known for his researches on the peripheral nervous system. Ranvier showed that the medullated nerves are not regularly cylindrical - at approximately equal distances there are constrictions in the form of rings where the myelin sheath, but not the cylinder axis, is interrupted. The nodes divide the nervous fiber into interannulary segments possessing a nucleus and protoplasm (neurilemma nucleus). Ranvier prepared his specimens either by the osmic acid method first employed by Schultze or by impregnation with silver nitrate. Ranvier also investigated the degeneration and regeneration of sectioned nerves. In spite of Waller’s earlier studies (1852), many scientists continued to believe that the cylinder axis persisted in the peripheral segment after section and therefore had an independent life. Ranvier’s work, confirming Wallerian degeneration, showed that the cylinder axis of the peripheral segment does fragment and disappear, while the cylinder axis of the central segment hypertrophies and emits buds that are the point of departure for new nervous fibers. Ranvier believed that the regeneration of nerves was a particular case of the general law of growth from the center to the periphery. Using an improved method of impregnation by gold, Ranvier did extensive research into the nervous terminations in the skin, the muscles, the cornea, and the sensorial organs. His other notable work on the nervous system includes a description of the “laminous sheath” (perineurium) connecting bundles of nervous fibers and his discovery that the apparently unipolar cells of the spinal ganglia of mammals bifurcate in a T-branch. This research tended to support the theory that the cylinder axis is a prolongation of the nervous cell. Much of Ranvier’s work on the nervous system was later used to support the neuron theory, but Ranvier himself did not become involved in the famous neuron-reticulum controversy. He did, however, support the controversial doctrine of the fibrillary structure of nerve cells. Ranvier also studied the differences between the nervous terminations of voluntary and involuntary muscles. To study muscle contraction he devised a method for utilizing a spectrum of diffraction set up by an extended muscle, which he then subjected to a tetanizing current. Ranvier studied the secretion of the salivary glands in the dog on a microscopical level. He obtained secretions by electric stimulation of the tympanic cord. He also investigated the nature of connective tissue and refuted Virchow’s theory by the novel method of disassociation by an edematous papule (boule d'oedeme). He studied the problem of the origin of the lymphatics and invented a cardiograph for measuring the movements of lymphatic hearts.

Louis-Antoine Ranvier Edit Profile

anatomist histologist neurohistologist pathologist physician scientist

Background

Louis-Antoine Ranvier was born on October 2, 1835, in Lyons, France. Ranvier’s father, Jean-Frantjois-Victor Ranvier, was a businessman who had retired early to devote himself to public administration.

Education

After studying medicine at Lyons, Ranvier went to Paris, and passing the examination to become an intern, entered the Paris hospitals in I860. He received his medical degree in 1865.

Education period of Louis-Antoine Ranvier in University of Paris

Career

After receiving his medical degree in 1865, shortly thereafter Ranvier and a friend, Victor Cornil, founded a small private laboratory where they offered a course in histology to medical students. Continuing the work of the Paris clinical school on the microscopical level, Cornil taught pathological anatomy while Ranvier taught normal anatomy. From this collaboration resulted the Manuel d'histologie pathologique, a unique work in France, where the leading pathological anatomists still disdained the microscope.

Ranvier’s collaboration with Cornil ended in 1867 when Ranvier became preparateur for Bernard at the College de France. Ranvier made his lodgings there into a small histology laboratory, which in 1872 was annexed to Bernard’s chair of experimental medicine and given official recognition as the Laboratoire d'Histologie of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes. In 1875, through Bernard’s influence, Portal's defunct chair of anatomy at the College de France was recreated for Ranvier as the chair of general anatomy; and for a time the histology laboratories at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes and at the College de France were combined. But eventually, the laboratories were separated, with Ranvier’s student Louis Malassez becoming director of the laboratory at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes.

Ranvier’s teaching, which he conducted mainly in the laboratory, tended to be dryly technical and focused on his own research. He, therefore, attracted only a small audience, but his printed lemons were widely read. For several decades his Traite technique d'histologie (1875-1882) was a leading textbook in the field. At the beginning of his career, Ramon y Cajal took Ranvier’s text as his scientific “Bible.”

From 1875 until about 1890 Ranvier’s laboratory was a center of activity for a large number of students, both French and foreign, including Malassez, Louis de Sinety, Maurice Debove, Renaut, William Nicati, and E. Suchard. After 1890 biological research moved away from morphology to chemistry, physical chemistry, and microbiology. For several years thereafter (until 1895) Ranvier continued his work, producing particularly important studies on cicatrization and on the development of the lymphatic vessels. In 1897 he and Balbiani founded the Archives d'anatomie microscopiqtie, the first journal in France devoted exclusively to microscopical studies.

By 1900 Ranvier felt isolated from the scientific community in France and retired to his estate in Thelys, where he spent the next twenty-two years almost totally removed from the scientific scene.

When Ranvier began his career, histology was well established in Germany but little pursued in France. Because he inherited the physiological tradition established by Bernard, Ranvier’s work was not as strictly morphological as much of the work in Germany. He supplemented histological techniques with those of physiological experimentation, namely, ligation, excitation of nerves and muscles by electricity, nervous section, and graphical registration of movements. His biographers have looked upon his work as an extension into histology of Bernard’s method.

Ranvier’s work embraced all organic systems, but he is best known for his researches on the peripheral nervous system. Ranvier showed that the medullated nerves are not regularly cylindrical - at approximately equal distances there are constrictions in the form of rings where the myelin sheath, but not the cylinder axis, is interrupted. The nodes divide the nervous fiber into interannulary segments possessing a nucleus and protoplasm (neurilemma nucleus). Ranvier prepared his specimens either by the osmic acid method first employed by Schultze or by impregnation with silver nitrate. Ranvier also investigated the degeneration and regeneration of sectioned nerves.

In spite of Waller’s earlier studies (1852), many scientists continued to believe that the cylinder axis persisted in the peripheral segment after section and therefore had an independent life. Ranvier’s work, confirming Wallerian degeneration, showed that the cylinder axis of the peripheral segment does fragment and disappear, while the cylinder axis of the central segment hypertrophies and emits buds that are the point of departure for new nervous fibers. Ranvier believed that the regeneration of nerves was a particular case of the general law of growth from the center to the periphery.

Using an improved method of impregnation by gold, Ranvier did extensive research into the nervous terminations in the skin, the muscles, the cornea, and the sensorial organs. His other notable work on the nervous system includes a description of the “laminous sheath” (perineurium) connecting bundles of nervous fibers and his discovery that the apparently unipolar cells of the spinal ganglia of mammals bifurcate in a T-branch. This research tended to support the theory that the cylinder axis is a prolongation of the nervous cell. Much of Ranvier’s work on the nervous system was later used to support the neuron theory, but Ranvier himself did not become involved in the famous neuron-reticulum controversy. He did, however, support the controversial doctrine of the fibrillary structure of nerve cells.

Ranvier also studied the differences between the nervous terminations of voluntary and involuntary muscles. To study muscle contraction he devised a method for utilizing a spectrum of diffraction set up by an extended muscle, which he then subjected to a tetanizing current.

Ranvier studied the secretion of the salivary glands in the dog on a microscopical level. He obtained secretions by electric stimulation of the tympanic cord. He also investigated the nature of connective tissue and refuted Virchow’s theory by the novel method of disassociation by an edematous papule (boule d'oedeme). He studied the problem of the origin of the lymphatics and invented a cardiograph for measuring the movements of lymphatic hearts.

Achievements

Ranvier's major achievement was in becoming a prominent figure and the leader in the renewal of the French anatomy. Ranvier's career, in collaboration with Bernard, generated the transition from neurophysiology to neuroanatomy in exceptional productivity. Ranvier’s work embraced all organic systems, but he is best known for his researches on the peripheral nervous system. His earliest and most celebrated achievement was his discovery in 1871 of the annular constrictions of medullated nerves, now known as the nodes of Ranvier. By adopting Experimental Histology from Bernard, Ranvier was able to discover the interruptions of myelin. He became immortalized by the name "nodes of Ranvier".

Ranvier was a master in histology, particularly in microscopy and staining, and his book, Technical treatise of histology, published in 1875 was later considered a bible by Ramón y Cajal who established the neuronal theory. With the French bacteriologist André-Victor Cornil he wrote Manual of Pathological Histology (1869), considered a landmark of 19th-century medicine.

Other anatomical structures bearing his name are the Merkel-Ranvier cells, melanocyte-like cells in the basal layer of the epidermis that contain catecholamine granules; and Ranvier's tactile disks, a special type of sensory nerve ending.

Also, he was one of the founders of the scientific journal in 1897, which was named Archives d'anatomie microscopique.

Works

$Manuel d\'Histologie Pathologique Manuel d\'Histologie Pathologique$ $Traite Technique D\'histologie Traite Technique D\'histologie$ $Le\u00E7ons sur l\'histologie du syst\u00E8me nerveux Le\u00E7ons sur l\'histologie du syst\u00E8me nerveux$ $Le\u00E7ons D\'anatomie G\u00E9n\u00E9rale Sur Le Syst\u00E8me Musculaire Le\u00E7ons D\'anatomie G\u00E9n\u00E9rale Sur Le Syst\u00E8me Musculaire$

book

Views

Ranvier's work was noted for its precision, thoroughness, and simple but effective techniques. He preferred disassociations (or fine dissections) to sectional cuts; and whenever possible he worked with thin membranes that were naturally disassociated. His few sectional cuts were usually made by hand rather than with the microtome. Osmic acid, alcohol, and bichromates were his usual fixating agents. The remainder of his reagents included a few coloring agents for injections and solutions of gold and silver for impregnations. Most often Ranvier worked with adult tissues; he took little interest in histogenesis. Like Bernard, he had only contempt for statistics. Although he recognized the necessity of forming hypotheses in his experimental work, he disliked theorizing.

Membership

In 1886 Ranvier was elected a member of the Paris Academy of Medicine and in the following year a member of the Academy of Sciences. He also became a member of numerous foreign academies and learned societies.

Personality

Unfortunately, Ranvier almost unknown to historians today. It is known that he had a rather independent personality, was unsociable, and often even rude. Seemingly insensitive, he was admired and feared more often than loved by his students and colleagues.

Connections

Father:: Jean-Frantjois-Victor Ranvier
collaborator:: Édouard Balbiani
teacher:: Claude Bernard
Friend:: Victor André Cornil

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