Figure 1.

Camillo Golgi, the black reaction and the Golgi cell A, Camillo Golgi, Nobel Prize winner for Phsyiology and Medicine (1906). Camillo Golgi (1843–1926) invented the ‘black reaction’, which allowed him and many other scientists to visualise the fine structure of the nervous system. B, in this picture, Golgi shows a reconstruction of a Golgi cell. Note the precise description of the basal and apical dendrites and of the large axonal plexus, the hallmark of the Golgi cell. (Gangliar cell in the (neonatal) cat cerebellar cortex; Table XIV, Opera Omnia, Golgi, 1903.) ‘Such cells are part of the granular layer and, in the cat and rabbit, when the black reaction succeeds, can be seen in a considerable amount. … Most ramifications of the protoplasmatic prolongations (in black) reach the superior border of the molecular layer. … The nervous prolongation (in red), with repeated subdivisions becoming finer and finer, creates an extremely complicated interlacement of fibres. These, in the vertical plane, spread from one to the other border of the granular layer, and in the width of the granular layer mix up with the interlacements resulting from subdivisions of neighbouring cells of the same type (see Table XVII). This cell is one of the most remarkable specimens among those that are described as second type cells in the text. Regarding the cerebellum, such a cell should be to compared to the one represented in Table XV (a Purkinje cell), representing one of the most remarkable specimens of the first type of cells.’ Translated from Opera Omnia (Golgi, 1903).