Figure 1. Early 20th century survey of glial biology in medicine: form and function.

(A) Camillo Golgi's drawings of astrocytes contacting blood vessels (from Golgi, 1903). (B) The close envelopment of neurons by the processes of neuroglial cells as seen by Santiago Ramón y Cajal (redrawn from Cajal's original plate by De Castro, from Glees, 1955). (C) Morphological diversity of neuroglia in human fetal cortex (Retzius, 1894–1916, Vol. 6, Plate II, Figure 5). (D) Close interactions between neuroglial (red) and neuronal (black) networks (from Schleich, 1894). (E) Oligodendroglia of the white matter and one astrocyte with a vascular endfoot showing the distribution of darkly stained granules or gliosomes in their processes (from Penfield, 1924), the image is taken from Glees (1955). (F) Pathological potential of neuroglia. The drawing by Alois Alzheimer (Alzheimer, 1910) shows association of glial cells (glz) with pathologically modified neurons (gaz or ganglion cells).