Re: early names in glial history
The translation from Otto Deiters' unfinished manuscript, submitted by Fritz-Dieter Soehn is fascinating. It caused me to read more carefully what Shepard has written about him in his Foundations of the Neuron Doctrine, Oxford, 1991. Shepard tells us that after medical training in Bonn, he studied under Rudolf Virchow who had just come to Berlin from Wuerzburg. What stikes the reader is that Shepard, certainly an authoritative source states that Virchow was the "discoverer of "neuroglia," the nonnervous type of cell that is an important constituent of the brain." Yet Ms. Netting names Dieters as the first to identify "glia, as distinct from neurons in 1865." So I have a question and a comment or two: 1. Who DID discover glia or neuroglia cells? 2 Ms. Netting: Golgi was a poor man who was forced to work in a hospital for the incurables to support himself. His laboratory was in his kitchen. I don't think he could have afforded a cleaning lady. Shepard addresses the subject of how histologists came to use silver stains. Their use by 19th century photographers, e.g., Daguerre, led histologists to try them. As for Golgi, all that Shepard has to say is "We do not know how Golgi hit on the use of silver nitrate solutions for staining brain tissue blocks . . ." Finally, as for astrocytes, a kind of glial cell, the discoverer is given as von Lenhossek. Shepard quotes at length from an 1895 monograph he wrote. You know, between people like Professor Dieter-Soehn, books like Professor Shepard's and questions like Ms. Netting's, a person can learn a great deal from Histneur-L and never get around to finishing his own work! Just one more thing: Dieters died of typhus fever. Thank you all sincerely, Richard Burack Jackson, NH 03846-0005