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  • Nerve Endings: The Discovery of the Synapse
  • Stephen Jacyna
Richard Rapport . Nerve Endings: The Discovery of the Synapse. New York: Norton, 2005. 240 pp. $U.S. 23.95, $Can. 33.00 (0-393-06019-5).

The theme of this book is the emergence at the turn of the twentieth century of modern conceptions of how nerve cells communicate. In the late nineteenth century two theories competed to explain the transmission of nervous impulses throughout the body: one was the "reticular" theory, which saw the nervous system as a continuous network; the other was what came to be known as the "neuron" theory, which maintained that nerve cells were, on the contrary, discrete anatomical units. The mechanism of communication was, at least prima facie, easy to understand on the first hypothesis. Proponents of the neuron theory, on the other hand, were obliged to explain how impulses could travel from one separate nerve cell to the next.

Richard Rapport takes a biographical approach to this subject. His protagonists are the Italian Camillo Golgi, chief proponent of the reticular hypothesis, and the Spaniard Santiago Ramón y Cajal, who played a decisive role in establishing the morphological autonomy of the nerve cell. Rapport ranges widely about his subject, however, including material on later developments in the field that depended on the development of the electron microscope. He makes clear in his preface that he writes for a general rather than a scholarly audience. The book therefore makes no claims to be an original contribution to our understanding of the history of neuroscience. The author is instead heavily dependent for his account on a small number of existing sources, notably Cajal's autobiography and Paolo Mazzarello's life of Golgi. He has skilfully woven these sources together to create a narrative that makes these debates, which at first sight are somewhat abstruse, both accessible and interesting.

A number of points emerge with particular clarity. Especially successful is Rapport's detailing of the rudimentary research facilities available to both Cajal and Golgi: the former's laboratory bench was the kitchen table after it had been cleared following the evening meal, and his microtome incorporated the razor he had retained from his early days of apprenticeship to a barber. Even in a period when elsewhere in Europe medical research was increasingly concentrated in elaborate university laboratories and conducted by teams of scientists, there was thus still scope for an isolated individual in a relatively scientifically backward country to produce results that would have a major impact. [End Page 780]

Rapport operates with a conventional conception of the dynamics of science. Knowledge of the structure and functions of the nervous system, on this view, progresses as new techniques and instruments become available to investigators. He also retains, however, a place for a more Romantic conception of discovery—one that values the potential for individual virtuosity and personal influence to have a decisive effect upon events. From the hints scattered throughout this book, one is left with the strong suspicion that much more remains to be said about the processes that led to the ultimate triumph of our current understanding of the form and function of the cellular elements of the nervous system.

Stephen Jacyna
Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London
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