Pío del Río Hortega

Pío del Río Hortega ( born May 5, 1882 in Portillo (Valladolid, Spain), † June 1, 1945 in Buenos Aires, Argentina) was a Spanish physician, anatomist and histologist.

His parents were Juan del Río and Dolores Ortega. The couple had eight children: María, León, Felisa, Pío, Julián, Catalina, Julia and Gerardo.

Life

Río Hortega began his medical studies in Valladolid and received in 1907, although he showed little interest in working as a practicing physician, one of the few places as Titulararzt. In 1909 he went to Madrid to begin his PhD entitled " Causes and pathological anatomy of tumors of the brain " ( " Causas y anatomía Patologica de los tumores del encéfalo "). Among his teachers was, inter alia, Leopoldo López García the histologist.

In 1913 he was awarded a scholarship, and expanded his knowledge in various institutions, including London and Paris. Back in Madrid he worked from 1914 to 1917 at the Institute of Santiago Ramón y Cajal under the teacher Nicolás Achúcarro, and took his position at his death in 1918. 1928 he became manager and in 1931 director of the National Cancer Institute in Madrid.

Río Hortega visited many European and Latin American universities and conferences to lectures on his discoveries to keep. He was 1929 and 1934 proposed for the Nobel Prize, but did not get it.

His liberal ideas led him soon to Spain ( see Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939 ) to leave. In 1937 he went to Paris and worked, and in 1938 he moved to Oxford there to conduct a pathological neurohistologisches laboratory. The University of Oxford awarded him an honorary doctorate ( Dr. hc ).

In 1940 he went to Buenos Aires, where he died in 1945 on a self- diagnose cancer. He was buried in the cemetery of the city of Buenos Aires and in 1986 his remains were reburied at the cemetery ( " Panteon de Hombres Ilustres " ) of Valladolid.

Work

After Ramón y Cajal Río Hortega is one of those which the reputation of the so-called Spanish Histological school most impressed. However, his prestige is essentially limited to histology, which is based mainly in the fact that he, unlike his fellow students, who were dedicated to the clinical subjects after the study of histology and pathological anatomy, to its conclusion on the Histological Laboratory researched.

Río Hortega regarded as explorers (1919-1921) of microglial cells (initially called Hortega cells) and oligodendrocytes. To its discovery, it was believed that there are only two types of cells in the brain, neurons and astrocytes. Although it has previously been observations that pointed to other cell types in the brain. Thus, for example, Ramón y Cajal, the technical term " glia adendritica " (round = / oval) for amoeboid cells in the brain characterized ( adendritica = without dendrites (branches ) ). Microglia in the state have activated an amoeboid cell shape ( morphology ), and have only in the quiescent state dendrite-like foothills.

Río Hortega used for his research, histological staining ( Silberkarbonatmethode ) of fixed cells, the Nicolás Achúcarro had first developed, but he was able to refine this critical and recognize such targeted structures and cells under a microscope.

The discoveries of Río Hortega allowed in addition to a more accurate general histology in particular the accurate classification of brain tumors. So different in 1846, although already Rudolf Virchow certain tumor types, which he attributed to the so-called neuroglia, of the large group of sarcomas (neuronal Turmore ), and had the Termini Technici glia and glioma marked, but only allowed the work of Río Hortega a pathologically and histologically differentiated Description of glioma ( glial tumors).