The Art that devised modern Neuroscience: The scientific drawing of Cajal and his disciples

Abstract

The drawings with which Santiago Ramón y Cajal unravelled how the nervous system is organized are unanimously recognized in the scientific world and increasingly acclaimed by the artistic world. Their magnificent and hyper-realistic artistry were key to use them as a revealing scientific tool: the photography of the time was not up to the task of being used effectively. But, along with incredible details that are fundamental (and vice versa), the Cajalian diagrams of larger structures connected at long distances denote its amazing capacity for intellectual distillation: with just a few neurons out of all those stained in a histological section, Cajal captures the essence of the physiological message to convey. He transmitted this way of drawing microscopic observations as an enormously effective tool for Science to almost all his disciples at the Spanish Neurological School: his brother Pedro Ramón y Cajal, Domingo Sánchez, Nicolás Achúcarro, Pío del Río-Hortega, Fernando de Castro and Rafael Lorente de Nó were all extraordinary artists. In 2017, UNESCO included these drawings in the World Heritage. Some of the most prestigious art critics of today suggest an imaginary podium in the History of Drawing: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti and… Cajal!.