Pío del Río Hortega

Pío del Río Hortega in his laboratory in 1924.

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

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 in 1907, although he showed little interest in working as a resident doctor, received one of the few posts as a titular doctor. In 1909 he went to Madrid to do his doctorate there with the title "Causes and pathological anatomy of tumors of the brain" (" Causas y anatomía patológica de los tumores del encéfalo "). Among his teachers was the histologist Leopoldo López García (1854–1932).

In 1913 he received a scholarship and expanded his knowledge in various institutions, including in London and Paris. Back in Madrid he worked from 1914 to 1917 in the institute of Santiago Ramón y Cajal under the teacher Nicolás Achúcarro (1880-1918) and took over his position on his death in 1918. In 1928 he became manager and in 1931 director of the National Cancer Institute in Madrid.

Río Hortega attended many European and Latin American universities and conferences to give lectures on his discoveries. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1929 and 1934 , but did not receive it.

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

In 1940 he went to Buenos Aires, where he died in 1945 of self-diagnosed cancer. He was buried in the city of Buenos Aires cemetery. In 1986 he was transferred to the cemetery (" Panteón de Hombres Ilustres ") in Valladolid.

plant

After Ramón y Cajal, Río Hortega is one of the doctors who shaped the reputation of the so-called Spanish Histological School the most. However, his prestige is essentially limited to histology, which is mainly due to the fact that, in contrast to his fellow students who devoted themselves to clinical subjects after studying histology and pathological anatomy, he continued in the histology laboratory until he graduated researched.

Río Hortega is considered to be the discoverer (1919–1921) of microglial cells (initially called Hortega cells) and oligodendrocytes . Until it was discovered, it was believed that there were only two types of cells in the brain , neurons and astrocytes . Although there had been observations before that indicated other cell types in the brain. So was z. B. by Ramón y Cajal, the term technicus "glia adendritica" for amoeboid (= round / oval) glial cells in the brain coined (adendritica = without dendrites (branches)). When activated, microglia have an amoeboid cell shape ( morphology ) and only have dendrite-like runners when they are at rest.

For his research, Río Hortega used a histological staining ( silver carbonate method) of fixed cells, which Nicolás Achúcarro had first developed, but he was able to refine this decisively and thus specifically recognize structures and cells under the microscope .

The discoveries of Río Hortega made possible, in addition to a more precise general histology, in particular the precise classification of brain tumors . So different in 1846 , although already Rudolf Virchow certain types of tumors, which he so-called neuroglia , attributed by the large group of sarcomas (neural Turmore), and the terms Technici had glial and glioma marked, but only facilitated the work of Río Hortega a pathologically and histologically differentiated Description of gliomas (glial tumors).

Web links

• Photograph by Pío del Río Hortega with Dorothy Stuart Russell
• Biography (spanish)