Characters in the service of Ramón y Cajal (1901-1934): the lights and shadows of his maids, driver, porter, secretary/librarian, and others

S. Giménez-Roldán
Neurosciences and History 2023;11(4):144-157

Type of article: ORIGINAL

AUTHOR

S. Giménez-Roldán
Former head of Neurology Department. Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón, Madrid, Spain.

ABSTRACT

Santiago Ramón y Cajal lived in modest economic circumstances for most of his life. This situation changed considerably after he received the Moscow Prize (1900), the Helmholtz Gold Medal (1905), awarded by a German institution, and particularly the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1906). This income enabled him to build a small mansion, employ servants to care for it, and acquire a car with a personal driver. The well-equipped Laboratorio de Investigaciones Biológicas, created on a government initiative in 1901, was staffed by diverse professionals under Cajal’s direction, including laboratory staff, a porter, and a librarian/secretary. This work analyses the influence of Cajal’s staff in his personal and working life. The most relevant characters in this sense are a meddling porter who played a key role in the traumatic disagreement between Cajal and Pío del Río-Hortega, and Cajal’s personal secretary and librarian, who included irrelevant information in successive publications on the great scientist, with an extreme case being the cropping of a photograph with the intention of excluding the female staff at the laboratory.

KEYWORDS

Ramón y Cajal, the maids Isidora Ballano and Hilaria Melquinza, the porter Tomás García de la Torre, Enriqueta Lewy Rodríguez, librarian/secretary

Neurosciences and History 2023;11(4):144-157