Julio Perales García, a disciple of Luis Simarro from Valencia
F. Vera Sempere
Neurosciences and History 2024;12(1):30-45
Type of article: ORIGINAL
AUTHOR
F. Vera Sempere
Emeritus professor, Department of Pathology. Universitat de València, Valencia, Spain.
ABSTRACT
Julio Perales García was a disciple of Luis Simarro Lacabra, who supervised his doctoral thesis in 1890. Besides his thesis, which was cited by Cajal in 1896, Julio Perales was probably the least well-known of Simarro’s disciples, and few biographical details are available.
The present study provides a global review of Simarro’s main disciples, followed by an analysis of the life of Julio Perales, based on documentary sources identified in Madrid and Valencia. We also analyse the content of his original thesis, evaluating his micrography work and its impact on the scientific oeuvre of Santiago Ramón y Cajal.
Julio Perales was born in Valencia in 1866; he studied in the city for the first five years of his medical degree, moving to Madrid in 1887 to complete his medical studies and to prepare his doctoral thesis with Simarro.
Cajal wrote in 1896 that Perales’ micrography work had been totally overlooked by other authors. This was due to the fact that the thesis was never published; neither was the hypothetical book mentioned in the thesis, which was to be published imminently by Perales’ master, Simarro. Cajal emphasised the functional significance of the results reported in the thesis, and had the integrity to acknowledge that Perales had been the first to make these discoveries, despite what was reported in other European publications.
Julio Perales ceased his micrography research in 1905, not without first attempting to obtain a stable university position. Unlike other disciples of Simarro, Perales had no links later in his life with the Junta para la Ampliación de Estudios, and was not involved in the histological school that materialised around Ramón y Cajal in the first third of the 20th century.
KEYWORDS
Julio Perales, Luis Simarro, neurohistology, Ramón y Cajal
Neurosciences and History 2024;12(1):30-45
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