Lc23 Pío del Río Hortega

PÍO DEL RÍO HORTEGA

1882 - 1945

I was born in 1882 in Portillo, a small village near Valladolid, which by the way, has another beautiful castle. I studied Medicine at the Medical School in this city, where I had the privilege of meeting the histologist Leopoldo López García among my teachers. Unlike my classmates, who after taking histology and pathology courses focused their attention on the clinic, I continued to collaborate in the histology laboratory until finishing my degree and although I didn’t have much interest in medical practice, I obtained the position of regular physician in my hometown in 1907, where I practiced for three years. In 1909 I moved to Madrid to do my doctorate, which I obtained with the work “Causes and pathological anatomy of brain tumors”. It was based on fifteen cases from which I collected detailed macro and microscopic observations. Later I abandoned professional practice.

Pío del Río Hortega worked with the tannin and silver technique that Achúcarro had devised, but he created four different variants. He also worked on the epiphysis, where he managed to demonstrate that the epiphyseal lobes are formed exclusively by fibrous neuroglia. Another field of his research was the study of tumors generated in the nervous system.

Shortly after the civil war began in 1936, this renowned Spanish scientist went into exile in Paris. There he worked in the neurosurgery service of the Hospital de la Pitié. He later went to the University of Oxford with the neurosurgeon Hugh Cairns. In 1940 he was invited by the Spanish Cultural Institution in Buenos Aires, to give a lecture. He stayed in the capital of Argentine to direct a Histological and Histopathological Research Laboratory. Shortly after, he died in Buenos Aires in 1945.

At present, in his hometown, Valladolid, a street is called Calle Pío del Río Hortega, the best hospital in the entire region is also called Hospital Rio Hortega, an institute and function rooms are named after him. In short, he has left a mark on the Spanish city of Valladolid.

Elisa Álvarez

<<  Cervantes | Fire of Valladolid >>