Santiago Ramon y Cajal. Portrait of Santiago Ramon y Cajal (1852-1934), Spanish histologist. Ramon y Cajal was apprenticed to a barber and a shoemaker before taking up medicine. From 1885 he became interested in the microscopic structure of the brain. By using and improving Camillo Golgi's recently-invented staining methods, Ramon y Cayal studied the brain, spinal cord and retina. He showed the great complexity of the system and argued that the cells in the nervous system were discrete, having no physical contin- uity between them. He also studied the degenera- tion and regeneration of nerves. In 1906 he shared the Nobel Prize for medicine with Golgi.