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epilogue
“ I was a third year medical student and from several books I had learned the details of the phenomenon mentioned, but these texts did not attract my attention although I felt they contained strong currents of thought. But when one of my friends, Mr Borao, Assistant of Physiology, kindly showed me the movement in the mesentery of the frog, in the presence of the sublime spectacle, I felt like I had a revelation. I was excited and touched to see red and white blood cells turn as pebbles to the momentum of the stream; seeing as, by virtue of their elasticity, the red cells stretched and passed laboriously through the finest capillaries and, the obstacle overcome, suddenly recovering their form in the manner of a spring, with a warning that, at the lowest obstacle in the current, joints of the endothelium would relax ensuing hemorrhage and edema; to notice, finally, how the heartbeat, weakened by the excessive action of curare, shook loose the stuck red blood cells ... it seemed like a veil was drawn back in my mind, and the belief in I do not know what mysterious force that was then attributed to the phenomena of life went away and was lost. In my enthusiasm I burst into the following statement, not knowing that many, notably Descartes, had expressed it centuries before: “Life resembles a pure mechanism. Living bodies are perfect hydraulic machines that are capable of repairing the disorders caused by the momentum of the stream that feeds them, and producing, under Generation, other similar hydraulic machines. “
Reglas y Consejos sobre Investigación Científica, Santiago Ramon y Cajal, Nobel Laureate 1902, Physiology,
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