FoundationalConceptsNeuroscience

Figure 2.14. Two figures from Galvani’s 1791 publication, depicting experi-
mental devices and arrangements, together with dissected frog legs.

Dendrites

Figure 2.15. Nerve cell, with axon and dendrites.

While working as a physician in a large psychiatric asylum admin-
istering to more than five hundred patients, Golgi, in his “spare time,”
developed his famous stain. He called it la reazione nera—the black
reaction. It made neurons, together with all their dendrites and axons,
eminently visible under the microscope. Here is the recipe, in brief, of
his technique: