MESOGLIA & MICROGLIA – A Historical Review of the Concept of Mononuclear Phagocytes Within the Central Nervous System
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- 1 November 2002
- journal article
- review article
- Published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of the History of the Neurosciences
- Vol. 11 (4) , 325-374
- https://doi.org/10.1076/jhin.11.4.325.8531
Abstract
More than a century and a half has elapsed since the first accounts of mesodermal phagocytic elements were proposed within the central nervous system. Over the intervening decades, body and substance were added to this concept through the advancement of histological techniques at the disposal of the researcher and the acute and keen-minded skills of the pathologist. Notable among these pioneering efforts were the contributions of W. Ford Robertson, Santiago Ramon y Cajal, Pio del Rio-Hortega and Wilder Penfield amongst an entire cavalcade of other noteworthy figures. The term ‘mesoglia’ and ‘third element of the nervous system’ was bestowed upon these cells towards the beginning of the twentieth century to account for their separate origins from neurons and macroglia. It was later amended by del Rio-Hortega in 1919, to ‘microglia’ in order to further discriminate between true mesodermal elements and oligodendrocytes, previously regarded as a component of ‘mesoglia’. This particular contention sparked much...Keywords
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