The presence of Cuba in the thought of Santiago Ramón y Cajal: an indelible imprint

Abstract

This paper analyzes the influence of Cuba's independence war on the thought and work of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Nobel Prize in Medicine and possibly the most relevant neuroscientist in history. During his youth, Cajal participated, as a military doctor, in Cuba's Ten Years' War and remained on the island for more than a year, treating wounded and sick soldiers in the unsanitary forts of the Cuban woods. This military experience nearly cost him his life because of severe malarial cachexia. The last war of independence, the war with the United States and the final loss of the colony produced a bankruptcy of the Spanish political and social system and had a very marked influence on Cajal's socio-political thought, which was aligned with the Regenerationist Movement of Joaquin Costa. From this moment on, Cajal defended, for the rest of his life, an educational, cultural and scientific regeneration of Spain. To this end, in many of his lectures, speeches and publications he defended a new idea of patriotism, centered on tenacity and honesty at work, where the desire for justice was an inescapable aspiration and the sense of personal sacrifice an indispensable maxim: patriotism of a critical character, eminently moral and always politically neutral. His motto was "before a small country, a great soul!" Thus, Cajal's Cuban experience resulted in one of the most lucid and clairvoyant examples of defense of Spanish patriotism in the first half of the 20th century.