Classic papers on glial cells
Network Glia provides a valuable library of publications from the pioneers of the research about glia
The concept of neuroglia was introduced by Rudolf Virchow in 1856. Virchow conceived neuroglia as a kind of connective tissue and found that this tissue also contained cellular elements. However, the first glial cell was described even before Virchow drafted his neuroglia concept.
Robert Remak had described nerve fibers and their surrounding sheats, later on called Schwann Cells, in his thesis published in 1838.
Heinrich Müller described cells which were named after him, the Müller cells and published the first drawings of these radial glial cells in Würzburg in 1851.
The first drawings of a star shaped glial cell were done by Otto Deiters (who died at a young age and whose work was published posthumously) in 1865.
Some years later Jacob Henle and Friedrich Merkel produced drawings of glial networks in the gray matter.
Finally, Pio del Rio Hortega, a disciple of Nicolás Achucarro and Santiago Ramón y Cajal, finally succeded in defining the three glial cell types in the central nervous system. In a series of publications he was able to distinguish microglial cells and oligodendrocystes from astrocytes, and since then we know these three major types of glial cells in the central nervous system.
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