Unless you're a neuroscientist, Santiago Ramón y Cajal is likely the most important figure in the history of biology you've never heard of. Along with Charles Darwin and Louis Pasteur, he ranks among the most brilliant and original biologists of the nineteenth century, and his discoveries have done for our understanding of the human brain what the work of Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton did for our conception of the physical universe.

Prologue: "A vehement desire of my soul" -- "The necessary antecedent" -- "Perpetual miracle" -- "Plunging into social life" -- "A castle of dreams" -- "The war of duty and desire" -- "The nasty and prosaic bag" -- "A myth concealed in ignorance" -- "Humbled by my failure" -- "Cells and more cells" -- "The irremediable uselessness of my existence" -- "Not for the living but for the dead" -- "The role of Don Quixote" -- "The religion of the cell" -- "Moved by faith" -- "Free endings" -- "Doubting certain facts" -- "The only opinions that matter to me" -- "The absolute unsearchability of the soul" -- "Grand passion in service" -- "From catastrophe to catastrophe" -- "The mysterious butterflies" -- "The summit of my inquisitive activity" -- "The most highly organized structure" -- "A cruel irony of fate" -- "To defend the truth" -- "The unfathomable mystery of life" -- "I drown and I awaken" -- "Those poisoned wounds" -- "No solemn gatherings" -- "Marvelous old man" -- "Statues of the living" -- "The self has no mirror" -- "Searching for themselves in secret" -- "My strength is exhausted.".