The discovery of sensory nature of the carotid bodies--invited article

Abstract

Although the carotid body (or glomus caroticum) was a structure familiar to anatomists in the XVIIIth century, it was not until the beginning of the XXth century that its role was revealed. It was then that the German physiologist Heinrich Hering described the respiratory reflex and he began to study the anatomical basis of this reflex focusing on the carotid region, and the carotid sinus in particular. At this time, the physiologists and pharmacologists associated with Jean-François Heymans and his son (Corneille) in Ghent (Belgium) adopted a different approach to resolve this issue, and they centred their efforts on the cardio-aortic reflexogenic region. However, at the Laboratorio de Investigaciones Biológicas (Madrid, Spain), one of the youngest and more brilliant disciples of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Fernando De Castro, took advantage of certain technical advances to study the fine structure of the carotid body (De Castro, 1925). In successive papers (1926, 1928, 1929), De Castro unravelled most of the histological secrets of this small structure and described the exact localisation of the "chemoreceptors" within the glomus. Indeed, his was the first description of cells specifically devoted to detect changes in the chemical composition of blood. Heymans was deeply interested in the work of De Castro, and he extended two invitations to the Spanish neurologist to visit (1929 and 1932) so that they could share their experiences. From 1932-1933, Corneille Heymans focused his attention on the carotid body and his physiological demonstration of De Castro's hypothesis regarding chemoreceptors led to him obtaining the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1938, while Spain was immersed in its catastrophic Civil War.