José Luis Arteta y Aljibez (1912-1957), un patólogo excepcional en la esfera de Gregorio Marañón, Carlos Jiménez Díaz y Pío Baroja

Abstract

José Luis Arteta, was one of Cajal's last students at the outstanding institute of neurohistology. His career highlights a time of transition in Spanish pathology during the difficult years between the 1940s and the early 1950s, following the Spanish civil war. Diagnostic pathology was beginning to take place within the hospital setting and eventually, in 1959, the Spanish Society of Pathology (SEAP) was founded. Like many of his peers, he was expert in clinical autopsies, but he also had the opportunity, in the Provincial Hospital in Madrid, to develop skills in biopsy diagnosis under the tutelage of Carlos Jimenez Díaz, the most brilliant clinician of the time. He continued his research at the Cajal Institute and in collaboration with Gregorio Marañón. However, not only was Arteta a notable physician and pathologist, he was also a cultured humanist and close friend of Pío Baroja. His premature death at age 45 from poliomyelitis remains somewhat of a mystery: was it caused by an environmental infection or an accidental inoculation during his research on the virus?