Nicolás Achúcarro Lund
(Bilbao, 1880 - Neguri, 1918)

Born into a family of medical tradition, Nicholas Achúcarro Lund belonged to the prestigious school of Spanish histology with those who were his teachers and his disciples: Simarro and Cajal, among the former, and Rodríguez Labora, Felipe Jiménez de Asúa, Sacristán, Calandre, Gayarre, and Río-Hortega, among the latter. But Achúcarro was more than a histologist: he was a prominent figure in psychiatry and neuropathology in Spain. Achúcarro had exceptional teachers like Miguel de Unamuno at Bilbao’s Instituto Vizcaíno, where he began his studies.  He then attended the Gymnasium in Wiesbaden, where he learnt German perfectly. He began his medical studies at the Universidad Central in Madrid in 1897, with Cajal, Olóriz in anatomy and Gómez Ocaña in physiology. He completed the first two years, and then moved to Marburg to study pathology, physiology, and biochemistry. He returned to Madrid in1900 to finish his degree.

He did his clinical training at the General Hospital under the supervision of Madinaveitia. Madinaveitia and Francisco Giner de los Ríos put him in contact with Simarro, who supervised his research on neuropsychiatry at the Laboratory of Histology  (Laboratorio de Histología Normal y Patológica del Sistema Nervioso).
He continued his graduate studies in Paris (1904-1905), with Charcot ‘s disciples at the Salpêtrière, then in Florence, and finally, in Munich where he acquired a solid training with Kraepelin and Alzheimer, who proponed Achúcarro as head of the pathology department of the Federal Asylum for the Insane in Washington D.C.  Even though his working conditions were better in Germany, he returned to Spain in 1910 and started his private practice of neuropsychiatry, while continuing his research at the General Hospital and in Cajal’s department. He was appointed director of the Laboratory of Histopathology of the Nervous System, created in 1912 by the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios, where he gathered the large and select group of disciples already mentioned.

Achúcarro’s main scientific interest was the degeneration and necrosis of neurons which began in his doctoral dissertation on the pathology of rabies (1906) and continued with his study of the stratum radiatum of Ammon's horn of the rabbit on the significance of the stick cells (Stäbchenzellen), demonstrating that they were not pathognomonic elements but response structures to inflammatory processes capable of phagocytosing neuronal decayed substances. These and subsequent discoveries led Achúcarro to develop new methods of staining with tannin and ammoniacal silver. He then incorporated into his work Cajal’s method of gold-sublimate for systematic studies of neuroglia, and the research carried out by Gayarre, under his supervision, regarding general paralysis and senile dementia.

His last research work dealt with to the study of abnormal cervical sympathetic ganglion in some mentally ill people, a type of vacuolar degeneration that occurs primarily in Korsakow disease.

Nicolás de Achúcharro died of Hodgkin's disease in Neguri, in April 1918.