"The foundational article of modern cellular neuroscience. . . . this is where Cajal first demonstrated with the Golgi method how neurons interact by contact not continuity in the adult central nervous system—in this case the avian cerebellum, and more specifically between  'basket cell' axons and Purkinje cell bodies. Over the course of the next decade he went on to show how this principle of interaction, the 'neuron doctrine' applies throughout the vertebrate (and invertebrate) nervous system, championing the idea that the nervous system is not a reticulum, but instead individual units or neurons interact by way of articulations, or as Sherrington soon called them, “synapses”. In doing this he displayed a combination of technical, observational, synthetic, and artistic genius never matched in neurohistology....Major discoveries contained in this brief paper include, a) dendritic spines (on Purkinje cells), b) the descending fringes (later called basket endings) of stellate cells in the molecular layer, which he interpreted as axons ending on (and not anastomosing with) Purkinje cells, the first clear evidence in the adult brain of what came to be known as the neuron doctrine, and leading him to hypothesize that “each element [nerve cell] is an absolutely autonomous canton”, and c) the ascending mossy fiber input to the cerebellum (Larry W. Swanson).