Augusto Pi y Suñer
(Barcelona, 1879-Mexico, 1965) Spanish Physiologist.Son of Jaume Pi i Sunyer, professor of general pathology at the Barcelona School of Medicine, he studied medicine, graduating in 1899.He received his doctorate in Madrid, in 1900, with a thesis on anaerobic life.Since his student years, he frequented the Barcelona Municipal Laboratory and continued working there after completing his studies.During these years he was greatly influenced by Ramón Turró, who directed his first research work.
In 1904 he obtained the chair of physiology at the Faculty of Seville.However, he was able to remain in Barcelona, sometimes as a commissioned attaché and other times as director of the general physiology course organized by the Municipal Laboratory.In 1916 he obtained the chair of physiology in Barcelona, succeeding Ramón Coll i Pujol.In 1920 the Institute of Physiology was created and Augusto Pi i Sunyer was appointed its director.With these means he was able to create a strong school and an effective research team.
The civil war thwarted this work and disbanded the team.Pi i Sunyer went into exile, and after a short stay in Paris, he was appointed professor of physiology at the Faculty of Medicine in Caracas.In Venezuelan lands, he founded and directed the Institute of Experimental Medicine, he was a professor of biochemistry at the Faculty from 1946 and, since 1942, also professor of biology and biochemistry at the National Pedagogical Institute of Caracas.Pi i Sunyer's work in Caracas was also extremely fruitful.The panorama of Venezuelan physiology changed radically from his arrival, and it can be stated, without fear of exaggeration, that the entire current school of physiology in Venezuela has its roots in the work of Pi i Sunyer.
His research work begins with his doctoral thesis on anaerobic life.This was a work richer in erudition than in contributions of materials.In it, after some chapters aimed at demolishing the exclusivity of oxidation, it reviews the existing chemical transformations in living beings that are carried out without the intervention of air: hydrations, hydrolysis and molecular transpositions.
Finished his doctoral thesis, embarked on a new stage in his research, joining Ramón Turró's program on the mechanisms of natural immunity.As is known, Turró was looking for a third theory, different from Elie Metchnikoff and Paul Ehrlich, to explain these phenomena.The central hypothesis of this theory was a supposed identity between the immune and digestive mechanisms at the cellular level.Although it cannot be said that the results in this field were brilliant, they did serve, at least, for Pi i Sunyer to be interested in the problem of trophic sensitivity, a path that would lead him, over time, to study adaptive nervous reflexes., one of his main contributions to physiology.
One of these reflex mechanisms that he studied was the regulator of respiratory movements.When, in 1918, he began his experimental study of the participation of peripheral chemical sensitivity in respiratory regulation, many reflexes capable of modifying the rhythm and depth of respiratory movements were already known, but all of them caused by physical stimuli; As a chemical mechanism of respiratory regulation, the direct action of stimuli of this kind on the centers of respiration was known and admitted exclusively.
The works of Pi i Sunyer were able to demonstrate that the hyperventilatory response of dogs, with intact pneumogastric organs, that breathed air with an abnormally high concentration of CO2, was due in large part to reflexes that peripheral chemoreceptors with afference vagal.He thought that these chemoreceptors would be located in the lungs.When, later, Comeille Heymans was able to demonstrate that chemoreceptors are found in various places in the vascular network, the contributions of Pi i Sunyer were somewhat muted, but lately, since the existence of chemoreceptors in the pulmonary vessels has been demonstrated, the works of Pi and Sunyer have been evaluated again.
At the same time, he was interested in the glycemic regulatory reflexes, being able to demonstrate that vegetative nervous conditions are involved in glycemic regulation, both in the descending and ascending directions.Pi i Sunyer's capacity to work allowed him to address many other aspects of physiology (biochemistry of carbohydrates, transforming and fixing action in liver metabolism, electrocardiography, etc.) in which, apart from demonstrating to be perfectly informed, he did some contributions of a certain importance.Reindeer physiology was also the object of his work, helping to demonstrate that uremic blood had an inhibitory action on urinary secretion.
The interest in such diverse fields perhaps reduced the depth of his research, but instead it allowed him to write well-documented synthesis works, and even to produce manuals that were extremely successful.The figure of Pi i Sunyer remains, however, incomplete if it is limited solely to his scientific activity.He was, without a doubt, one of the key characters in the resurgence of Catalan medicine in the first third of the 20th century.His capacity for organization, agglutination and even enthusiasm put him at the service of two ideals: that his country could incorporate the European habits of laboratory research and that the Catalan language become a normal means of scientific communication.He participated very actively in almost all the collective medical companies that were organized in Catalonia between 1900 and 1936.
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