Fernando de Castro (1896-1967) and the discovery of the arterial chemoreceptors

The last of Cajal's direct disciples cut the glossopharyngeal roots inside the skull of seventeen cats and three dogs, found the carotid body still innervated, and concluded in 1928 that it was a sensory organ built to taste the blood. That is the invention of chemoreception. The Nobel Prize for the reflex went to Ghent ten years later, while its author spent the war guarding the Cajal Institute.