'One contention that gained considerable traction during the final years of the nineteenth century was the so-called 'amoeboid' theory of cellular interaction. Just as individual cells could be identified as manifesting vital capacities such as autonomous extension and contraction, each nerve-cell or 'neuron' was, in the conception of histologists such as Mathias-Marie Duval, an independently-acting contributor to the neurological whole. Ramón y Cajal suggested in a study of 1890 that nerve fibres could be seen to grow outwards from their cellular origins. Though Cajal would later renounce this view, he and like-minded theorists believed that this constituted evidence that nerve cells behaved just like amoeba in that they expanded, contracted, and moved their extremities from place to place.'