Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard

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Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard
Born(1817-04-08)8 April 1817
Port Louis, Mauritius
Died2 April 1894(1894-04-02) (aged 76)
Sceaux, France
Known forBrown-Séquard syndrome
Scientific career
Fields
InstitutionsVirginia Commonwealth University

Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard

neurologist who, in 1850, became the first to describe what is now called Brown-Séquard syndrome.[1][2]

Early life

Brown-Séquard was born at

Medical College of Virginia where he conducted experiments in the basement of the Egyptian Building
.

He was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1854.[4]

Later life

He returned to Paris, and in 1859 he migrated to London, becoming physician to the

National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic. There he stayed for about five years, expounding his views on the pathology of the nervous system in numerous lectures which attracted considerable attention. In 1864 he again crossed the Atlantic, and was appointed professor of physiology and neuropathology at Harvard. He relinquished this position in 1867, and in 1869 became professor at the École de Médecine in Paris, but in 1873 he again returned to America and began to practice in New York City.[3] While in New York, his daughter, Charlotte Maria
was born.

Finally, he went back to Paris to succeed

Cimetière du Montparnasse.[5][6][7]

Brown-Séquard was quite a controversial and eccentric figure, and is also known for claiming, at age 72, rejuvenated sexual prowess after subcutaneous injection of extracts of animal testis.

placebo effect, but apparently this was "sufficient to set the field of endocrinology off and running."[11]

In 1886 Brown-Séquard was elected to the Board of the Sugar Club.[

Royal Society of London.[citation needed
]

Works

Brown-Séquard was a keen observer and experimentalist. He contributed largely to our knowledge of the blood and animal heat, as well as many facts of the highest importance on the nervous system. He was the first scientist to work out the physiology of the spinal cord, demonstrating that the decussation of the fibres carrying pain and temperature sensation occurs in the cord itself.[3] His name was immortalised in the history of medicine with the description of a syndrome which bears his name (Brown-Séquard syndrome) due to the hemisection of the spinal cord, which he described after observing accidental injury of the spinal cord in farmers cutting sugar cane in Mauritius.

Far more important is that he was one of the first to postulate the existence of substances, now known as

testicles of guinea pigs and dogs leads to rejuvenation and prolonged human life. It was known, among scientists, derisively, as the Brown-Séquard Elixir. A Vienna medical publication quipped dismissively: "The lecture must be seen as further proof of the necessity of retiring professors who have attained their threescore and ten years."[12]

Brown-Séquard's research, published in about 500 essays and papers, especially in the Archives de Physiologie, which he helped to found in 1868 along with Jean-Martin Charcot and Alfred Vulpian, cover a very wide range of physiological and pathological subjects.[3]

In the late 19th century Brown-Séquard gave rise to much controversy in the area of supposed

inheritance of acquired characteristics. In a series of experiments on guinea pigs extending from 1869 to 1891, Brown-Séquard observed that a partial severing of the spinal cord, or a complete severing of the sciatic nerve, was followed after a few weeks by a peculiar morbid state resembling epilepsy. The offspring of the animals operated on were frequently decrepit, and a certain number showed a tendency to the so-called epilepsy. Some scientists considered these observations evidence for Lamarckian inheritance. However, Lamarck himself had rejected the inheritance of characteristics acquired by means other than their exercise or atrophy in response to environmental stimuli.[13] His experiments are now considered anomalous; alternative explanations for his observations have been suggested.[14] One proposed explanation was that the experiment showed a disease being induced in the parent and transmitted to the offspring.[15]

References

  1. ^ C.-É. Brown-Séquard: De la transmission croisée des impressions sensitives par la moelle épinière. Comptes rendus de la Société de biologie, (1850) 1851, 2: 33–44.
  2. ^ Kelly, Howard A.; Burrage, Walter L. (eds.). "Brown-Séquard, Charles Edward" . American Medical Biographies . Baltimore: The Norman, Remington Company.
  3. ^ a b c d e Chisholm 1911.
  4. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 19 April 2021.
  5. PMID 3042914
    .
  6. PMID 16731494
    .
  7. ^ "Brown-Sequard, Charles Edouard (1817–1894) and Family". Archived from the original on 6 June 2011. Retrieved 30 May 2009.
  8. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(00)64118-1. Archived from the original on 23 October 2022. Retrieved 10 January 2023.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link
    )
  9. ^ Greenblatt, Robert B. (1963). Search The Scriptures: A Physician Examines Medicine in the Bible. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott. p. 55.
  10. S2CID 24745225
    .
  11. ^ The Practice of Neuroscience, pp. 199–200, John C.M. Brust (2000).
  12. ^ Osborn Segerberg Jr. (1974). The Immortality Factor. New York: E. P. Dutton and Co. pp. 84–85.
  13. ^ Stephen Finney Mason (1956). Main Currents of Scientific Thought: A History of the Sciences. Abelard-Schuman. p. 343. Also see Lamarck's Laws cited in Richard Burkhardt (1995). The Spirit of System: Lamarck and Evolutionary Biology. Harvard University Press. p. 166.
  14. ISBN 9780199780648
    .
  15. ^ Henry Richardson Linville; Henry Augustus Kelly (1906). Text Book of General Zoology. Ginn & Company. p. 108.

Further reading

External links
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