Brown Séquard: An Improbable Genius Who Transformed Medicine

by Michael J. Aminoff MD

Brown-Sé An Improbable Genius Who Transformed Medicine traces the strange career of an eccentric, restless, widely admired, nineteenth-century physician-scientist who eventually came to be scorned by antivivisectionists for his work on animals, by churchgoers who believed that he encouraged licentious behavior, and by other scientists for his unorthodox views and for claims that, in fact, he never made. An improbable genius whose colorful life was characterized by dramatic reversals of fortune, he was a founder-physician of England's premier neurological hospital and held important professorships in America and France.

Brown-Séquard identified the sensory pathways in the spinal cord and emphasized functional processes in the integrative actions of the nervous system, thereby anticipating modern concepts of how the brain operates. He also discovered the function of the nerves that supply the blood vessels and thereby control their caliber, and the associated reflexes that adjust the circulation to bodily needs. He was the first to show that the adrenal glands are essential to life and suggested that other organs have internal secretions. He injected himself with ground-up animal testicles, claiming an invigorating effect, and this approach led to the development of modern hormone replacement therapy.

Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard was reportedly "one of the greatest discover of facts that the world has ever seen". It has also been suggested that "if his reasoning power had equaled his power of observation he might have done for physiology what Newton did for physics." In fact, scientific advances in the years since his death have provided increasing support for many of his once-ridiculed beliefs.

376 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1993

Reviews

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brown-Sequard's name is known to all medical students from the syndrome bearing his name caused by a lesion affecting one half of the spinal cord. However this brilliant and complicated 19th century physician and physiologist published 577 papers and books in his lifetime on subjects as diverse as epilepsy, rigor mortis, neuroanatomy, transplantation, and rejuvenation. His controversial and often ridiculed work with injections of testicular extracts in humans led to the beginning of the field of endocrinology. Michael Aminoff's excellent biography gives us a thorough view of this complex man's scientific and personal life in the context of 19th century science and medicine in Europe and the US.