DR. BROWN-SEQUARD. 
By ISAAC OTT, M.D., 
Professor of Physiology in the Medico-Chirurgical College, Philadelphia. 
An introductory address to the students of the Medico-Ohirurgical College 
of Philadelphia, October 1, 1896. 
Reprinted from The Medical Bulletin. DR. brown-sequard; 
ISAAC OTT, M.D., 
Professor of Physiology in the Medico-Chirurgical College, Philadelphia. 
The faculty of the college have selected 
me to give the introductory address at the 
opening of this semester of the school. 
Had I been consulted I could have given 
them much better advice as to their choice. 
But as there was no way to retreat I pre- 
sume some subject must be inflicted upon 
you. 
He arrived in Paris in 1838. He had a 
letter of recommendation to Charles No- 
dier, to whom he wished to present a ro- 
mance, which Nodier read, but advised him 
to leave romance alone. This good advice 
was like similar advice given to Bernard, 
who came to Paris with a five-act tragedy. 
Brown-Sequard’s life, while in itself a 
romance, was turned toward the consum- 
ing passion of his life—that of medicine. 
At that period (1838) the illustrious Ma- 
•gendie was in the zenith of his fame, al- 
though quite aged. In the second year of 
medical study he began to manifest a great 
passion for physiology, and worked with 
his preceptor, Martin-Magron, repeating 
his master’s experiments. Then his mother 
died, whom he adored, and for a long time 
he was incapable of doing anything, and 
commenced the wandering life which was 
so extraordinary in a person occupied with 
physiology. After traveling considerably 
he embarked for his native country, and 
afterward returned to Paris, where he ob- 
tained his degree of medicine in 1846 at 
the age of 29. 
In the selection of a subject this even- 
ing I have been governed by a desire to 
give a more extended notice of the life of 
a man who occupied a prominent position 
in America, England and France. I feel 
that he has not quite received the amount 
of recognition in this country that his mer- 
its deserve, and while I may add but little 
to it, yet I shall attempt it, however feeble 
it may be. Besides, he was a friend of 
mine whom I highly esteemed. I refer to 
Brown-Sequard, a name you have doubt- 
less heard. He was a Creole, born in 1817, 
in the Isle of Mauritius, a dependency of 
France. He was a posthumous child. His 
father was a Philadelphian and a sea cap- 
tain by the name of Brown. His mother 
was a Creole lady by the name of Sequard. 
His father died on a voyage to the East 
Indies. 
In his early life he styled himself Edward 
Brown-Sequard. After the ’sos he signed 
himself Charles Edward Brown-Sequard. 
The data of the early years of his life are 
wanting. After the death of his father his 
mother made a living sufficient to bring up 
her child. At the agfe of 15 he became a 
clerk in a store. While a clerk he began 
to write pieces for the theatre, romances 
and poetry. At the age of 20 he persuaded 
his mother to embark for France. 
In 1849 he was assistant physician to a 
cholera hospital. At the age of 35 he left 
France, having been concerned in some 
machinations antagonistic to the govern- 
ment. Arriving in New York he gave 
French lessons and a course in physiology. 
He was elected Professor of Physiology at 
Richmond, 1854-55. 
By the kindness of Dr. W. B. McCaw, 
late Dean of the Medical College of Vir- 
ginia, I have obtained some information 
about his life in Richmond. His letter reads 
as follows: 
* An introductory address to the students of 
the Medico-Chirurgical College of Philadelphia, 
October 1, 1896. 
“I was very intimate with him, and 
worked with him in many of his vivisec- DR. BROWN-SEQUARD 
3 
tions. He was the most expert operator 
on the living subject I ever saw, and his 
dogs, rabbits and guinea pigs were cauter- 
ized and handled in the most artistic way. 
He was mostly engaged with a comparison 
between the drug opium and the new bro- 
mides, chloral and that class of remedies. 
By trephining the skulls of guinea pigs he 
studied the effects of opium and narcotics 
on the dura mater. Alternating with 
chloral and bromides he proved that the 
opiate always engorged the membranes of 
the brain, while chloral bleached the dura 
mater. 
alysis in London, in 1861, was established, 
Brown-Sequard was made a visiting physi- 
cian, and here it was that he instituted his 
bromide treatment of epilepsy, which still 
remains our sheet anchor, notwithstanding 
many substitutes, additions and alterations. 
While in London he had a large practice 
and made money, but he could not sacrifice 
what he loved better than his life, the search 
of truth in the direction of physiology. 
So he quit this life and accepted a chair 
at Harvard. His marriage to the niece of 
Daniel Webster also had weight in the de- 
termination to go to Harvard.^ 
“Ever since that time the profession has 
recognized the fact and acted upon it, as 
in the sudden convulsions of children and 
the uremic convulsions of Bright’s disease. 
By the kindness of Bowditch 
I have had the pleasure of reading his in- 
troductory address, which was delivered on 
November 7, 1866. He closes it with the 
following remarks to future investigators; 
“If you are seriously willing to work you 
■can dispense with any special teaching, and 
what is still more important, I am sure that 
you must succeed. If you have the will 
you will soon find that scientific and prac- 
tical facts abound.” Have the will, he re- 
peats, and you will soon help science, to 
which, I might add, that you will also do 
much for your own personal success. His 
assistant. Dr. Thomas Dwight,* speaks of 
him as being extremely kind, and seemed 
to take an interest in his progress. He 
thought that young men were much at- 
tached to him by his kindness and im- 
pressed by his brilliancy and enthusiasm. 
In Boston he seemed to be satisfied, and 
Agassiz was his friend. 
“The enthusiastic nature of Brown-Se- 
quard shows us his whole life and bearing. 
Simple-minded and guileless, he was truth 
itself as far as he saw it. His most affec- 
tionate nature made dear friends wherever 
he was.” 
He left Richmond because he had no 
time for original work. The news that he 
had been awarded a prize at Paris caused 
him to decide to return to France. Next 
we hear of him in charge of a cholera hos- 
pital in his birthplace. While here he was 
awarded a gold medal for his devotion and 
services during the epidemic. In 1855 he 
was a teacher of physiology in New York 
and a practicing physician. 
In the same year he returned to Paris, 
and, in common with Charles Robin, he 
furnished a private laboratory, where he 
passed nearly two years. He had some 
students, as Rosenthal, of Vienna; West- 
phal and Czermack. In 1857 and 1858 he 
was giving lectures at the Royal College 
of Physicians, where his fascinating man- 
ner, breadth and depth of knowledge of the 
nervous system made a powerful impres- 
sion on English minds, influencing them to 
a more extensive study of the nervous sys- 
tem. 
But he lost his wife, and this, like the 
death of his mother, sent him wandering 
about the suburbs of Paris and London, 
but always working at something in physi- 
ology. 
But neither grief nor loss of position 
could quench the spirit for experimenta- 
tion. Soon he went to work and found 
that sections of the sciatic nerve were fol- 
lowed by epileptic attacks; and he also dis- 
covered new facts about the spinal cord. 
In 1868 he founded the Archives of Physi- 
ology with Charcot and Vulpian, and he 
was nominated to the Chair of Experi- 
mental Pathology in the Faculty of Medi- 
cine, While holding his chair he made 
numerous discoveries; The hereditary 
transmission of nervous lesions, the centre 
of respiration, spinal epilepsy; that injuries 
Owing to the high esteem in which his 
lectures were held he was asked to repeat 
them at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dublin. 
From his great reception he established 
himself in London as a neurologist, having 
refused a chair at Glasgow on account of 
the bad climate. In 1861, at the age of 
44 years, he gave the Goulstonian lectures. 
When the Hospital for Epilepsy and Par- 
* Personal letter. 4 
DR. BROWN-SEQUARD. 
of the nerve centres could cause hemor- 
rhages and edema of the viscera. 
I shall continue the efforts begun in Lon- 
don in 1861 in my Goulstonian lectures.” 
This letter shows that he had the fibrous, 
mental and physical power which makes a 
man. So great was his enthusiasm for the 
carrying on of physiological investigation 
that he often made himself very sick in his 
studies upon digestion when he swallowed 
pieces of sponges attached to a thread for 
withdrawal so as to obtain gastric juice. 
At another time he had drawn from his 
arm about a half a pound of blood, to be 
injected into the arm of a decapitated crimi- 
nal in order to study the effect of arterial 
and venous blood upon the tissues. When 
a man will undergo such injuries we know 
that he is terribly in earnest in his work. 
And I say to you that if you wish to suc- 
ceed well you also must be terribly in ear- 
nest. For nearly fifty years he sacrificed 
everything for his love of science. He did 
not make researches for renown or the sen- 
sation of being celebrated, for he was sim- 
plicity itself in all things. In 1876 he mar- 
ried a lady of Geneva, Switzerland. At 
this place he was offered the Chair of 
Physiology, now held by another old giant, 
Schiff. But the death of Magendie’s suc- 
cessor, Bernard, left that chair for Brown- 
Sequard, which he accepted and held for 
sixteen years up to the day of his death. 
During the siege of Paris he visited the 
United States and collected sums of money 
to forward to his unfortunate countrymen. 
Having married another American lady he 
gave up his chair in Paris, and in 1872 took 
up his residence in New York, where he 
proposed to practice part of his time and 
devote part to his researches. Here he es- 
tablished the Archives of Scientific and 
Practical Medicine. It was at this time, 
after some studies abroad, that I called 
upon Brown-Sequard to take a course with 
him in neuro-physiology. 
But I found him unwilling on account of 
want of time, stating that his assistant, Dr. 
E. Dupuy, had just left him. He treated 
me cordially and gave me quite a discourse 
upon his researches. In 1875 he returned 
to London, but soon left for Paris. In 
1874 he made experiments upon the ther- 
mic irritations of the cortex, lectured upon 
amaurosis and hemianesthesia. He gave 
three lectures at the Royal College of 
Physicians to demonstrate that the same 
lesion of the brain’s cortex is able to pro- 
duce different symptoms and in different 
parts of the body. He did not believe in 
what is called the localization theory: “that 
each part of the brain is connected with a 
certain movement or sensation, and not 
with any other.” 
PRIVATE LIFE. 
He believed that inhibition and dynamo- 
geny would explain these phenomena, and 
while localization is established yet inhi- 
bition and dynamogeny will still come more 
to the front as time rolls by. It was not 
that he had made a mistake and tried to 
uphold it rather than admit in his later 
years his error that he hammered away 
with experiments to establish the inhibi- 
tory-dynamogenic theory against that of 
localization. 
Was there ever a man who loved to 
move from place to place more than our 
illustrious friend? He crossed the Atlan- 
tic over sixty-six times. In private life he 
seemed to be taken up with his pursuit. 
In 1886 I had the great pleasure of spend- 
ing an hour with him in Paris. Although 
he was about to go to Nice he seemed very 
cordial and complimented me upon the 
work I had done on lines somewhat like 
his on inhibition. 
He found it a heavy task, as he admits 
in a letter to Dr. J. Ogle in 1879. He 
was then 62 and wrote as follows: “My 
lecturing and some patients take all my 
time. I have a very much harder fight for 
the doctrines relating to the brain than I 
had at the time I first became acquainted 
with you for the doctrines relating to the 
spinal cord. If I did not love truth much 
more than comfort, ease and quietness I 
would give up the painful, heavy task I 
have given myself. So long, however, as 
I have breath or power and mind and body 
He ventured forth upon explanations of 
his ideas of inhibition in the brain. Fi- 
nally, I had to withdraw as I feared he 
would not see Nice on that day. Before 
leaving I asked him why no photograph 
of him existed in the studios of Paris, 
stating that Charcot’s could be found every- 
where. He replied that he had never had 
but one photograph taken, and that was 
for a dear friend of his, the Emperor of 
Brazil. 
He retired at 8 P. M. and rose at 3 A. 
M., entirely because these hours suited his 
work. This fact led to a rather annoying DR. BROWN-SEQUARD, 
5 
occurrence to a friend of mine in Baltimore, 
who invited a number of his friends to call 
on a certain evening at his house to meet 
Brown-Sequard. When the guests arrived 
Brown-Sequard had retired, and no persua- 
sion would make him come down and meet 
the guests. He cared for nothing but 
physiology; for money he was absolutely 
indifferent. For example, I may mention 
that an American gentleman asked him 
while in Havre to go to Italy to see his son. 
After inquiry he found that it was not a 
case in his line, so he refused, suggesting 
another physician. But the American stated 
that it was Brown-Sequard he wanted, and 
offered an enormous fee of $50,000, but 
he refused to go. At another time he 
was offered a fee of SIOOO to go from 
London to Liverpool, but he replied that 
he would be in Liverpool next day on his 
way to New York, and that he would see 
the patient. His fee would be five guineas. 
He died far from wealthy as a necessary 
consequence. 
side of section or loss of sensation on the 
opposite side. This enables surgeons •to 
diagnosticate the existence of certain one- 
sided lesions of the spinal cord. He also 
discovered the relation existing between 
the tissues and the blood, that the en- 
ergy and histological properties of the 
tissues of a recently-amputated limb could 
be restored by the injection of defibrinated 
blood and oxygen. He was the first physi- 
ologist to find out that blood vessels con- 
tracted under the action of electricity upon 
certain nerves. There is no doubt of his 
discovery of the vaso-constrictors and their 
mode of action upon the blood vessels and 
the temperature of the corresponding parts. 
He also found out that epilepsy could be 
experimentally produced and could be in- 
herited. In the late years of his life he tried 
to establish that the inhibitory action of cer- 
tain lesions on irritation of certain parts of 
the nervous system had an action upon the 
activity of certain other parts of the nervous 
system seated at a distance from the site of 
original injury. 
His thesis for the doctorate was “Re- 
searches and Experiments Upon the Physi- 
ology of the Spinal Cord,” 1846. These 
experiments were performed in a miserable 
chamber, without fire, in the winter. He 
was very poor, living upon bread and 
water, sharing these with his animals to be 
experimented upon. These were truly 
black years, as his friend, Eugene' Dupuy, 
styles them. This thesis signalled the new 
fact that the reflex activity of the spinal 
cord was nearly annulled after separation 
from the brain, and then gradually in- 
creased. He also brought out the fact that 
sensory impressions travel especially by the 
gray substance and not by the posterior 
columns. The number of his articles when 
offered for admission to the French Acad- 
emy was 435, many of them being large 
treatises upon the nervous system. 
During the first ten years of his medical 
life he published sixty-six articles; in his 
second decennial, thirty-five; in the third, 
sixty-eight, and in his fourth decennial, two 
hundred and sixty-six. I shall now take 
up his most important discoveries. 
He established in an unassailable man- 
ner, contrary to the classic opinion, that 
conducting fibres of sensation or feeling 
decussate in the spinal cord, so that a trans- 
verse section of one-half of the spinal cord 
is followed by paralysis of motion on the 
SCIENTIFIC LIFE. 
In 1858 he published some researches 
made with Professor Francis Gurney 
Smith, of this city, that starch could be 
changed into sugar in the stomach even 
when it contained a very acid gastric juice. 
In 1856 he showed that the extirpation of 
the adrenals soon caused death. He also 
was among the first to suggest the inject- 
ing of glandular tissue and the theory of 
internal secretion. These are a few of his 
important discoveries. 
Glandular physiology, in its widespread 
ramifications, applied to other ductless 
glands of the body, has revolutionized 
many parts of physiology and pathology. 
It is only in its infancy. Its maze of meta- 
bolic changes hold many facts to be dis- 
covered. The secretion of the ductless 
gland opens up new avenues of investiga- 
tion, which will enrich the science of physi- 
ology and the practical application of these 
facts in therapeutics. We have a silent and 
hitherto unsuspected secretion going on 
which plays a most important and unknown 
part in our economy. 
Very potent remedies are the ductless 
glands, where but a few thousandths of a 
grain of a gland, like the pituitary, greatly 
elevates arterial tension. Several of these 
animal extracts, as I have shown, are ther- 
mogenic agents; others are not. Some, 6 
DR. BROWN-SEQUARD. 
like the thyroid, greatly depress the rate 
of the heart. 
He was not a man of one idea which, 
when exhausted, closed his career; but in 
whatever direction he worked he threw a 
bright and illuminating effulgence through 
the gifts of intellect, personal fascination 
and magnetism. 
When we see the cures produced by the 
thyroid powder, or one of its active princi- 
ples—iodo-thyrine—in myxedema, cretin- 
ism, obesity, and in my own experience of a 
cure of sclerema; when we see the changes 
of acromegaly arrested by the pituitary; 
Addison’s disease improved by the adren- 
als, we cannot help seeing their power. We 
see in the action of these extracts the sim- 
ple external manifestations of the great 
forces at play in the nutrition of the econ- 
omy. When Brown-Sequard was laughed 
at in regard to his orchitic extract—yes, 
even reviled—all his friends knew he was 
right, but his quackish imitators for the 
greed of gain exaggerated its qualities, so 
that the reaction necessarily fell upon the 
originator. But his researches and facts 
about it live, while his revilers are num- 
bered among the great unknown. Dr. 
Pregl, by a series of most elaborate re- 
searches, has shown that the orchitic ex- 
tract increases one’s neuro-muscular power. 
It is stated that he spent nearly 1000 francs 
in the gratuitous distribution of the or- 
chitic extract. 
He will remain unforgotten by his nu- 
merous friends, scholars and admirers. 
And while I am making the attempt in this 
short sketch to give a picture of this great 
personality I feel how difficult a task I have 
undertaken in regard to the position of a 
peculiar person like Brown-Sequard. We 
must remember that physiology, compared 
with the other sciences, is comparatively 
young, and it is only in the last seventy- 
five years that it has been cultivated. 
All sides of phenomena interested 
Brown-Sequard. He understood that many 
problems of the nervous system could be 
solved by the cultivation of neighboring 
subjects in anatomy, physics and chemis- 
try, although he did hardly any microscopic 
work. Although in 1847 Ludwig, Helm- 
holtz, Du Bois-Reymond and Bruecke were 
cultivating the physical Origin of all phe- 
nomena, we see Brown-Sequard influenced 
by the same spirit, a spirit, by the way, cul- 
tivated by Magendie, and who subjected 
everything to what'he called the experimen- 
tal method, that is, physical and chemical 
tests in contradistinction to the vitalistic 
ideas of Bichat. 
He loved science for itself, and as presi- 
dent of the Biological Society of Paris he 
sincerely rejoiced in every new fact received 
before it as though he had been the author 
himself. 
From 1846 to 1894, for forty-eight years, 
his original genius gave him no rest but to 
quench it by research, whether in Rich- 
mond, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, 
London or Paris. At all times and at all 
places he worked away without any exter- 
nal driving power, without any pecuniary 
reward, rather with much pecuniary loss. 
I say that these ideas of Magendie were 
propagated when Germany was still 
plunged in the shadows of philosophy. It 
was under the influence of these teachings 
that the mind of Brown-Sequard was 
moulded in the direction of the experimen- 
tal method which he continued to use all 
his life. In his last years he discovered as 
many new facts as at any other period of 
his life. 
I say without these things he worked for 
all he was capable of at any spare moment 
that he had at what he loved more than 
position, power or money; that is the sci- 
ence of physiology. Laboremus wTas the 
watchword of Septimus Severus; labore- 
mus was the ensign on his high standard 
until the day of his death. In judging 
from what I personally observed he suf- 
fered but little from ill health; he was of 
sturdy frame, good color in his cheeks, 
with brown eyes with a great sheen in them, 
behind which rested a powerful mind. I 
say it was with his great physical power 
that he was enabled to let his mind carry 
on the numerous reseaches. 
As to his honors, he was a member of 
many learned societies. He succeeded 
Vulpian in the section of medicine in the 
Academy. He was a laureate of the Insti- 
tute, with the biennial prize of 1885. In 
1886 he obtained the Baly medal of the 
Royal College of Physicians, and in 1881 
was made an LL. D. by the University of 
Cambridge. Death as before removed his 
estimable wife, who, for eighteen years, was 
most devoted to him. This great grief and 
the burden of seventy-seven years .were too 
much for him to bear, and he succumbed to 
An attack of apoplexy. DR. BROWN-SEQUARD 
7 
If we compare Brown-Sequard with 
Ludwig or Bernard, we find that he did not 
have as great originality of discovery in 
him or the many-sided ability to attack 
new problems. But we can say of Brown- 
Sequard what Burdon-Sanderson has said 
of Ludwig: “There were not a few of 
them who, for the first time in their lives, 
came into personal relation with a man who 
was utterly free from selfish aim and vain 
ambition; who was scrupulously conscien- 
tious in all that he said and did; who was 
what he seemed and seemed what he was, 
and who had no other aim than the ad- 
vancement of science, and that advance- 
ment saw no other end than the increase 
of human happiness.” 
school, Professor Sangree, who has gone ho 
Vanderbilt University, Tennessee. 
You will find here teachers thoroughly 
in earnest to instruct you in the art and 
science of medicine, for we all know that 
life is short and medical art is long, and 
especially long, to be covered in three 
years. But by great industry and patience 
you will master the foundation and details 
of the practice of your future life. 
Remember, as to your studies that it is 
to do or die as regards your success in the 
future. 
The recent success of our students in 
the acquirement of hospital positions shows 
that the students and the teachers of the 
college are doing good work. 
And now a few words to our students. 
In the name of the faculty I extend to all 
a most hearty welcome to this most active 
and progressive college, a college young 
in years, vigorous in growth, expansive in 
its future and annually putting forth a fruit- 
age of good and well-educated young men. 
As to the arrangement of the college 
you will find some changes the walls have 
undergone—a transformation—a new coat 
—a sort of ecdysis. 
The laboratories of pathology, chemis- 
try and experimental therapeutics have 
been transferred to Eighteenth street to 
meet the increased size of our classes. The 
histological laboratory has been enlarged, 
both for the purposes of histology and for 
an important factor in our school—free 
recitations. A children’s department of 
the hospital has been opened up on Eight- 
eenth street. 
Eighteen hospital positions have been 
obtained by the members of our last gradu- 
ating class of 54. That is, one-third of the 
class have become resident physicians, and 
many of them only by a hard competitive 
examination. The Medico-Chirurgical 
College expects every man to do his duty. 
Do not forget that you have undertaken a 
heavy task, which your teachers will need 
to lighten. 
I have just laid before you the life of a 
great man who worked under disadvan- 
tages much greater than I expect you to; 
but he reached the pinnacle of greatness, 
although only a sea captain’s son. Humble 
in origin, humble all his life, as became the 
great man that he was, yet he acquired all 
the earthly honor that a medical man could 
aspire to. 
You will have a new teacher of path- 
ology, Professor Joseph McFarland, who 
comes to us from the University of Penn- 
sylvania, succeeding a graduate of the 
Papers consulted: Notice sun- les Tra- 
vaux scientifiques. Du Docteur C. E. 
Brown-Sequard. Archives de Physiolo- 
gic, 1894. London Lancet, 1894. Societe 
de Biologic, 1894.