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Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard

January 01, 1970

Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard FRS (8 April 1817 – 2 April 1894) was a Mauritian physiologist and neurologist who, in 1850, became the first to describe what is now called Brown-Séquard syndrome.[1][2]

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

Early life edit

Brown-Séquard was born at Port Louis, Mauritius, to an American father and a French mother. He attended the Royal College in Mauritius, and graduated in medicine at Paris in 1846. He then returned to Mauritius with the intention of practising there, but in 1852 he went to the United States.[3] There he was appointed to the faculty of the 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 edit

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 Claude Bernard in 1878 as professor of experimental medicine in the Collège de France, and he remained there until his death, which occurred in 1894 at Sceaux, France.[3] He was buried in Paris at the 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.[8] Thousands of men tried the therapy. The endocrinologist Robert B. Greenblatt wrote that this therapy could not have possibly worked because, unlike the thyroid gland, the testes do not store the hormones they produce and, therefore, obtaining a therapeutic dose of testosterone directly from animal glands "would require about one-quarter ton of bull's testes."[9] It was later confirmed experimentally that his method did not yield active amounts of testosterone.[10] The positive response by many men is now thought to have been a 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.[citation needed] He also was a member of the Royal Society of London.[citation needed]

Works edit

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 hormones, secreted into the bloodstream to affect distant organs. In particular, he demonstrated (in 1856) that removal of the adrenal glands resulted in death, due to lack of essential hormones. At age 72, at a meeting of the Societé de Biologie in Paris, Brown-Séquard reported that hypodermic injection of a fluid prepared from the 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 edit

  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. ^ Pearce (1988). "Brown-Séquard's description of spontaneous cerebellar haemorrhage". J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatry. 51 (5): 634. doi:10.1136/jnnp.51.5.634. PMC 1033067. PMID 3042914.
  6. ^ Laporte, Y. (2006). "Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard. Une vie mouvementée et une contribution importante à l'étude du système nerveux (Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard. An eventful life and a significant contribution to the study of the nervous system)". Comptes Rendus Biologies. 329 (5–6): 363–68. doi:10.1016/j.crvi.2006.03.007. PMID 16731494.
  7. ^ . Archived from the original on 6 June 2011. Retrieved 30 May 2009.
  8. ^ Brown-Séquard, Charles-Édouard (20 July 1889). . The Lancet. 134 (3438): 105–107. 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. ^ Cussons, Andrea J; Walsh, John P; Bhagat, Chotoo I; Fletcher, Stephen J (9 December 2002). "Brown‐Séquard revisited: a lesson from history on the placebo effect of androgen treatment". Medical Journal of Australia. 177 (11): 678–679. doi:10.5694/j.1326-5377.2002.tb05014.x. ISSN 0025-729X. PMID 12463999. 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. ^ Michael J. Aminoff (2011). Brown-Séquard: An improbable genius who transformed medicine. O.U.P. p. 192. ISBN 9780199780648.
  15. ^ Henry Richardson Linville; Henry Augustus Kelly (1906). Text Book of General Zoology. Ginn & Company. p. 108.

Further reading edit

  • Aminoff, Michael J. (2000). "Brown-Séquard: Selected Contributions of a Nineteenth-Century Neuroscientist". The Neuroscientist. 6 (1): 60–65. doi:10.1177/107385840000600114. S2CID 144271357.
  • Borell M. (1976). "Brown-Séquard's organotherapy and its appearance in America at the end of the nineteenth century". Bull Hist Med. 50 (3): 309–320. PMID 791406.
  • Brown-Séquard C. E. (1889). "The effects produced on man by subcutaneous injection of a liquid obtained from the testicles of animals" (PDF). Lancet. 137 (3438): 105–107. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(00)64118-1.
  •   This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Brown-Séquard, Charles Edward". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 4 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 674.
  • Dawka, Sushil. (2017) "Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard: A bicentennial tribute". Int J Med Update. 12 (1): 1–3. https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/ijmu.v12i1.1
  • Laporte, Y. (2006). "Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard. Une vie mouvementée et une contribution importante à l'étude du système nerveux (Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard. An eventful life and a significant contribution to the study of the nervous system)". Comptes Rendus Biologies. 329 (5–6): 363–368. doi:10.1016/j.crvi.2006.03.007. PMID 16731494.
  • Olmsted, J. M. D. (1946). Charles-Edouard Brown-Séquard. A Nineteenth Century Neurologist and Endocrinologist. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • Rengachary, Setti S.; Colen, Chaim; Guthikonda, Murali (April 2008). "Charles-Edouard Brown-Sequard: An Eccentric Genius". Neurosurgery. 62 (4): 954–964. doi:10.1227/01.neu.0000318182.87664.1f. PMID 18496202. S2CID 28337775.
  • Ruch, Theodore C. Ruch (March 1946). "Charles Edouard Brown-Séquard (1817-1894)". Yale J. Biol. Med. 18 (4): 227–238. PMC 2601899. PMID 21434249.
  • Sneader, Walter (2005). Drug Discovery. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons Inc. pp. 151–152. ISBN 978-1-85070-427-0.

External links edit

  • Kahn, Arnold (2005). "Regaining Lost Youth: The Controversial and Colorful Beginnings of Hormone Replacement Therapy in Aging". The Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences. 60 (2): 142–147. doi:10.1093/gerona/60.2.142. PMID 15814854.
  • Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard - Biographical information and selected publications
  • New York Times obituary (1894)
  • Documents relating to Brown-Séquard in the Queen Square Archive
  • National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir

January 01, 1970
charles, Édouard, brown, séquard, april, 1817, april, 1894, mauritian, physiologist, neurologist, 1850, became, first, describe, what, called, brown, séquard, syndrome, born, 1817, april, 1817port, louis, mauritiusdied2, april, 1894, 1894, aged, sceaux, france. Charles Edouard Brown Sequard FRS 8 April 1817 2 April 1894 was a Mauritian physiologist and neurologist who in 1850 became the first to describe what is now called Brown Sequard syndrome 1 2 Charles Edouard Brown SequardBorn 1817 04 08 8 April 1817Port Louis MauritiusDied2 April 1894 1894 04 02 aged 76 Sceaux FranceKnown forBrown Sequard syndromeScientific careerFieldsMedicinePhysiologyNeurologyInstitutionsVirginia Commonwealth University Contents 1 Early life 2 Later life 3 Works 4 References 5 Further reading 6 External linksEarly life editBrown Sequard was born at Port Louis Mauritius to an American father and a French mother He attended the Royal College in Mauritius and graduated in medicine at Paris in 1846 He then returned to Mauritius with the intention of practising there but in 1852 he went to the United States 3 There he was appointed to the faculty of the 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 editHe 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 Ecole de Medecine 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 Claude Bernard in 1878 as professor of experimental medicine in the College de France and he remained there until his death which occurred in 1894 at Sceaux France 3 He was buried in Paris at the Cimetiere du Montparnasse 5 6 7 Brown Sequard 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 8 Thousands of men tried the therapy The endocrinologist Robert B Greenblatt wrote that this therapy could not have possibly worked because unlike the thyroid gland the testes do not store the hormones they produce and therefore obtaining a therapeutic dose of testosterone directly from animal glands would require about one quarter ton of bull s testes 9 It was later confirmed experimentally that his method did not yield active amounts of testosterone 10 The positive response by many men is now thought to have been a placebo effect but apparently this was sufficient to set the field of endocrinology off and running 11 In 1886 Brown Sequard was elected to the Board of the Sugar Club citation needed He also was a member of the Royal Society of London citation needed Works editBrown Sequard 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 Sequard 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 hormones secreted into the bloodstream to affect distant organs In particular he demonstrated in 1856 that removal of the adrenal glands resulted in death due to lack of essential hormones At age 72 at a meeting of the Societe de Biologie in Paris Brown Sequard reported that hypodermic injection of a fluid prepared from the testicles of guinea pigs and dogs leads to rejuvenation and prolonged human life It was known among scientists derisively as the Brown Sequard 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 Sequard 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 Sequard 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 Sequard 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 edit C E Brown Sequard De la transmission croisee des impressions sensitives par la moelle epiniere Comptes rendus de la Societe de biologie 1850 1851 2 33 44 Kelly Howard A Burrage Walter L eds Brown Sequard Charles Edward American Medical Biographies Baltimore The Norman Remington Company a b c d e Chisholm 1911 APS Member History search amphilsoc org Retrieved 19 April 2021 Pearce 1988 Brown Sequard s description of spontaneous cerebellar haemorrhage J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 51 5 634 doi 10 1136 jnnp 51 5 634 PMC 1033067 PMID 3042914 Laporte Y 2006 Charles Edouard Brown Sequard Une vie mouvementee et une contribution importante a l etude du systeme nerveux Charles Edouard Brown Sequard An eventful life and a significant contribution to the study of the nervous system Comptes Rendus Biologies 329 5 6 363 68 doi 10 1016 j crvi 2006 03 007 PMID 16731494 Brown Sequard Charles Edouard 1817 1894 and Family Archived from the original on 6 June 2011 Retrieved 30 May 2009 Brown Sequard Charles Edouard 20 July 1889 Note on the effects produced on man by subcutaneous injections of a liquid obtained from the testicles of animals The Lancet 134 3438 105 107 doi 10 1016 S0140 6736 00 64118 1 Archived from the original on 23 October 2022 Retrieved 10 January 2023 a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a CS1 maint bot original URL status unknown link Greenblatt Robert B 1963 Search The Scriptures A Physician Examines Medicine in the Bible Philadelphia J B Lippincott p 55 Cussons Andrea J Walsh John P Bhagat Chotoo I Fletcher Stephen J 9 December 2002 Brown Sequard revisited a lesson from history on the placebo effect of androgen treatment Medical Journal of Australia 177 11 678 679 doi 10 5694 j 1326 5377 2002 tb05014 x ISSN 0025 729X PMID 12463999 S2CID 24745225 The Practice of Neuroscience pp 199 200 John C M Brust 2000 Osborn Segerberg Jr 1974 The Immortality Factor New York E P Dutton and Co pp 84 85 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 Michael J Aminoff 2011 Brown Sequard An improbable genius who transformed medicine O U P p 192 ISBN 9780199780648 Henry Richardson Linville Henry Augustus Kelly 1906 Text Book of General Zoology Ginn amp Company p 108 Further reading editAminoff Michael J 2000 Brown Sequard Selected Contributions of a Nineteenth Century Neuroscientist The Neuroscientist 6 1 60 65 doi 10 1177 107385840000600114 S2CID 144271357 Borell M 1976 Brown Sequard s organotherapy and its appearance in America at the end of the nineteenth century Bull Hist Med 50 3 309 320 PMID 791406 Brown Sequard C E 1889 The effects produced on man by subcutaneous injection of a liquid obtained from the testicles of animals PDF Lancet 137 3438 105 107 doi 10 1016 s0140 6736 00 64118 1 nbsp This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain Chisholm Hugh ed 1911 Brown Sequard Charles Edward Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol 4 11th ed Cambridge University Press p 674 Dawka Sushil 2017 Charles Edouard Brown Sequard A bicentennial tribute Int J Med Update 12 1 1 3 https dx doi org 10 4314 ijmu v12i1 1 Laporte Y 2006 Charles Edouard Brown Sequard Une vie mouvementee et une contribution importante a l etude du systeme nerveux Charles Edouard Brown Sequard An eventful life and a significant contribution to the study of the nervous system Comptes Rendus Biologies 329 5 6 363 368 doi 10 1016 j crvi 2006 03 007 PMID 16731494 Olmsted J M D 1946 Charles Edouard Brown Sequard A Nineteenth Century Neurologist and Endocrinologist Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press Rengachary Setti S Colen Chaim Guthikonda Murali April 2008 Charles Edouard Brown Sequard An Eccentric Genius Neurosurgery 62 4 954 964 doi 10 1227 01 neu 0000318182 87664 1f PMID 18496202 S2CID 28337775 Ruch Theodore C Ruch March 1946 Charles Edouard Brown Sequard 1817 1894 Yale J Biol Med 18 4 227 238 PMC 2601899 PMID 21434249 Sneader Walter 2005 Drug Discovery Hoboken New Jersey John Wiley and Sons Inc pp 151 152 ISBN 978 1 85070 427 0 External links editKahn Arnold 2005 Regaining Lost Youth The Controversial and Colorful Beginnings of Hormone Replacement Therapy in Aging The Journals of Gerontology Series A Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences 60 2 142 147 doi 10 1093 gerona 60 2 142 PMID 15814854 Charles Edouard Brown Sequard Biographical information and selected publications New York Times obituary 1894 Documents relating to Brown Sequard in the Queen Square Archive National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Charles Edouard Brown Sequard amp oldid 1216003797, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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