BookLouis-Cyril Celestin.
Summary: Genius and dilettantism often go hand in hand. Nowhere is this truer than in the life of Charles-Edouard Brown-Sequard, the bilingual physician and neurologist who succeeded Claude Bernard as the Chair of Experimental Medicine at the College de France in Paris after having practiced in Paris, London and in the USA, especially in Harvard. For most men, making one discovery of global importance would have sufficed to satisfy their curiosity and self-image. Not so Brown-Sequard. His explanation of the neurological disparity following the hemi-section of the spinal cord was a unique achievement that added his name to the syndrome and made him immortal. Yet, the demons of his mind tormented him in his endless search for medical truths and drove him to explore other phenomena, seeking to explain and remedy them. This unique biography shows for the first time the conflict between his professional and personal life, and should appeal to all students of medical history and psychology.
Contents:
Physiology in the Nineteenth Century
The Birthplace
The Forebears
The Formative Years: 1817-1837
The Medical Student: 1838-1846
The Lone Experimenter: 1846-1851
The Visitor to America: 1852-1853
The Cholera Physician: 1854
The Richmond Professor: 1854-1855
The Paris Practitioner: 1856-1857
The Itinerant Lecturer: 1856-1859
The London Consultant Neurologist: 1860-1864
The Harvard Professor: 1864-1867
The Paris Course Lecturer: 1869-1872
The New York Practitioner: 1872-1874
The Indigent Physician: 1874-1877
The College de France Professor: 1878-1894
The Father of Hormonal Therapy: 1889-1893
The Last Years: 1892-1894.