The Life And Works Of Brown Sequard

This book traces the strange career of Brown-Sequard, an eccentric, restless, nineteenth-century physician-scientist whose life was characterized by dramatic reversals of fortune and is said to have been "one of the greatest discovers of facts that the world has ever seen".

A chronicle of Charles Edouard Brown-Sequard's life which appraises his scientific legacy and gives a vivid account of his rich imagination, his creative approach to research, and his innovative methods of investigation."

Genius and dilettantism often go hand in hand. Nowhere is this truer than in the life of Charles-Edouard Brown-Séquard, 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-Séquard. 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.

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An exploration of one of the most universal human obsessions charts the rise of longevity science from its alchemical beginnings to modern-day genetic interventions and enters the world of those whose lives are shaped by a belief in immortality.