From the stars to the gutter: the (almost) untold story of a neurological genius

Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard (1817–1894) is primarily remembered for the eponymousspinal cord hemisection syndrome. Yet his scientific contributions extended far beyond thissingle observation, encompassing groundbreaking work on sensory pathways in the spinal cord,the vital role of the adrenal glands, and the pioneering concept of “internal secretions” thatforeshadowed modern endocrinology. His extraordinary career, however, was marked byprofound personal restlessness—later attributed to a bipolar disorder—financial hardship, andperpetual professional instability across three continents. In 1889, at the age of seventy-two andat the pinnacle of his career as professor at the Collège de France, Brown-Séquard publiclyannounced that he had reversed the effects of ageing through self-injections of testicularextracts from dogs and guinea pigs. While this announcement inadvertently anticipated the fieldof hormone replacement therapy, it brought him immediate and devastating ridicule, effectivelyeclipsing decades of legitimate scientific achievement. His therapy, despite having had severaldistinguished aged followers (including Pasteur and Charcot), became the subject of satiricalsongs, cartoons, and dismissive commentary from the medical establishment. This article tracesBrown-Séquard's remarkable trajectory from a childhood in Mauritius through his peripateticcareer in France, England, and the United States, to his final hours, when he turned his ownfatal cerebral haemorrhage into one last act of clinical self-observation. We argue that thederision provoked by his rejuvenation experiments has unjustly overshadowed his substantialand lasting contributions to the contemporary neurosciences.