Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard | |
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Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard
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Born |
Port Louis, Mauritius |
8 April 1817
Died | 2 April 1894 Sceaux, France |
(aged 76)
Residence | Mauritius, United States, England, France |
Nationality | Mauritian |
Fields |
Medicine Physiology Neurology |
Known for | Brown-Séquard syndrome |
Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard FRS (8 April 1817 – 2 April 1894), also known as Charles Edward, was a Mauritian physiologist and neurologist who, in 1850, became the first to describe what is now called Brown-Séquard syndrome.
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 practicing there, but in 1852 he went to the United States. There he was appointed to the faculty of the Medical College of Virginia where he conducted experiments in the basement of the Egyptian Building.
Subsequently 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. 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. He was buried in Paris at the Cimetière du Montparnasse.