Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 1839

CHARLES EDOUARD BROWN-SEQUARD (1817-1894) Recherches expérimentales sur la transmission croisée des impressions sensitives dans la moelle épinière. Victor Masson 1855 19 pp. 22.1 cm.

After teaching for a term at the Medical College of Virginia, Brown-Séquard returned to Paris in mid-1855 where he received a warm welcome from the scientific community. He proceeded to establish a small laboratory where he could carry on his own research projects while also working with graduate students who came to do experiments under his tutelage. It was soon after his return to Paris that the Société de Biologie, largely at his insistence, appointed a committee to investigate his doctrines concerning the crossing over of sensory impulses in the spinal cord. Serious and sometimes bitter discussions over this matter had gone on since his findings had first been reported in 1849. A committee of six including Paul Broca (see No. 1912), Claude Bernard (see 1792 ff.), and Edme Félix Alfred Vulpian (see No. 1926) overwhelmingly supported Brown-Séquard's experimental results, which furthered his reputation as an authority on diseases of the nervous system. The present tract was also published in La Gazette hebdomadaire de médecine et de chirurgie (Tome II, nos. 31 et 36) and was prepared to answer the question: "Où s'opère l'entrecroisement des éléments conducteurs des impressions sensitives dans le centre cerebro-rachidien?" (p. 4) ("Where is the point of action in the cerebrospinal center of the crossed sensory fibers of the spinal cord?").

See Related Record(s): 1912 1792 1926

Cited references: Waller 1505

Gift of John Martin, M.D.