★This biography introduces us a scientist who has made great contributions to science, but is less well known. The adventurous life and inglorious ending of Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard, physician, neurologist, endocrinologist, luminary, long respected between America and Europe, author of many important discoveries, and finally proponent of a supposedly “miraculous” aqueous solution made from dog testicles for invigoration in old age: since then, an embarrassed silence has fallen over the great achievements.

Few have written about Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard (1817-1894). An embarrassed silence has fallen over the great achievements of this scientist, although he was one of the acknowledged fathers of endocrinology, a pioneer in neuroscience, and although his name is still used in the clinic to refer to a specific neurological syndrome. At his apogee he was undoubtedly one of the world's most famous and influential physicians, one of those who under “normal” conditions would have gotten half bronze busts in the squares of cities on three continents. Instead, only a couple of streets and a small psychiatric hospital were dedicated to him.
A native of Mauritius, a British citizen of a French mother (with some Indian ancestry, evident from the piercing gaze in the only photograph that has come down to us), Brown-Séquard was a restless man to say the least. Born fatherless amidst tropical storms and epidemics, in his twenties he moved with his mother to France to attempt a literary career. Instead, he ends up studying medicine, immediately building an important, if patchy and erratic, career: Paris, London, Dublin, New York, Boston, Richmond, Glasgow, Geneva. He crossed the Atlantic Ocean as many as sixty-six times, always in search of the best place to develop his research. Over time he achieved several successes, struggling to climb the rungs of an academy that was always somewhat hostile to him, until he returned to Paris, where he finally succeeded in obtaining the coveted French citizenship and becoming a professor. And just then, in 1889, he makes his big misstep.
This is the Nineteenth century, medicine is rapidly discovering great things, but many concepts and techniques are still embryonic and we are fumbling between the visible and invisible. Thus, Brown-Séquard - after having made fundamental contributions to nascent neurology and having been among the first to intuit the existence of those elusive endogenous substances we now call hormones - appears one fine day at the Société de Biologie announcing the discovery of a “miraculous fluid” made from dog testicles: he has injected himself with ten doses in the course of three weeks and eventually went back - him, a septuagenarian – to his twenties vigour. To prove it, the urine flush, invigorated and powerful as it once was. He does not add anything else, but the prurient implication is there for all to see.
Not a few believe him in the first instance. On the other hand, this is the Nineteenth century and medicine is really expected to do anything. Even Emile Zola, even Louis Pasteur (!) make use of his portentous fluid. Then science takes its course, proceeds with its experimental verifications, and the ridiculous prevails over the magical, decreeing the end of the reputation of an outstanding scientist and his - unfair, after all - damnatio memoriae.

Silvia Bencivelli
She graduated in Medicine and specialized in Science Communication at Sissa in Trieste. An authoritative voice in Italian science popularization, is active with podcasts and radio and television programs. Among her publications, Il dubbio e il desiderio. Eva Mameli Calvino (Mondadori/Electa 2023), Sospettosi. Noi e i nostri dubbi sulla scienza (Einaudi, 2019), Le mie amiche streghe (Einaudi, 2017). For Bollati Boringhieri he published Eroica, folle e visionaria. Storie di medicina spericolata (Heroic, mad and visionary. Stories of reckless medicine, 2023).