Ralph H. Major ^^y 



pituitary gland will be of great value in the treatment of hypopituitarism as 

 soon as we can "build up the malady constituted by the special symptoms 

 showing the absence of secretion of the pituitary gland"— a service rendered 

 several years later by Frohlich and others. Since the protocols of these experi- 

 ments contain no records of the blood chemistry or of the blood pressure, it is 

 impossible to tell whether he was working with active extracts. There is cer- 

 tainly no evidence that he had an extract of the pancreas which contained 

 insulin, although, judging from his previous communications, he was ob- 

 viously seeking for some such substance in the pancreas. 



If Brown-Sequard had had at his disposal the fine procedures of the modern 

 chemist, he would have been able to control his own imaginative thinking 

 and also to avoid the derision of many of his colleagues. Fundamentally, many 

 of his ideas were sound, but he had tackled his work without the tools to 

 fashion it, since these tools were, at that time, undiscovered. 



Brown-Sequard died in 1894, at the age of seventy-seven, having served 

 medicine faithfully for fifty-six years. His contributions, as we have seen, were 

 numerous and varied. The actual number of his publications exceeds five hun- 

 dred, and, while the majority of them relate to the physiology and pathology 

 of the nervous system and to endocrinology, a review of his bibliogi aphy shows 

 numerous articles also on the subjects of hematology, hypnosis, anesthesia, 

 laryngology, experimental emphysema, vitiated air, and antiseptics. His great- 

 est contributions, however, were his demonstration of the Brown-Sequard 

 syndrome, which was anticipated in his doctor's thesis, and his work on the 

 glands of internal secretion, which, while faulty in certain respects, had the 

 most desirable effect of turning the attention of medicine to this much neg- 

 lected field. We can imagine his great enthusiasm if he were among us today 

 and could view the enormous strides that endocrinology has made since his 

 time. 



