

HOW THE GLANDS WERE DISCOVERED 35 



adrenal bodies to loss of something produced by them of con- 

 stitutional importance. He was particularly struck by the 

 change in the pigmentation of the skin, so much so that his own 

 designation for the affection was "bronzed skin." Since then, 

 however, the condition has been universally styled Addison's 

 Disease. 



There is something spectacularly mysterious and picturesque 

 about most of the malign, insidious effects of the disease which 

 appealed at once to a number of investigators. The most adven- 

 turous, the most daring, the most imbued with enthusiasm for 

 the experimental method, was the American Frenchman, Brown- 

 Sequard, who is acknowledged the father of modern knowledge 

 of the glands of internal secretion, though to Claude Bernard 

 belong the honors of the grandfather. 



Brown-Sequard the Great 



Brown-Sequard, as the outstanding figure in the history of the 

 glands of internal secretion, deserves some notice as a person- 

 ality. In the words of the note-makers for novels and plays, 

 he was a card. He was born in 1817 at Port-Louis, on the island 

 of Mauritius, off Africa, then French property. His father was 

 a Mr. Brown, an American sea captain; his mother a Mme. 

 Sequard, a Frenchwoman. Early in childhood, the father sailed 

 away on one of his voyages and never came back. The mother 

 thereafter supported herself and her son sewing embroideries. 

 At fifteen, Brown-Sequard, with the physical appearance of an 

 Indian Creole, was clerking in a colonial store by day, and com- 

 posing poetry, romances arid plays by night. The call of Paris 

 was in his blood, which was indeed a supersaturated solution of 

 wanderlust. 



Soon he was landed there to make his fortune in literature, 

 only too speedily to be disillusioned. Exhibition of manuscripts 

 to a leading literary light merely evoked curt advice to learn a 

 trade or go into business. He would have none of either and 

 studied medicine instead, earning his way by teaching as he 

 learned. In the laboratories, he made the acquaintance of people 

 who more than once were to be his salvation in the ups and downs 

 of his career. In 1848 he was one of the secretaries of the Society 

 of Biology, newly founded by Claude Bernard. 



Some trouble, perhaps some effect upon his health of cholera 

 which then swept Paris, caused him to return to his native 



