678 THE LIFE AND WORKS OF BROWN-SEQUARD. 



world, from the Indian Ocean, where be was born, to the coasts of 

 Europe and America; sometimes an experimenter, sometimes a consult- 

 ing physician, sometimes a scientific journalist, and sometimes a pro- 

 fessor; at Paris, at London, at Dublin, at Few York, at Boston, until 

 the time when he found in his later years a resting place and the crown 

 of his career in our old but always youthful College of France, always 

 an asylum for original intellects, and in our Academy of Sciences, a 

 final consecration of scientific work. 



Such is the man whose life and work I am about to try to sketch. 



Charles fidouard Brown- Sequard was born April 8, 1817, at Port- 

 Louis (Mauritius) of an American father, Brown, of Philadelphia, and 

 a French mother, who was a Mile. Sequard, of Provencal origin. His 

 father, a captain in the merchant marine, went to sea with his vessel 

 some months before the birth of his son, and was never heard of again. 

 Brown's lot was in this respect like that of E. Benan, who also lost 

 his father under similar circumstances. Our scientist bore, in his phys- 

 ical frame as in his intellectual character, the traces of this double 

 origin, modified by the climate of his birthplace. From his mother he 

 inherited that southern vivacity and sympathetic character that 

 attracted so many to him, while from his father he derived that adven- 

 turous boldness which he carried into his experiments, and also that 

 ability to promptly change the surroundings of his life and to work 

 without cessation during the constant shifting about of an adventurous 

 career. The tropical land where he was born endowed him with the 

 physical characteristics of the Indian Creole. Formerly a French 

 colony, it was torn away from its native country by the disasters of 1814, 

 because it was a naval station of the first rank, being the base of the 

 bold expeditions conducted by Dupleix and La Bourdonnais, in the 

 eighteenth century. 



Therefore, England, who hastens to seize every island, every cape, 

 and every strait that controls the sea, did not neglect to possess herself 

 of Mauritius at the time of our misfortune. The population has, how- 

 ever, even to the present day, preserved a certain attachment for the 

 country from which it sprang. 



When Brown-Sequard was born Mauritius was no longer French ter- 

 ritory, and this was the reason why, when after a wandering existence, 

 he wished at the decline of his life to settle finally in France, it was 

 necessary for him to become naturalized. Still his native tongue was 

 French, and when he made his first visit to the United States he was 

 obliged to learn English, which he did during the voyage. 



In the midst of privation and poverty his mother raised him with a 

 tenderness of which he always preserved the most lively remembrance. 

 She lived by the work of her needle, employing an aged negro to sell 

 her embroidery. Thus it was that our future colleague was initiated 

 into the severe struggle for existence, an initiation that tempers the 

 spirit of those that can submit to it without shrinking. It is well to 



