682 THE LIFE AND WORKS OF BROWN-SEQUARD. 



Rayer thus gave to Brown-Sequard his first opportunities for work; 

 he interested himself in him and confided to his care certain patients 

 whom he thought ought to be treated by galvanism. 



The next year, in 1849, during that deadly epidemic of cholera, which 

 left a profound impression on the minds of the students and doctors of 

 my time who were called to treat the sick and dying, Brown-Sequard 

 was appointed as assistant physician at the military hospital of Gros- 

 Caillou. It was a dangerous post, requiring devotion to duty. Brown 

 never drew back on such occasions. 



Still his means of existence continued to be uncertain. In 1852 he 

 found hinself at the end of his resources, and his republican opinions 

 hardly permitted him to hope for any official support. He embarked 

 for New York on a sailing vessel. He was ignorant of the language of 

 the country where he was going to seek his fortune, but he smilingly 

 said that he counted on the length of the voyage for learning English 

 and on his profession for subsistence when he had once arrived in the 

 United States. He showed at this time that mixture of almost childish 

 want of foresight and self confidence that characterized his entire life; 

 tossed about incessantly from fortune to poverty, always rescued before 

 reaching the last extremity and always recovering himself by his own 

 energy. 



Thus it was that he commenced that irregular career that led him so 

 many times from France to England and to America, and from America 

 to England and to France, attracted on the one hand by the desire for 

 a life in Paris, the only place where his scientific instincts were com- 

 pletely satisfied, and on the other by his Anglo-American traditions 

 that led him to seek for a living in New York or London, where applied 

 science was more generously compensated. He crossed the ocean in 

 this way more than sixty times in the course of a half century. 



This existence of a scientist wandering from country to country 

 becomes more and more rare and difficult. During the sixteenth cen- 

 tury it was almost the usual method of life. As the new spirit of the 

 Renaissance found but little encouragement in the old scholastic uni- 

 versities, scientists and artists were then in the habit of wandering 

 between France, Italy, Germany, and sometimes England, seeking the 

 protection, too often capricious, of princes and sovereigns. In the seven- 

 teenth century Louis XIV called to France Cassini, Huyghens, and 

 many others, some of whom, indeed, founded dynasties there. 



The eighteenth century, with its ideas concerning the moral and 

 intellectual unity of the human race, was favorable to this wandering 

 habit. Even in our own days we have seen that in the early part of the 

 present century it was kept up between France, Italy, and Germany, 

 as well as between Germany, England, and Russia. It would be easy 

 to cite numerous examples of this, but since the wars of the last forty 

 years that have established the great European States these powers 

 have become more jealous of each other; each has tried to preserve 



