690 THE LIFE AND WOKKS OF BROWN-SEQUARD. 



perpetual torment to him. But lie was still disturbed concerning the 

 career of bis son. It was at this time that he refused a chair in the 

 University of Glasgow, because of the climate. He repaired to New 

 York, to Chester, to Paris, and in 1875 again returned to New York, 

 always involved in financial difficulties. "I have the means for living 

 just nine months, after which there is absolutely nothing. I must once 

 for all put myself in a position to earn something for my old age, 

 which is rapidly coming on." 



The years 1874 and 1875 were thus passed in agitations of all kinds — 

 illness, melancholy, and lamentations — without his being able to decide 

 what to do. He hesitated between Glasgow, Geneva, Paris, and New 

 York. "To choose is very perplexing; there are difficulties every- 

 where." In the midst of all this he gave lectures on amaurosis and 

 hemiana?sthesia; a scientific discussion with Charcot in the Society of 

 Biology excited him greatly. Another trait of character may be men- 

 tioned: In 1870 he visited in Paris, as a consulting physician, Dom 

 Pedro, whose affable and open countenance we all remember. Yet 

 Brown-Sequard did not feel entirely satisfied. He saw that sovereigns 

 do not like to be treated on terms of equality; one can always feel the 

 claw under the velvet foot of the leopard. 



In 1877 he married a third time, espousing the widow of Doherty, 

 the painter. This wife died in 1891, a few months before him. It was 

 at the time of this marriage that he accepted for a while a chair of 

 physiology in the University of Geneva, but circumstances prevented 

 him from ever occupying it. He had, however, reached the end of his 

 life of wandering and agitation and was about to find among us, in a 

 purely scientific situation of the very first rank, a rest for his declining 

 years, surrounded by honors to which his long career entitled him. He 

 had always been dominated by an ardent zeal for intellectual matters, 

 and he had not hesitated to sacrifice to them the advantages, even 

 though well earned, which belong to a purely professional career. 



Brown-Sequard was in New York, in 1878, when he heard of the death 

 of Claude Bernard, who was snatched away after a few weeks' illness 

 by an affection of the kidneys. Brown immediately proceeded to Paris 

 to apply for the position. No chair could suit better this original mind 

 than that which had been occupied by Magendie and Claude Bernard, 

 nor could any teaching be better adapted to him than that in the 

 College of France, a teaching essentially personal and in which each 

 teacher gives out his own ideas and exhibits his own work at the very 

 moment he has completed it, whether in his study or in his laboratory, 

 without any care for a didactic course, following no set programme, 

 not subject to the fatigue of examinations which are at once the evi- 

 dence of a course and the proof of capacity of candidates for diplomas. 

 This way of considering teaching as a personal matter suited perfectly 

 the vivacious mind of Brown-Sequard, characterized by good qualities 

 and by imperfections, but, above all, original and inventive. He was, 



