692 THE LIFE AND WORKS OF BROWN-SEQUARD. 



The entire assembly rose, animated by feelings of respect and sorrow. 

 It sent a telegram of condolence to the Academy of Sciences at Paris — 

 a last homage to the life that was wholly devoted to disinterested 

 research for truth. 



The scientific work of Brown-Sequard is considerable in amount and 

 extends to nearly all branches of physiology, these being traversed in 

 turn by this indefatigable explorer. 



This work bears tbe stamp of the personality of the author. It is of 

 an intuitive character, governed by his imagination, quick to perceive 

 the original side of new problems and to attack old problems in an 

 unexpected way. But he did not stick long to any point; he was not 

 one of those who study for a long time with minute attention a par- 

 ticular fact under all conditions until they have a complete knowledge 

 of it. Constantly drawn in divers directions by an inexhaustible 

 curiosity, he had no time to analyze in an extended and rigorous man- 

 ner the facts he had just discovered. He was in too much of a hurry 

 to get on and had to return to his work again and again and repeat his 

 imperfectly finished studies and demonstrations, for, though he often 

 changed the object of his researches, they were always present in his 

 mind, and he was always seeking to carry them further, never hesi- 

 tating to acknowledge former errors. This is a phenomenon that has 

 often been noted in the history of science; there is a certain opposition, 

 or, rather, contrast, often seen between the in venti ve genius who discovers 

 new facts and the precise mind that gives to them the final sanction of 

 exact demonstration. These two kinds of minds are equally necessary 

 and supplement each other reciprocally, without there being, however, 

 any exact line of demarcation between the scientists who possess 

 them. Thus Brown-Sequard, who maybe said to be an inventor rather 

 than a demonstrator, once gave at London a lecture (called the Croonian 

 lecture) on the life of the muscles, a lecture cited by John Stuart 

 Mills in his Treatise on Logic as a perfect example of the employ- 

 ment of the four scientific methods. 



The labors of Brown-Sequard were directed especially and principally 

 to the elucidation of the necessarily related subjects, the physiology 

 and pathology of the nervous system. During the latter years of his 

 life he added to it a new investigation, equally important, which has 

 opened surprising vistas in medicine — that of internal secretions and 

 their normal office in the healthy human organism, as well as their 

 therapeutic effect upon the organism when diseased. 



In the early part of his career, in 1846, he began the study of the 

 spinal cord as the transmitting agent of sensory impressions and motor 

 impulses. He attacked a problem which seemed at that time already 

 solved by the discovery of two kinds of nerve roots taking origin in 

 the spinal cord — the motor roots and the sensory roots. Charles Bell 

 had also extended that distinction to the columns of the cord itself. 



