title: Charles Edouard Brown-Séquard: professor of physiology and pathology of the nervous system at Harvard Medical School.
abstract: Brown-Séquard's career as Harvard's first professor of the physiology and pathology of the nervous system is chronicled in a unique and previously unpublished series of his private letters and university archival material. At Harvard, Brown-Séquard tried to modernize the curriculum by adding laboratory exercises and animal experiments in the teaching of physiology. He dreamed of constructing a great physiologic institute to study fundamental problems in neurology, including epilepsy, paralysis, muscular atrophy, nerve injuries, and a wide variety of other problems. His letters reveal Brown-Séquard as a disarmingly "modern" professor who avoided faculty meetings, complained constantly about lecture schedules, his salary, and the improper care of his animals--and threatened to resign regularly!
mesh_terms: D049672:History, 19th Century; D008404:Massachusetts; D009462:Neurology / Q000266:history; D009482:Neurophysiology / Q000266:history; D010336:Pathology / Q000266:history; D012577:Schools, Medical