Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard, The Physiologist Who Believed Guinea Pig Testicles Would Grant Him Eternal Life
Wikimedia CommonsCharles-Édouard Brown-Séquard was a successful physiologist but attracted controversy for his use of animal testes extracts.
Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard was always something of an outcast. A horribly depressed and withdrawn student of medicine, he often traveled as a means of escaping his less-than-ideal life. It is said that he crossed the Atlantic Ocean more than 60 times in the mid-1800s, setting sail whenever he experienced moments of sadness or difficulty, according to a study of his work in Brain: A Journal of Neurology..
Colleagues described Brown-Séquard as difficult and distractible yet energetic and full of grandiose plans. Unfortunately, he often fell into fantasies that made it nearly impossible for him to function normally.
One of his more eccentric ideas was that he could achieve anti-aging effects and sexual prowess using extracts from dog and guinea pig testes. Over a three-week period, he injected himself with these extracts and claimed that he noticed improvements in his concentration skills, his strength and endurance, and even his bowel habits.
Brown-Séquard had also previously infused his own blood into criminals who had been decapitated by a guillotine, ingested the vomit of cholera patients, and varnished his skin — only for his students to have to sand the varnish off when they found him unconscious.
So while Brown-Séquard’s work with guinea pig testicles was far from his most bizarre self-experiment, it was his most infamous. News of his hypothesis spread quickly, inviting harsh ridicule. Brown-Séquard’s reputation took a hit — and he died five years later, despite the supposedly anti-aging injections.
