This made another change in the career of Dr. Brown. He left Natchez and with his negroes moved to a plantation near Huntsville, Alabama. His energies were now directed for a time to educating his children until they reached the age for school. He also co-operated with Dr. Daniel Drake (q.v.) in a project to establish a medical school in Cincinnati. Dr. Drake had obtained a charter from the state of Ohio in 1819. About this time the trustees of the Transylvania University offered Dr. Brown the chair of practice, which he accepted. This was the reorganization of the medical department of the Transylvania University as he and Dr. Frederick Ridgely (q.v.) had been appointed in 1799, Brown as professor of chemistry, anatomy and surgery.
In the spring of 1825 he tendered his resignation in favor of his friend, Dr. Daniel Drake, who was unanimoulsy appointed his successor.
In 1799 by uniting with his brothers John and James and Mr. Henry Clay he used his influence in an endeavor to introduce a clause into the new state constitution respecting the gradual emancipation of slaves. These efforts were not crowned with success and ever afterwards he shunned politics.
According to Lunsford P. Yandell, Sr., the first medical paper from the pen of a Kentucky physician was one written by Brown for the American Medical Repository in June, 1799; its title, "A curious Instance of Disease in which the Feeling of the Patient was Abolished while the Power of Motion remained Unimpaired." He was an industrious writer but composed no elaborate papers and his letters to scientific men, which were very numerous, were more interesting than his medical papers.
The crowning effort of his life was the organization of a society with branches in other cities, whose members pledged themselves to ideals similar to those of Dr. Brown, a society styled "The Kappa Lambda Association of Hippocrates." Its members were elected by unanimous vote and on the exaction of a promise similar to that of the Hippocratic oath. A journal was put forth in 1825 in Philadelphia under the auspices of this association, under the name of the North American Medical and Surgical Journal.
He was active in the organization of societies for the discussion of questions of science and literature, and probably the first to make known to his countrymen the discovery of the art of lithography in Europe, and the first to suggest a process of clarifying ginseng, rendering it fit for the Chinese market. He also made some valuable suggestions about the distillation of spirits.
His contribution to "The Transactions of the American Philosophical Society" consisted of a paper under the title of "A Description of a Cave on Crooked Creek, with Observations on Nitre and Gunpowder." His death was caused by apoplexy in the third attack of which he died on the twelfth of January, 1830, in the sixty-second year of his age. He died at the residence of Col. Thomas G. Percy, near Huntsville, Alabama.
Brown-Séquard, Charles Edward (1817–1894)
This great and original "savant," cosmopolite physiologist and physician who taught in England, America and France, Charles Edward Brown-Séquard was born at Port Louis, Mauritius, April 8, 1817, the posthumous son of Edward Brown (a Philadelphian), captain in the merchant service. His mother's family, the Séquards, had been for some years settled in the Isle of France and as his father was Irish the lad inherited a large amount of vivacity, and it is easy to imagine his routine work as clerk in a store was soon thrown up. His mother in 1838 went to Paris and kept her son at his medical studies by taking in some students, also Mauritians, but she died soon after and Brown affixed her maiden name to his own. In 1846 he was admitted M. D. at Paris with a thesis on "Researches and Experiments on the Physiology of the Spinal Cord." In 1849 he was auxiliary physician under Baron Larrey at the military hospital of Gros Caillou during an outbreak of cholera.
During these years he had a hard fight with poverty but devoted himself to physiology and on the foundation of the Société de Biologie became one of the four secretaries.
The political troubles of 1852 made him fear the consequences of his own republicanism and he sailed for New York where he taught French, attended obstetric cases at $5.00 each, and married an American woman, with whom and a baby son he returned to France the year following, to stay only one year, for he seems to have had touches of travel fever leading him to go to Mauritius to practice. There was just then an outbreak of cholera in
