Gonzo Biohacker Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard

Dr. Brown deserves to win the award for being he most gonzo biohacker of the late 19th century. Brown was a well known neurologist and a pioneer of the endocrinology field. His work came in the form of over 575 essays and papers. He advanced our understanding of hormones and epilepsy through animal and human experimentation. The Wikipedia entry for Brown refers to him as a “controversial and eccentric figure”. To give you an idea of how radical this physician was here is a short list of his better known self-experiments which tended to focus on life extension and performance enhancement.
  • Covered himself in varnish and nearly died while trying to understand how the skin worked. A student rescued him by using sand paper to remove the varnish.
  • Swallowed a sponge with a string attached and removed it from his stomach to analyze gastric juices. He would be plagued with acid reflux issues for the rest of his life.
  • Swallowed vomit from a paient with cholera to test opiates as possible cure on himself. He nearly died from an overdose of laudanum.

In 1889 Brown published an article about having reversed senility in himself and feeling 10 years younger. His extract “The Elixir of Life” made from dog and guinea pigs testicles combined with his own blood and semen was eventually recognized as quackery. Until then over 12,000 physicians were dispensing this concoction “Sequarine”.

Brown’s “Elixir of Life” reached the level of popularity that it did by being the first performance enhancing drug used in sports. An older professional baseball player from Pittsburg known as “Pud Galvin” received an injection of Brown’s elixir and went on to have an incredible performance the following day. It is currently thought that any effects gained from use of the elixir were placebo.

The following day, Galvin turned back the clock by pitching a 9-0 shutout against Boston. His fastball was sizzling, and he yielded just five scattered singles. Galvin’s bat was full of vitality as well. A career .201 hitter, Galvin knocked in two runs with a fourth-inning double and plated another runner with a triple in the fifth inning. The Pittsburg Dispatch reported that Galvin “once more was a youngster full of fun, power and tricks.”

Today Brown’s work is can come across as reckless experimentation, but he was relentless with his research and held significant positions at four different Universities (including Harvard). He crossed the Atlantic over sixty-five times spending almost six years of his life in oceanic transit. At one point Brown (a French speaker) was so vocally opposed to Napoleon coming into power that he had to flee to America and learned English on the voyage. He was a poor teacher in the US due to his limited language and he struggled while in Virginia with the politics of slavery (which he opposed). Today’s hormone replacement therapies still have some resemblance to what Brown was experimenting with almost 150 years ago.


Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards

Join Adafruit on Mastodon

Adafruit is on Mastodon, join in! adafruit.com/mastodon

Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.

Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!

Join us every Wednesday night at 8pm ET for Ask an Engineer!

Join over 38,000+ makers on Adafruit’s Discord channels and be part of the community! http://adafru.it/discord

CircuitPython – The easiest way to program microcontrollers – CircuitPython.org


New Products – Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! — NEW PRODUCT – Adafruit RP2350 22-pin FPC HSTX to DVI Adapter for HDMI Displays

Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: Adafruit Grand Opening, Profile MicroPython Memory and More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi — Classic editor

EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey

Adafruit IoT Monthly — Garden Lights, Bluetooth 6.0, and more!

Maker Business – Adafruit Daily — A look at Boeing’s supply chain and manufacturing process

Electronics – Adafruit Daily — When do I use X10?

Get the only spam-free daily newsletter about wearables, running a "maker business", electronic tips and more! Subscribe at AdafruitDaily.com !



No Comments

No comments yet.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.