clusion that, if subcutaneous injections of
the liquids drawn from these parts are ineffectual, then we should
inject some of the venous blood supplying these parts.... We admit
that each tissue, and, more generally, each cell of the organism,
secretes on its own account, certain products or special ferments,
which, through this medium (the blood), influence all other cells of
the body, a definite solidarity being thus established among all the
cells through a mechanism other than the nervous system.... All
the tissues (glands and other organs) have thus a special internal
secretion, and so give to the blood something more than the waste
products of metabolism. The internal secretions, whether by direct
favorable influence, or whether through the obstacles they oppose to
deleterious processes, seem to be of great utility in maintaining the
organism in its normal state."

The only part of this statement not conceded today is that relating to
the formation of internal secretions by tissues other than those of
which the cells are definitely glandular, that is secretory: as can be
determined under the microscope. Brown-Sequard added to the concept
of internal secretions, fathered by Claude Bernard, the idea of a
correlation, a mutual influencing of them and of the different organs
of the body through them. The nervous system had hitherto been
regarded as the sole means of communication between cells, by its
telegraphic arrangements of nerve filaments reaching out everywhere,
interweaving with each other and the cells. The Brown-Sequard
conception inferred the existence of a postal system between cells,
the blood supplying the highway for travel and transmission of the
post, the post consisting of the chemical substances secreted by
the glands. To be sure, the doctrine was only an inference, though
well-founded, of which the direct experimental proof was not to
be obtained until the researches of Bayliss and Starling. Yet to
Brown-Sequard belongs the immortal credit, if not of the originator,
at any rate of the resurrector of the idea of using gland extracts to
influence the body. The unwarranted hopes aroused by his enthusiastic
reports of rejuvenating miracles have long since been dissipated.
Moreover, they smeared the whole subject with a disrepute which clings
to certain narrow and unreasonable minds to this day. But as every
physiologist since has acknowledged, he was and remains the great
path-breaker in the conquest