Head-and-shoulders portrait photograph of Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard facing slightly left

PUBLIC DOMAIN source

Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard (as patient)

Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard

1817–1894 · French (Mauritius-born)

role:Self-experimental subject of the 1889 testicular-extract injection protocol; the developer-vendor of the protocol acting in the role of his own first patient

nationality:French (Mauritius-born)

connection:Brown-Séquard administered five subcutaneous injections of aqueous testicular extract to himself over an 18-day period in spring 1889, then reported the results to the Société de Biologie on 1 June 1889. The self-administration is the empirical basis of his published claims and the defining methodological feature of the case: a developer who is also his own first patient and his own outcome reporter, with no blinding, no controlled comparison, and no independent assessment. He is included in the archive as a Person distinct from his Practitioner record in order to surface the role-overlap explicitly. Brown-Séquard died in Paris on 1 April 1894, less than five years after the self-injection, without having demonstrated objective rejuvenation.

confirmed:yes

APPEARS IN CASES

brown-sequard-self-injection-1889 patient

EXTERNAL REFERENCES

NOTES

Brown-Séquard’s self-experiment is the defining feature of the 1889 case. He was simultaneously the developer of the protocol, its vendor (in the form of free distribution of research material to colleagues), its theoretical apologist, and its first and most public patient. The role-overlap is preserved in this archive by giving him both a Practitioner record (developer-vendor role) and a Person record (patient role). The split is in line with the spec’s note that the same human can occupy both roles. Brown-Séquard’s self-administration is the methodological template for the modern category of self-experimenting biohacker founders, including contemporary figures who promote, sell, and personally use the protocols they market.