Charles Darwin – At Down Housechronic nausea, headaches, abdominal pain, palpitations and insomnia, all of which
had his doctors completely puzzled. He may have become infected with some virus or
parasite during his travels through South America or as some have suggested it may
have been a psychosomatic illness related to the big dangerous idea he had decided to
keep secret. He was engaged in the most revolutionary of thoughts which he could not
bring himself to publish or even share except with a few close friends and this may
have affected his health. Darwin tried many cures which today would be considered as
quackery; these only provided some temporary relief and he continued to be plagued
by illness for the rest of his life. Darwin describes his continuing illness and how
severely it affected his style of life:
Few persons can have lived a more retired life than we have done. Besides short visits to the
houses of relations, and occasionally to the seaside or elsewhere, we have gone nowhere.
During the first part of our residence we went a little into society, and received a few friends
here; but my health almost always suffered from the excitement, violent shivering and
vomiting attacks being thus brought on. I have therefore been compelled for many years to
give up all dinner-parties; and this has been somewhat of a deprivation to me, as such parties
always put me into high spirits. From the same cause I have been unable to invite here very
few scientific acquaintances.In 1844, the same year that Darwin wrote his ‘Essay’ for posthumous publication,
the publication by an anonymous author of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
stunned Darwin and could only have made his medical condition worse. It was written
in a journalistic style but it proposed the evolution of all living creatures from a simple
form, which was similar to his own ideas. The book sold out, a publishing sensation,
it was discussed in all the fashionable clubs, around household dining tables, and in
the working-class mechanics’ institutes. What was shocking was the backlash from
the scientific and religious establishment. The scientific and church community lined
up to denounce the book’s errors and its insult to religion. Darwin was shaken to the
core by a denunciation of Vestiges from his old mentor and Professor of Geology at
Christ’s College, the Reverend Adam Sedgwick:
If the book be true, the labours of sober induction are in vain; religion is a lie; human law is
a mass of folly, and a base injustice; morality is moonshine, our labours for the black people
of Africa were works of madness; and man and woman are only better beasts.In 1847 Darwin decided to take the important step of sending his complete ‘Essay’123