Health of Charles Darwin

For much of his adult life, Charles Darwin's health was repeatedly compromised by an uncommon combination of symptoms, leaving him severely debilitated for long periods of time.

However, Darwin himself suggested that, in some ways, this may have helped his work: "Even ill-health, though it has annihilated several years of my life, has saved me from the distractions of society and amusement.

On 10 December 1831, as he waited in Plymouth for the voyage on HMS Beagle to begin, he suffered from chest pain and heart palpitations, but told no one at the time in case it stopped him from going on the survey expedition.

[5][6] In his diary for 25 March 1835, while to the east of the Andes near Mendoza, he noted "an attack (for it deserves no less a name) of the Benchuca, a species of Reduvius, the great black bug of the Pampas".

These are associated with transmittal of Trypanosoma cruzi causing Chagas' disease, but in subsequent days he does not mention the fever characteristic of first infection, which may have occurred in September 1834.

For over forty years Darwin suffered intermittently from various combinations of symptoms such as: malaise, vertigo, dizziness, muscle spasms and tremors, vomiting, cramps and colics, bloating and nocturnal intestinal gas, headaches, alterations of vision, severe tiredness, nervous exhaustion, dyspnea, skin problems such as blisters all over the scalp and eczema, crying, anxiety, sensation of impending death and loss of consciousness, fainting, tachycardia, insomnia, tinnitus, and depression.

[12] In September, his sickness returned during the excitement of a British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting, and Darwin made a day visit to Malvern, then recuperated at home.

Darwin explained to Fox his wrathful scepticism about clairvoyance and worse, homeopathy, thinking the infinitesimal doses were against all common sense and should be compared against the effects of no treatment at all.

Darwin became a complete convert, "well convinced that the only thing for Chronic cases is the water-cure", and wrote, "I really think I shall make a point of coming here for a fortnight occasionally, as the country is very pleasant for walking."

nervousness when E[mma] leaves me ..." [the list continues][35]In his autobiography of 1876, Darwin wrote of his illness, emphasising that it had been brought on by "the excitement" of socialising: Few persons can have lived a more retired life than we have done.

Bowlby suggested that separation anxiety may help cause the development of panic disorder in adulthood and that agoraphobic patients frequently describe parents as dominant, controlling, critical, frightening, rejecting, or overprotective, which matches (disputed) descriptions of Darwin's father as tyrannical (see below).

Sir Gavin de Beer disputed this explanation, claiming a physical causation.8 Darwin's autobiography says of his father, "... [he] was a little unjust to me when I was young, but afterwards I am thankful to think that I became a prime favourite with him."

Kettlew: "The predisposing cause of any psychoneurosis which Charles Darwin displayed seems to have been the conflict and emotional tension springing from his ambivalent relations with his father ... whom he both revered and subconsciously resented."

Bradbury also quotes John Chancellor's analysis: "... [Darwin's] obsessive desire to work and achieve something was prompted by hatred and resentment of his father, who had called him an idler and good-for-nothing during his youth."

Darwin did tell Emma of his ideas at that stage, and, while she was deeply concerned about the danger to his afterlife expressed in the Gospel, "If a man abide not in me...they are burned", she married him and remained fully supportive of his work throughout their marriage.

He liked the thought of becoming a country clergyman, and before studying at the University of Cambridge, "as I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible, I soon persuaded myself that our Creed must be fully accepted."

The clergyman naturalist professors there who became his lifelong friends fully accepted an ancient earth but opposed evolutionism which they felt would undermine the social order.

At both universities, he saw how evolution was associated with radicals and democrats seeking to overthrow society and how publicly supporting such ideas could lead to destruction of reputation, loss of position and even imprisonment for blasphemy.

What is unclear is whether this was anxiety about disgrace and damage to his friends, or about his loss of faith in Christianity, or indeed a rational fear of the harsh treatment he had seen meted out to radicals and proponents of evolutionism.

It is most disgusting to feel soft wingless insects, about an inch long, crawling over ones body; before sucking they are quite thin, but afterwards round & bloated with blood, & in this state they are easily squashed.

[51]The great black bug of the Pampas is identified by Richard Keynes as Triatoma infestans, commonly called winchuka[52] (vinchuca), one of the triatomine vectors for Trypanosoma cruzi which leads to Chagas disease.

[citation needed] A diagnosis of Ménière's disease is based on a series of symptoms, some of which were present in Darwin's case, such as tinnitus, vertigo, dizziness, nausea, motion sickness, vomiting, continual malaise and fatigue.

An argument put forward for a diagnosis of Ménière's is that Darwin hunted a lot when he was young and could have damaged his inner ear with the repeated noise of shooting.

The pathologist John A. Hayman of the University of Melbourne has presented a case that Darwin's symptoms indicate that he suffered from cyclic vomiting syndrome (CVS), an illness associated with mitochondrial DNA abnormalities.

[55][56] In a supplement published in February 2012, he proposed that stroke-like episodes of memory loss and partial paralysis which do not occur with CVS are characteristic of the MELAS syndrome.

[60][61] Evidence for familial systemic lactose intolerance syndrome was that vomiting and gastrointestinal symptoms usually appeared two to three hours after meals and that, apparently, Darwin got better when he stopped taking milk or cream.

This has been proposed as the source of Darwin's illness, but the hypothesis is improbable, because, as with lactose intolerance, its temporal and causal relationship with food is easily established, and this was not always the case.

This hypothesis has been advanced by John H. Winslow, who published a book arguing that Darwin took arsenic at low dosages as a remedy and that there was "a very close match" between his symptoms and those of arsenicosis.

He wrote that Darwin—isolated from social life and obligations of a "normal" scientist, such as administrative and teaching work—had ample time and material comforts for research, thought, and writing extensively, which he did.

Darwin often complained that his malady robbed him of half a lifetime, but even so, Pickering noted that his scientific contributions can be compared favorably to those of such figures as Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.