Charles Darwin (medical student)

[1][2] A memoir by his father recalled young Charles Darwin as having a precocious interest in science, from infancy being: accustomed to examine all natural objects with more attention than is usual: first by his senses simply; then by tools, which were his playthings – By this early use of his hands, he gained accurate ideas of many of the qualities of bodies; and was thence afterwards enabled to acquire the knowledge of mechanics with ease and with accuracy; and the invention and improvement of machines was one of the first efforts of his ingenuity, and one of the first sources of his amusement.

He collected with care the products of these countries; and examined them by such experiments, as he had been taught,or had discovered: hence he obtained not only distinct but indelible ideas of the properties of bodies, at the very time when he learnt the names of them; and thus the complicate science of chemistry became not only easy, but delightful to him.

In an attempt to cure this by learning the French language, around the end of October 1766 the eight-year-old Charles Darwin was sent to Paris with a private tutor, the Reverend Samuel Dickenson.

He studied at Oxford for less than a year, as he disliked the curriculum as pursuing "classical elegance" and "sigh'd to be removed to the robuster exercises of the medical schools of Edinburgh.

Soon after joining the university Darwin became friends with the up-and-coming clinical teacher Andrew Duncan, staying in his house and getting personal guidance as well as access to the wards of The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.

His graduating dissertation, written as a conventional thesis in classical Latin, discussed the relationship between the lymphoid system and "dropsy", heart failure.

[6]About the end of April, Mr. Darwin had employed the greatest part of a day in accurately dissecting the brain of a child which had died of hydrocephalus, and which he had attended during its life.

This, however, did not prevent him from being present in the Medical Society, where he mentioned to Dr. Duncan the dissection he had made, and promised the next day to furnish him with an account of all the circumstances in writing.

[3] It also includes the only description Erasmus published of the boy's mother, Mary Howard, praising her for having brought their son up to have "sympathy with the pains and pleasures of others", and "as she had wisely sown no seeds of superstition in his mind, there was nothing to overshade the virtues she had implanted.

In a paper, dated 14 January 1785 and read on 16 March of that year, Erasmus Darwin published a more detailed "account of the successful use of foxglove", but this gained little attention.

[11] In an 1879 biographical sketch of his grandfather Erasmus Darwin, he outlined his uncle's life, and said that "Professor Andrew Duncan, in whose family vault Charles was buried, cut a lock of hair from the corpse, and took it to a jeweller, whose apprentice, afterwards the famous Sir H. Raeburn, set it in a locket for a memorial.