Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–1882. With Original Omissions Restored

Source: C. Darwin, Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809 – 1882. With Original Omissions Restored , ed. Nora Barlow (London: Collins, 1958), pp. 96–116. (Reproduced with permission from John van Wyhe, ed. 2002, The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online , at https://darwin-online.org.uk/ ) Editorial Headnote Charles Darwin is not remembered today primarily for his invalidism; nevertheless, his varying ailments have fascinated biographers and researchers. Given that other volumes in this series doubtless cover Darwin’s mainstream legacy of evolutionary theory and its earth-shaking effect on Victorian society, this headnote will focus on the particular niche issue of his health. It is common for researchers—particularly medical practitioners who turn to history—to offer retrospective diagnoses for historical figures. But Darwin’s condition has eluded simple classification. Having experienced various bouts of ill health as a child, he remained largely active and healthy until his return from the grueling five-year journey on the H.M.S. Beagle . Starting in 1838, he started to experience long bouts of gastrointestinal distress, along with eczema on his skin. Scholars have speculated that he contracted the parasitical Chagas’ disease while traveling in South America. Others have offered diagnoses of Crohn’s disease, lupus, and chronic arsenic poisoning stemming from medications and tonics. 1 Another undeniable factor in his physical condition was his mental health—both the overwhelming stress of bringing his controversial theory of evolution to print and more personal strains like his anxiety over his wife’s pregnancies and the loss of his young daughter Annie (Colp 182–4). Thus, some have proposed that Darwin’s many physical ailments are best understood as psychosomatic, or at least exacerbated by mental health strains. Whatever their origin, Darwin was plagued by sustained ill health for years at a time throughout his life. Unlike the other writers in this volume, Darwin never published accounts of his ill health during his lifetime. However, he did share forthright descriptions in private letters, diaries, and in his manuscript for his autobiography. These descriptions were slow to come to light, as early published versions of these documents left out the more embarrassing symptoms Darwin himself chose to record. It was too unseemly, at least for early editors, to allow this towering figure of science to describe such vulnerable symptoms as boils, flatulence, vomiting, and belching. So these passages were cut (alongside some of his unorthodox musings on theology) from the nineteenth-century published editions of Life and Letters of Charles Darwin . They were only restored to the text in his granddaughter’s 1958 publication of the Autobiography . In 2008, Ralph Colp Jr. also published the full text of Darwin’s personal ‘Diary of Health’, a fascinating shorthand document that records daily entries of health from 1849–1855, 2 showing not only the minute vagaries of his illness but also his methodical, even scientific attention to them. Such introspective data-keeping is a habit Darwin shares with many of the invalid writers in this volume, particularly those who chose to advocate publicly for fringe medical ideas. 3 The selection here from Darwin’s Autobiography reveals well the pressures many invalid writers faced to complete their publishing goals in the midst of ill health. Yet Darwin professes to enjoy the work as a counterbalance to his ill health, stating, ‘My chief enjoyment and sole employment throughout life has been scientific work; and the excitement from such work makes me for the time forget, or drive quite away, my daily discomfort’ (115). Following the period of time described here, Darwin and his wife Emma moved their family to the countryside, a strategic retreat from the social pressures of London that allowed Darwin to better balance his physical needs and his scientific writing goals. Notes 1 All of these possibilities are explored in depth in Ralph Colp’s definitive work, Darwin’s Illness (University of Florida Press, 2008), a text that represents the culmination of Colp’s lifetime research into Darwin’s health. 2 Darwin’s health diary is reproduced in Colp, Darwin’s Illness , pp. 187–257. 3 It is notable too that Darwin tried hydrotherapy at Malvern ( Autobiography 117), much like Edward Bulwer Lytton and Richard Lane (see Chapters 15 and 16 of this volume for their accounts of this therapy).