[_ Old Earth _] Darwin's strange illness

[kendemyer]

DARWIN'S STRANGE ILLNESS

It seems as if Darwin was obsessed with his critics and he often go sick (vomiting, etc ) when his ideas regarding the macroevolutionary hypothesis were publically criticized. Also, in one instance when Darwin's macroevolutionary position was very lightly publically praised by Charles Lyell, Darwin had a vomiting problem that lasted 10 days. In fact, it seems as if he was plagued with this sickness thoughout all his life after he pursued his macroevolutionary ideas. It seems as if the best evidence is that his illness was psychogenic in origin (Caused by mental or emotional processes; psychological in origin ).

I thought the below website's information was interesting and I have corroborated it through publications such a Scientific American and a citation to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA ), Britannica, and a article posted at a Perdue University website which I will give among other sources.


DARWIN'S STRANGE SICKNESS

http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/20hist06.htm



SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN REGARDING DARWIN'S STRANGE ILLNESS

According to a Scientific American article writen by Colp, Darwin had a scapbooks filled with the following: 350 reviews, 1,600 articles, parodies, satires, etc. Also, according to the Scientific American article, Darwin had many of his worse instances of illness when his work was attacked in print.

Here is the online article:

Reviews

October 2002 issue

Putting Darwin in His Place
Using his quiet country estate as headquarters, the great naturalist was a reclusive revolutionary
By Richard Milner

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articl ... 9EC5880000

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articl ... =2&catID=2


SOME WORDS FROM DARWIN

I had a terrible long fit of vomiting yesterday, which makes the world rather extra gloomy today. And I have an insanely strong wish to finish my accursed Book, â€â€such corrections every page has required, as I never saw before. It is so weariful killing the whole afternoon after 12 oclock doing nothing whatever. But I will grumble no more. So farewell, we shall meet in the winter I trust.

taken from: http://darwin.lib.cam.ac.uk/perl/nav?pc ... &pkey=2485

NEW ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA ON DARWIN'S ILLNESS

The New Encyclopaedia Britannica says, 'Some of the symptomsâ€â€painful flatulence, vomiting, insomnia, palpitationsâ€â€appeared in force as soon as he began his first transmutation notebook, in 1837. [This is the year after he returned to England from his five-year voyage aboard H.M.S. Beagle.] Although he was exposed to insects in South America and could possibly have caught Chagas' or some other tropical disease, a careful analysis of the attacks in the context of his activities points to psychogenic origins.'1 ....

1 The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1992, Vol. 16, p. 980.

taken from: http://www.answersingenesis.org/creatio ... llness.asp

I recommend reading the full article:

Darwin’s mystery illness by Russell Grigg
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creatio ... llness.asp




SOME ADDITIONAL COMMENTS ABOUT THE ORIGIN OF DARWIN'S ILLNESS

Here is something else I found regarding Darwin's doubts and his nausousness and sickness:

Even Charles Darwin thought his own theory was "grievously hypothetical" and gave emotional content to his doubts when he said, "The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder." To think the eye had evolved by natural selection, Darwin said, "seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree." But he thought of the same about something as simple as a peacock's feather, which, he said, "makes me sick. " Of course, anyone who has knowledge of the intricacies of the human eye and other living structures immediately realizes the problem Darwin sensed. How could an organ of such an intricate magnificence ever have a originated via random chance? Oller and Omdahl (CH) Page 274

taken from: http://www.windowview.org/science/09f.html

Is the following true in regards to the scientific community in Darwin's day?

... a key fact: namely, that Darwin did not win over most of his contemporaries. His theory was accepted by only a handful of scientists for a good three-quarters of a century, and then only after Mendelian genetics had provided a clear understanding of heredity. The majority of Darwin's contemporaries came to agree that some form of evolution or development had occurred, but they championed other mechanisms and causes to explain the process. Generally they insisted either that God was directing the process or that it was propelled forward by some internal directing force. Pearcey (MC) Page 75

taken from: http://www.windowview.org/science/09f.html

I also cite this regarding what Darwin purportedly wrote:

"When we descend to details," he wrote, "we can prove that no one species has changed [i.e., the cannot prove that a single species has changed]; nor can we prove that the supposed changes are beneficial, which is the groundwork of the theory. Nor can we explain why some species have changed and others have not" (Darwin 1899, 2:210). In other words, Darwin was aware that the scientific evidence was short of compelling. Pearcey (MC) Page 77

taken from: http://www.windowview.org/science/09f.html

DARWIN'S STRANGE ILLNESS AND JAMA

According the following website Colp has co-published information regarding a diagnosis of Darwin in a notable peer reviewed journal:

The dueling diagnoses of Darwin."
Adler, Jeremy and Colp, Ralph et al. The Journal of the American Medical Association, (April 1997) page 1275.

taken from: http://www.aboutdarwin.com/literature/Jour_01.html

EXCELLENT ARTICLE PUBLISHED AT PURDUE UNIVERSITY WEBSITE

Here is something I found at a Purdue University website regarding Darwin's illness:

Carolyn Douglas
Prof. Gene Joy
Humanities 104
24 May 1990


Changing Theories of Darwin's Illness

From 1831-36, Charles Darwin explored South America and several Pacific islands as the naturalist aboard the Beagle. Though he suffered from seasickness, he was healthy and energetic on land. In 1833 he undertook a horseback journey of 400 miles through an unsettled region of Argentina, climbing mountains along the way, hunting with gauchos, and going for "several days without tasting anything besides meat" (C. Darwin, Works 1:106-21). Soon after his return to England, however, his health broke, and by 1842, at the age of 33, he was living in seclusion in the English countryside, so easily exhausted that he could work for only a few hours each day and could manage only short walks (F. Darwin, Life 1: 87-102). He was so ill that he could barely cope with a visit from friends: ". . . my health always suffered from the excitement, violent shivering and vomiting attacks being thus brought on" (C. Darwin, Autobiography 115).

"Many of my friends, I believe, think me a hypochondriac," Darwin wrote in 1845 (F. Darwin, Life 1: 318), and Sir Peter Medawar 1 has suggested that Darwin's inability to find a physical cause for his disease was "surely a great embarrassment for a man whose whole intellectual life was a marshalling and assay of hard evidence" (67). About 1857, Darwin told his physician that he believed the illness had been caused by "the extreme sea-sickness he underwent in H.M.S. 'Beagle.'" 2 His son and biographer, Francis Darwin, reported that the "ill health was of a dyspeptic kind, and may probably have been allied to gout, which was to some extent an hereditary malady" ("Darwin" 525). Modern medicine, however, does not recognize long- term effects of seasickness, and it does not associate gout with shivering and vomiting (Berkow 1: 975-76, 1450). The precise cause of Darwin's illness remains a mystery, but the best evidence now available suggests that it was caused by the psychological stress of advocating the theory of evolution. The persistent attempt to find a physical cause reveals at least as much about society's reluctance to consider mental disease "real" as it does about what was wrong with Charles Darwin. [Here you all will "develop" this thesis. That means adding in sentences that explain how the point will be made. These sentences are restatements of the points (claims) of the body of the paper. Here is a sentence that is a link to paragraph 5, and the sentence there brings you back. Here is a sentence that is a link to paragraph 6, and the sentence there brings you back. This is the idea.]

The first argument for a psychological origin other than hypochondria was made in 1901, nearly two decades after Darwin's death, by physician William W. Johnston. Using evidence in Francis Darwin's The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Johnston demonstrated that the illness grew more severe when Darwin worked on his theory of evolution and that it subsided when he did other things. Johnston identified the illness as "chronic neurasthenia," caused by a "continued overstrain of exhausted nerve cells" and the resulting "loss of normal nerve supply to the digestive organs and the heart" (157-58). The notion of neurasthenia, exhaustion of nerve cells as a result of strong emotions, has essentially been abandoned by modern medicine (Diamond 8: 27- 28), but the correlation between Darwin's research on evolution and his illness has continued to fuel speculation.

For about fifty years, from World War I through the early 1960s, psychoanalytic theories dominated the discussion of Darwin's illness. Dr. Edward J. Rempf wrote the first study of this kind for the Psychoanalytic Review in 1918. Arguing from evidence in the Life and Letters, Rempf suggests that Darwin suffered from an "anxiety neurosis" caused by his "complete submission to his father" (191). Rempf believed that this submission prevented Darwin from expressing anger, first toward his father and then toward others. Darwin, according to Rempf, feared "being offensive, ungrateful, and unappreciative" and so he became, on the surface, hyperappreciative" and extraordinarily kind. Anger, however, was "a repressed emotional impulse that he had to be incessantly on guard against and which, perhaps, contributed to wearying him into invalidism" (174).

[Somewhere in this paragraph is your idea what its claim should be. Your claim and the related part of the thesis explain the "link" between the information and point of the paragraph, and the point of the paper.] In 1954, Dr. Rankine Good published an influential explanation of Darwin's psychology, apparently based on the same sources used by Rempf. Good believed that Darwin felt "aggression, hate, and resentment . . . at an unconscious level" for his "tyrannical" father. By ''reaction- formation," however, his conscious feeling was a "reverence for his father which was boundless and most touching." Darwin's illness, according to Good, was

. . . in part, the punishment Darwin suffered for harbouring such thoughts about his father. For Darwin did revolt against his father. He did so in a typical obsessional way (and like most revolutionaries) by transposing the unconscious emotional conflict to a conscious intellectual one--concerning evolution. Thus, if Darwin did not slay his father in the flesh, then in his The Origin of Species . . . he certainly slew the Heavenly Father in the realm of natural history. (106)

Like Oedipus, 3 Darwin suffered greatly for this "unconscious patricide." Good believes that it accounts for his "almost forty years of severe and crippling neurotic suffering" (107).

[Somewhere in this paragraph is your idea what its claim should be. Your claim and the related part of the thesis explain the "link" between the information and point of the paragraph, and the point of the paper.] Speculations of this sort irritated some of Darwin's admirers. In 1958 George Gaylord Simpson, an eminent paleontologist and expert on Darwin's life, disagreed with the "psychiatrists and psychoanalysts" who "have considered the disease to be purely psychological." The "psychoneurotic theory," said Simpson, "is an easy way out with any undiagnosed illness." A great many illnesses were undiagnosed in Victorian times, Simpson pointed out, including brucellosis, "an infectious, long-continuing disease that frequently produces exactly Darwin's symptoms," and one to which he was "undoubtedly exposed" (121). Soon after, Dr. Saul Adler, an internationally recognized expert on diseases transmitted by parasites, also argued against a "purely psychological aetiology." He pointed out that in the Voyage of the Beagle, Darwin records being attacked by "the great black bug of the Pampas," a blood-sucking insect Adler believed to be "no other than Triatoma infestans . . . the causative agent of Chagas's disease." Chagas's disease, Adler pointed out, matches many of Darwin's symptoms, including exhaustion and stomach trouble (Nature 1102). Sir Gavin de Beer's 1963 biography of Darwin embraced Adler's theory and dismissed the psychoanalytic theories with contempt, especially one (clearly Good's, though Good is not named) suggesting that "Darwin's theories of evolution and natural selection killed the Heavenly Father, and that Darwin suffered the remorse of Oedipus." De Beer treated this diagnosis as if it were an accusation of weakness and attempted to refute it by showing that Darwin was, after all, manly:

It must remain a matter or opinion whether this is sufficient explanation of the reduction to semi-invalidism of a man with the physical stamina, courage, fortitude, healthy mind, and good judgment that Darwin showed during the voyage of the Beagle when for five years he cheerfully endured the hardships of life at sea in a little ship and ashore, when he roughed it with the gauchos, ate coarse food and enjoyed it, climbed mountains, made numerous, lengthy, arduous, and dangerous journeys on foot and on horseback, slept out, caught venomous snakes, fished, admired Spanish ladies, cracked jokes, and took everything in his stride. (115)

De Beer was in a position to make his opinions known. Writing for Encyclopaedia Britannica, he briefly mentioned the psychoanalytic theories and announced that "all this specious and special pleading is unnecessary" in light of Adler'a discovery ("Darwin" 496). At this point, it certainly appeared that the case for psychological causation was weakening. And the case for physical causation gained still more strength in 1971, when John H. Winslow published a book demonstrating that Darwin, like other Victorians, may have taken arsenic for medical reasons and that there is "a very close match" between his symptoms and the symptoms of chronic arsenic poisoning (26- 34).

But the case for physical causation had weaknesses, and doubt was soon cast on both the theory of Chagas's disease and the arsenic theory. Dr. A. W. Woodruff, a British expert on tropical diseases, questioned Adler's diagnosis. He pointed out that many of Darwin's symptoms (heart palpitations, undue fatigue, and trembling fingers) appeared before Darwin sailed on the Beagle, and that when they recurred after his return, they were associated not with physical strain (as would have been expected with Chagas's disease) but with "mental stress." He also pointed out that no other member of the Beagle crew suffered from Chagas's symptoms, and he questioned the accuracy of Professor Adler's statistics about the high rate of infection with Chagas's disease in the province of Mendoza, where Darwin was attacked by the "black bug" (745- 50). Woodruff's diagnosis of Darwin's illness was "an anxiety state with obsessive features and psychosomatic manifestations" (749). After reading Woodruff's article, Professor Adler continued to believe in the theory of Chagas's disease, but he pointed out the possibility that Darwin suffered both from it and from "an innate or acquired neurosis" (Journal 1250). The "black bug" theory therefore lies in limbo, and even its chief proponent did not argue that it excluded psychological causation of some of Darwin's symptoms.

The arsenic theory has been answered by Dr. Ralph Colp, a physician and psychiatrist who studied Darwin's Diary of Health, his letters, and other relevant documents thoroughly. Colp points out that, unlike arsenic poisoning, Darwin's disease was intermittent:" . . . acute nausea and vomiting would sometimes abruptly cease, and his stomach would return to normal, or near-normal, function." In addition, with chronic arsenic poisoning the patient ordinarily loses weight and suffers from "disturbances of the lower part of the bowel," but even during his acute periods of illness Darwin maintained his weight and his bowels were unaffected (133). These and other discrepancies between the symptoms of arsenic poisoning and Darwin's actual symptoms led Colp to conclude that "there is not 'a very close match' between the two groups of symptoms" (137).

Dr Colp's 1977 book To Be an Invalid, which carefully correlates fluctuations in Darwin's health with records of Darwin's activities, confirms what William W. Johnston noted in 1901: work on the theory of evolution made the illness worse, and practically any relief from that work made it better. It was not merely the strain of mental work that brought on a bout of illness; Darwin's health flourished while he wrote a difficult book on a non- evolutionary topic (52) but suffered as The Origin of Species neared completion (65-66). Colp draws a cautious but firm conclusion: "I believe that the evidence shows that Darwin's feelings about his evolutionary theory were a major cause for his illness." He does not commit himself to a psychoanalytic view like Good's, but instead emphasizes some of the stresses in Darwin's life: his awareness that his theories offended some of his few friends, his knowledge that other friends who were eminent scientists doubted some of his conclusions, his awareness that time spent in society was time taken away from his great work, and an "obsessional" concern with problems in the theory that he could not solve. Darwin did "have a neurotic side," Colp concludes. He sometimes felt "an excessive and inappropriate anxiety" and he "was tortured by obsessional thoughts," many of them related to his work (141-43). Colp's book is clearly the most complete study of Darwin's illness ever published, and his conclusion seems difficult to refute.

The consensus opinion among experts today seems to be that psychological illness could and did reduce the once vigorous Darwin to semi- invalidism, or at least contributed to his suffering. In the most recent book-length biography, Ronald W. Clark reviews earlier theories and rejects both Chagas's disease and Oedipal conflict. He believes, however, that there was a more "straightforward and likely" psychological cause. Darwin's wife Emma was deeply religious, and Darwin feared that his scientific work night "destroy her belief and with it a part of her life." He also must have sensed that his theory would do damage to the "confident world" of the Victorians. " Thus," Clark concludes, "it is possible to avoid the larger lunacies of psychoanalysis and yet believe that Darwin's illnesses may have been, at least in part, the result of a mental conflict created by hls work" (61). The 1989 article on Darwin in Encyclopedia Americana, surprisingly, continues to advocate the theory of Chagas's disease, but the article has not been revised ln at least 17 years. Its author is Slr Gavin de Beer, who died in 1972. The 1990 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica reports that "a careful analysis of the attacks [of illness] in the context of his [Darvin's] activities points to psychogenic origins" (Kevles 980). Clearly, the author is referring to Colp's book.

In the process of giving his now accepted conclusions, Colp comments that "maturity and neurosis can coexist in the same person" (142). In the context of the history of the controversy over Darwin's illness, this sentence seems especially significant. It appears that in Darwin's own time, psychological disease was considered not "disease" at all but mere hypochondria. In the twentieth century, psychiatrists and psychologists (though their theories have sometimes sounded bizarre) have gradually established the reality of psychological illness. Though we can see in many of Darwin's "defenders" during the 1950s and 1960s a tendency to treat psychologically caused illness as though it were some sort of defect in the character of the sufferer, this view seems to be losing ground--at least in Darwln's case. Most writers, and perhaps most readers, seem willing to acknowledge that psychological illness can coexist not only with maturity but with a greatness like Darwin's.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes

1 Winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine, 1960.
Medawar believed that Darwin's illness was partly organic and partly psychological.

2 The source of this quotation is a letter from
Darwin's physician, Dr. Edward Lane, to Dr. B. W. Richardson. Because the letter is not available, I have guoted it from Colp's To Be an Invalid, page 59.

3 Good is clearly thinking of Freud's famous "Oedipus complex."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Works Cited

Adler, Saul. "Darwin's Illness.n Nature 10 Oct. 1959: 1102- 03.
---. "Darwin's Illness." British Medical Journal 8 Hay 1965: 1249-50.
Berkow, Robert, ed. Zba Merck Manual gf Diagnosis and Therapy 15th ed. 2 vols. Rahway, NJ: Merck, 1987.

Clark, Ronald W. The Survival of Charles Darwin: The of a Man and an Idea. New York: Random, 1984.

Colp, Ralph. To Be an Invalid: The Illness Qf Charles Darwio. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1977.

Darvin, Charles. The AutobiograDhy of Charles DarwiD, 1809- 1882. With Original Omissions Restored. Ed. Nora Barlow. Nev York: Harcourt, 1958.

---. Journal of Researches . 1839. Vol. 1 of The Works of Charles Dorwin. 18 vols. New York: AHS Press, 1972.

Darwin, Francis. "Darwin, Charles Robert." Dictionary of Natlonal Biography. 1888. 1973 ed.

---, ed. The Life and Letterq of Charles Darwln. 2 vols. Nev York: Basic, 1959.

De Beer, Gavin. Charles Darwin: & Scientifig Biogroghy. 1963. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965.

---. nDarwin, Charles." Encyclopedia Anericana. 1989 ed.

---. "Darwin, Charles. n En cyclopaed 1~ Britonnica: Mcc~unt a. 1974 ed.

Dianond, Leon. ~Neurasthenia.~ r=ee-n~e1Ona1 ~nryclopedia QZ Psychi~try. psychqlogy~ ~nd Neurology. 8d. 8enJanin B. Wolnan. 12 vols. New York: Aesculapius, 1977.

Good, Rankine. "The Life of the Shawl." It£ Lancet 9 Jan. 1954: 106-07.

Johnston, William W. nThe Ill Health of Charles Darwin: Its Nature and Its Relation to His Work." Auerica~ ~ , n.s. 3 (1901): 139-58.

Kengf, Edward J. nCharles Darwin--The Affective Sources of His Inspiration and Anxiety-Neurosis.. P v~o"aYlIyt~O Review 5 (1918): 151-92.

Revles, Barbara. ~Darwin, Charles." 8ncyclopa~diB B=i: ~Di5a h-mD=qulm1L.. 1990 ed.

Medawar, Peter. ~Darwin's Illness.. 2hQ Art gt the Soluble. London: Methuen, 1967. C1-67.

Sinpson, George Gaylord. "Charles Darwin in Seareh Or Hinself.. Sci-ntiti~ Acerican Aug. 1958: 117-22.

Winslow, John H. Dorwin's victgricn Malady: EYid~nse for 1~e Medically Inducod Origin. Philadelphia: Anerican Philosophieal Soeiety, 1971. Woodruff, A. W. ~Darwin's Health in Relation to His Voyage to South Anerica." British 8*diG.1 Jour~al 20 March l9C5: 745-50.

taken from: http://omni.cc.purdue.edu/~sbenning/el102c/Darwin.html

FINAL THOUGHTS


Here is what a Nobel prize winning scientist who professes materialism said:

"Biologists must constantly keep in
mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved." (Crick
F.H.C., "What Mad Pursuit," 1990, p.138). "

taken from: http://www.asa3.org/archive/evolution/200006/0070.html

However, consider this comment regarding Crick's statement:

Crick is also a fervent atheistic materialist, who propounds the particle story. In his autobiography, Crick says very candidly biologists must remind themselves daily that what they study was not created, it evolved; it was not designed, it evolved. Why do they have to remind themselves of that? Because otherwise, the facts which are staring them in the face and trying to get their attention might break through."

taken from: http://www.ldolphin.org/ntcreation.html

 

[Barbarian]

This seems particularly apropo:

"Charles Darwin's illness was suffered throughout Charles Darwin's adult life and went undiagnosed by the medicine of his age. As a result, there has been much speculation as to the nature of his illness, particularly if it was the exotic Chagas' disease, contracted on the voyage of the Beagle, or if the symptoms were psychosomatic (the worst of it seemed to occur when Darwin was under extreme stress or did not want to interact with others for some reason).

Many of Darwin's children suffered from similarly vague illnesses for much of their early lives, but it has been speculated that part of this may have been simply because he encouraged a household where sickness was a form of attention and socialization. Darwin himself  concerned with heredity  wondered if he had passed on his general infirmary condition to his children, and was especially interested if his marriage to Emma Wedgwood a cousin was not perhaps also responsible (his concerns later in life with the effects of inbreeding were potentially motivated by this personal aspect as well).

Creationists, as part of a systematic character assassination of Darwin have questioned whether Darwin was psychotic. Even if he was (which seems historically unlikely), the implications for Darwin's scientific theory evolution by natural selection are minimal since it has been accepted as the central unifying paradigm of biology by mainstream science."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illness_of_Charles_Darwin

 

[kendemyer]

TO: Barbarian

I would suggest reading this source if you have any further questions.

JAMA. 1997 Apr 23-30;277(16):1275-6; author reply 1276-7. Related Articles, Links


Comment on:
JAMA. 1997 Jan 8;277(2):138-41.

The dueling diagnoses of Darwin.

Colp R Jr.

taken from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... t=Citation

In the meantime, I offer what I posted in another thread:

Science Now regarding Darwin's hysterical crying:

Here is what Science Now says which is a online magazine affiliated with the journal Science I believe:

Until his death in 1882 at 73, Darwin suffered attacks of severe anxiety, often accompanied by heart palpitations, shortness of breath, feelings of impending doom, hysterical crying, and severe nausea and vomiting. He also had frequent feelings of depersonalization, which he described as "treading on air and vision." Moreover, he dreaded leaving his house.

taken from: http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/co ... 1997/108/4

Here is the full Science Now article:

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/co ... 1997/108/4


A NEW 500 PAGE BOOK ON DARWIN MENTIONS HIS HYSTERICAL CRYING


Here is something I read from the Washington monthly and it describes a book which I believe may be pertinent:

Charles Darwin: A New Life

John Bowlby. Norton, $24.95. Bowlby's 500-page biography is not the first book to probe Charles Darwin's mysterious illness, which endured for 30 years or more. Authors and scholars have long speculated on the great man's "shivering, dying sensations, ringing in the ears" (to use Darwin's words), his heart palpitations, blurred vision, and hysterical crying fits.

Here is the full article:

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/ ... i_10746080



I also cite:

Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist
by Adrian Desmond, James Moore

DESMOND AND MOORE’S DARWIN: A CRITIQUE

by Robert M. Young

Darwin by Adrian Desmond and James Moore is a tour de force, a prodigious feat of scholarship and compilation. It reads well....

Desmond and Moore are meticulous and often moving in their descriptions of his symptoms, ones Darwin summed up to a new medical adviser as ‘Age 56-57. - For twenty-five years extreme spasmodic daily & nightly flatulence: occasional vomiting, on two occasions prolonged during months. Vomiting preceded by shivering, hysterical crying[,] dying sensations or half-faint. & copious and very palid urine. Now vomiting & every passage of flatulence preceded by ringing of ears, treading on air & vision. focus & black dots[,] Air fatigues, specially risky, brings on the Head symptoms[,] nervousness when E[mma]. leaves me...’ (p. 531). Rarely do three pages go by without their mentioning symptoms. It is perfectly obvious to them that all of this is psychosomatic and caused by anxiety about the challenge he is mounting to orthodox opinion.

taken from: http://human-nature.com/darwin/books/desmond.html

I also cite:

"Darwin suffered from extreme anxieties as he developed his theories. Colp traces the beginning of Darwin's illness to his first work on evolutionary theory. From the first, his wife Emma worried whether his scientific investigations were going to cost him his soul.

"Darwin dreamt of being beheaded or hanged; he thought a belief that went so contrary to biblical authority was `like confessing a murder."â€â€*R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p. 113

taken from: http://www.present-truth.org/darwin-sick.htm

 

[Barbarian]

This says it all:
"Creationists, as part of a systematic character assassination of Darwin have questioned whether Darwin was psychotic. Even if he was (which seems historically unlikely), the implications for Darwin's scientific theory evolution by natural selection are minimal since it has been accepted as the central unifying paradigm of biology by mainstream science."

The descriptions of Darwin's ailment is remarkably close to this:

"ABSTRACT
Digestive manifestations in the chronic phase of Chaga's disease.
Two cases of chronic phase of Chaga's disease with mega deformations of digestive tube from the municipality of San Martín de Hidalgo, Jalisco are descirbed. With an evolution of 12 and 8 years respectively, the diagnosis in both cases was acalasia of unknow etiology. The first paient has mega-esophagus, megaduodenum, and megaileum (which are less frequent associated manifestations). The digestive symptoms and signs were: dysphagia, retroesternal pain, regurgitation, sensation of gastric plenitude, epigastric pain, vomit, sialorrhea and weight loss.

The second patient has dysphagia, vomit, regurgitation, night cough, sialorrhea, parotide hypertrophy and weight loss. The commonest signs and symptoms observed in both cases were dysphagia, vomit, regurgitation, sialorrhea, and weight loss. Uncommon signs and symptoms associated with the disease were: nocturnal prodominating cough, parotide hypertrophy, retroesternal pain, sensation of gastric plenitude, and epigastric pain.
Manifestaciones digestivas en la fase crónica de la enfermedad de Chagas.
Cir Ciruj 1997; 65(1): 10-14.

Darwin, in spite of his debilitating illnesses, continued to write and produce important work, up to the year of his death.

It is notable for contrast, that the Robert Fitzroy, Captain of the Beagle, a lifelong creationist, who later vigorously opposed Darwin, gave way to depression, eventually dispaired and killed himself.

If one was inclined to foolishly speculate, one might suppose this had something to do with the value of the theory of evolution, with respect to creationism.

 

[kendemyer]

TO: Barbarian

Does Chaga's disease cause hysterical crying, feelings of impending doom, and heart palpatations? I could go on but I suggest reading the Journal of the American Medical Association article mentioned earlier along with the other cited works. I have nothing further to add.

 

[Barbarian]

Yep. Didn't you read the description?

Darwin returned from his trip with an undetermined illness, most likely Chaga's disease, the symptoms of which Darwin exhibited.

It is likely the disorder was organic in nature, since Darwin, was, in periods of good heath, able to procede with his work in an effective manner.

No doubt the hysterical and angry response of some people to his work disturbed him. He likely put off publishing it, because he was worried about the response it might cause.

But the illness that felled him from time to time seems to be Chaga's.

 

[kendemyer]

TO: Barbarian

I will let readers decide if a article which cites the Journal of American Medicine Association, Science Now (which appears to be a online magazine from the journal Science ), Scientific American and the gentleman who did exhaustive research of Darwin and produced a book, makes more accurate statements regarding this matter than a internet poster who goes by the moniker Barbarian. I have nothing further to say in this thread.

 

[reznwerks]

spec

TO: Barbarian

I will let readers decide if a article which cites the Journal of American Medicine Association, Science Now (which appears to be a online magazine from the journal Science ), Scientific American and the gentleman who did exhaustive research of Darwin and produced a book, makes more accurate statements regarding this matter than a internet poster who goes by the moniker Barbarian. I have nothing further to say in this thread.

You can do all the speculation you want. The fact remains that any in depth analysis of Darwins condition and what may have been going on will be forever unknown because the knowledge to accurately diagnose the problem was not known at the time. To imply that his work and his theories was somehow to blame for his problems is a stretch of a desparate person. I have reviewed the articles of Jama regarding their opinion of Darwin and think it highly irresponsible for you to suggest that somehow his work was the reason for any problems. Are you willing to pinpoint or rather draw a correlation with Christianity and Schizophrenia of which much suggestive evidence exists?
http://www.faithnet.org.uk/150/Griffith ... iths_2.htm
http://godisamyth.com/regs/ez/webdoc8.htm
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:pk ... ties&hl=en

 

[Barbarian]

Kendemyer gets a little grumpy when presented with evidence that doesn't fit his hopes.

It is his habit, as you see, of trying to appeal to authority ("a article which cites the Journal of American Medicine Association") and then ignoring whatever evidence is offered.

Barbarian is not suggesting that an article which cites a reliable journal is necessarily correct.

What caused Darwin's illness will never be satisfactorily determined. We know that he was bitten by insects known to carry Chaga's disease, and that his symptoms were consistent with that illness.

It is also possible that the treatment given him might have caused some of the symptoms. Late in life, when he had the night crises, he was under a doctor's care, and among the remedies offered at that time were compounds of mercury, which could indeed cause neurological symptoms.

 

[keebs]

...I don't understand how any of this is important...

 

[Grengor]

It's not important. As was mentioned, it was the stretch of a desperate man.

 

[spreadingtheword]

Charles Darwin was a sick sick man to begin with. His delusional fantasies brought on even more sickness - this time physical. Devine retribution? Perhaps. Why would anyone listen to the ravings of such a lunatic? Darwin is to evolutionists what Confucious is to confusionists or Frued is to fruediens. Maybe a better comparison is Manson to his followers.

 

[Grengor]

So you think God was so malicious to not smite Darwin but to instead slowly and painfully torture him? I've seen a lot of parodies lately - too many.