What made Darwin sick?

May 19, 2011 • 5:44 am

If you’ve read anything about Charles Darwin (and I’d recommend Janet Browne’s two-volume biography), you’ll know that he was plagued with illness his whole adult life.  He had terrible stomach pains, digestive problems, nausea, eczema, bouts of vomiting and—a trade secret among evolutionists—chronic flatulence.  On May 20, 1865, when he was 56, Darwin wrote down his own symptoms (extract from John Bowle’s biography):

For 25 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). .  ringing in ears, treading on air and vision. (focus and black dots) . . . (nervousness when E. [Emma] leaves me)—What I vomit intensely acid slimy (sometimes bitter) consider teeth.

If you visit Down House, Darwin’s home in Bromley (formerly Kent), you’ll see in his study a screen, behind which stands a basin.  When I asked about it, I was told that that was where Darwin would go to hurl if he felt nauseous during his lucubrations.

Darwin repeatedly sought remedies for his illness, including the famous “water cure” of Dr. Gully.  His doctors prescribed a bland diet, a copy of which used to be on display in Down House. It included broth and a boiled chicken wing.  I once hoped to write about this diet under the title “On the Origin of Feces,” but never got to use it (you’ve seen it first.)  Nothing worked well, and Darwin was in bad health until his death from heart disease at 73.  It’s amazing, considering his chronic and severe illness, that the man was able to achieve so much!

You may also know that ever since Darwin’s death, doctors have speculated on what made him so ill.  When I was younger, the prime candidate was Chagas disease, a debilitating and sometimes fatal illness endemic to the Neotropics.  Chagas is caused by a trypanosome parasite, itself transmitted by the bite of a reduviid bug (a “true bug,” by the way).  The roster of candidate afflictions is now much longer: Wikipedia lists 14 possible maladies.

Faye Flam,  evolution columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer, takes up Darwin’s illness in her latest piece, “Darwin’s mysterious disease.” (The column, “Planet of the Apes,” may be America’s only weekly newspaper column on evolution: Olivia Judson used to write one for the New York Times, but she’s gone now.)

The most likely diagnosis now seems to be “cyclic vomiting syndrome” (CVS), a disorder that has many of the symptoms that plagued Darwin, including digestive problems, nausea, vomiting, and dizziness.  It may be caused—and this is disputed—by defects in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA): Flam notes that Darwin’s mother had similar symptoms, and of course mtDNA is inherited from the mother.  Chagas disease may also have been involved, but since Darwin had many of his symptoms before he arrived in South America on the Beagle (remember his “terrible seasickness”?), something else might have been going on.

The CVS hypothesis was first suggested in 2009 by John Hayman in a short paper in the British Medical Journal (free); it’s well worth reading if you’re a Darwinophile.  Of course, there’s not much we can do now to test Hayman’s theory, or the other theories, short of exhuming Darwin from Westminster Abbey and looking at his DNA.  And since CVS might not be caused by lesions in mtDNA, that idea is a nonstarter.  All we can do is speculate.  Regardless, though, we must admire Darwin all the more for producing so many works of genius while laboring under terrible physical adversity.

___________

BTW, Flam has a “blog” associated with her column, also called Planet of the Apes. Last week I wrote about her column on the Catholic Church’s non-acceptance of the modern theory of evolution; this week on her “blog” she’s published some angry responses from Catholic readers, including this gem:

The sun definitely circles the earth as proved by Ptolomy [sic] in the 2nd Century.  All science followed him for 14 centuries until Copernicus proved him wrong.  Einstein showed that the stars in the sky were fixed in place until Hubble proved they are moving.  Anything science proves today could be right but the chances are it could be wrong.  Remember that Evolution, the science, requires as much faith as creationism and both could be wrong.

50 thoughts on “What made Darwin sick?”

  1. I read this article a week or so ago & postulated to a colleague that her vomiting might be related. It must have given him bad teeth?

    As for the comment from the angry Roman Catholic, I would quote Donovan’s comment no.5 to the piece on Wolpe (he also linked to a very good article by Asimov) –
    “People who claim science is always changing, and therefor is unreliable, should probably stop driving a car, since every time they turn the key the car will head toward a different destination.”

    2. Dental decay occurs with any cause of repeated and prolonged vomiting – with bulimia, hyperemesis of pregnancy, and with CVS.

  2. It is said that Darwin used to recite the alphabet as he walked around the Sandwalk.

    “F*****g A!, B, C, D, F*****g E!, F, G, H, F*****g I!…”

    I think he had Irritable Vowel Syndrome.

    1. Darwin probably had allergy to milk protein as well as other substances (crab). ‘Systemic lactose intolerance’ is not a recognized entity.

  5. I wonder… do you think Darwin would have approved of researchers exhuming him and sequencing his chromosomal and mitochondrial genome? It always feels a little disrespectful doing so (like when Chavez had Simon Bolivar dug up to see if he was poisoned by moon people), but at the same time, I can’t help but feel that if I had a debilitating, unknown disease, it would be nice if *someone* knew, even if I was already dead.

    1. I’m currently reading The Voyage of the Beagle. What impresses me is Darwin’s fascination with the smallest details of living and non-living things around him, as well as the breadth of his interests (sociology, biology, geology). Of course no one could say for sure, but my guess is that he’d be fascinated to see what studies of his DNA would reveal.

    2. My first response is, who would possibly agree more with this investigation than Darwin?

    3. MtDNA is maternally inherited.It may be possible to trace Darwin/Wedgwood descendents from Charles Darwin’s sisters or his maternal aunts to see if they have abnormal mtDNA. Of course one would not have to exhume Darwin – we could drill down and take a core sample through the floor of Westminster Abbey (at night).

      1. John, going by the family tree – and following the maternal line that contains the mitochondrial DNA – there were six individuals in Darwins generation with the same mitochonria, Charles Darwin, his brother and four sisters.
        In the next generation we have to follow his sisters descendents – and only one, Caroline, produced children (four girls, one of whom died in infancy).
        Of the three remaining girls only one produced children – the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.
        That makes 11 individuals, or ten who survived infancy and who lived to a lifespan longer than average for that time.
        All of these individuals would have had the same mitochondrial DNA that Darwin had.
        Is there any evidence that any of these suffered the same or similar symptoms as Charles suffered? Or symptoms similar to Charles’ mother and maternal uncle?
        Does Darwin ever mention anything in his writings about his sisters and brother having a weak stomach like himself? One would imagine that something like that would strike him as unusual and worth mentioning.
        If, on the other hand, it appears that Charles was the only one of his and subsequent maternal generations to have shown the symptoms of CVS then I suggest a mitochondrial explanation is not supported by the evidence.

        1. Charles’ mother Susannah was dipped into the icy Irish sea as a child ‘to cure her pukes and boils’. Like Charles,she seems to have had atopic dermatitiss and staphylocccal infection (boils) are a common complication of this form of dermatitis. She also suffered from motion sickness, being unable to ride in a carriage without being ill, had hyperemesis with her pregnancies and died at the relatively early age of 52 years with abdominal pains.Her younger brother Tom, Charles’ maternal uncle suffered severe headaches, abdominal pains and was confined to his cabin with seasickness on his one voyage to the West Indies, a journey taken in an attempt to improve his health. He died with opium overdosage at the young age of 34. There is good evidence of matrilineal inheritance.
          Charles’ siblings were also unwell. Their illnesses are recorded in many letters but these may be summed up by Darwin himself:’All my sisters are well, except Mrs Parker, who is much out of health; & so is Erasmus at his poor average’.
          The same mitochondrial disorder produces very different symptoms in different patients depending on the random distribution of the abnormal mitochondria. Someone may carry the same abnormal mitochondrial gene as a severely afflicted person but they may be entirely free of symptoms or perhaps have some relatively minor complaint such as increased motion sickness or hyperemesis with pregnancy.
          In summary, the diagnosis of Darwin’s illness is well supported from the family history.

          1. “In summary, the diagnosis of Darwin’s illness is well supported from the family history.”
            I would say the diagnosis is somewhat supported by comparison with his reported symptoms but the familial aspect – in particular the idea that it is a mitochondrial defect – is not sufficiently supported when you look at the absense of reports of similar symptoms in his sisters or their descendents.

          2. Dear Sigmund, I would be pleased to send you my full review of the Darwin/Wedgwood family history if you would let me have an appropriate address. This is several pages and it is not appropriate to post it here. I would appreciate your appraisal. The important point is that siblings with the same inherited mtDNA abnormality may have very different clinical symptoms. There are papers showing that they may have no symptoms but I would dispute this – they may have drug sensitivity, increased susceptibility to motion sickness, fatigue after viral infection … (the list is long).

  6. Wait — what?

    You mean it wasn’t a swarm of pig demons that Jesus sent to dissuade Darwin from pursuing his heresies — heresies designed to entice untold millions into Satan’s arms?

    Well, I’ll be damned. Learn something new every day.

    We’re still sure that that Hawking really is being given a foretaste of his own upcoming personal encounter with Angra Mainyu, right?

    Cheers,

    b&

    1. Maybe Darwin was inflicted with a Biblical plague to get him to stop. And he was probably ready to conceed, but god hardened his heart, so god could send more plagues. Why not, god did the same thing to Pharroah.

    2. Yes, you’re completely right about Hawking.

      He’s being pre-punished. In fact, Yahweh (or was it Queztalcoatl?) knew Hawking was going to make this statement and gave him ALS many years ago.

      He also made Einstein’s hair bushy and untamable, because he knew Einstein would call the bible “silly” and religious belief “childish”. That showed him.

      Coyne he made into a cat fancier. No greater horror can be visited on anyone. Myers: well, he made sure he got a job in Minnesota…’nuf said.

      That god is always pre-punishing people for things they’re going to do. After all, what good is omniscience if you’re not going to use it?

    1. Charles’ son, Leonard, first proposed that his father’s illness was due to chronic infection, suggesting that it came from pyorrhea associated with dental decay. Darwin’s dental problems and infection were the result of the repeated vomiting that was part of his illness(CVS) – they were not the cause of his illness. Leonard was an Army Engineer.

  8. I like “The Origin of Faeces” (UK edition). Now I want to write a book about my sisters (“The Origin of Neices”) and maybe about sheep farming (“The Origin of Fleeces”).

  10. Actually Darwin’s home, Down house is still in the county of Kent as it’s sited in the village of Downe (not the town of Bromley), and although it has a London Borough of Bromley post (zip) code is actually not within the Borough.

    1. He was a Shropshire Lad –

      Into my heart an air that kills
      From yon far country blows:
      What are those blue remembered hills,
      What spires, what farms are those?

      That is the land of lost content,
      I see it shining plain,
      The happy highways where I went
      And cannot come again.

    2. Although postcodes aren’t a reliable guide, The London Borough of Bromley certainly seems to believe Downe has been within it’s boundaries since the London Government Act 1963 took effect in 1965. Specifically, Downe is administratively part of Orpington, which former Urban District was transferred to Bromley by that Act.
      The largest Parliamentary Ward in Bromley is actually called Darwin, and naturally includes Downe.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Borough_of_Bromley

  12. Darwin had four sisters who would have also inherited and been able to pass on the same mitochondrial DNA (he had a brother, Erasmus, but since one gets ones mitochondria from your mother any descendents of his would have recieved the mitochondria of his wife rather than his.
    Darwins sisters, on the other hand, would have passed on the same mitochondria as Darwin possessed (we are assuming it wasn’t some sort of strange de novo mutation)
    The sisters all lived reasonably long lives – so it is questionable whether they were afflicted with something of the severity as seen in their brother.
    – Marianne (1798-1858)
    – Caroline (1800-1888)
    – Susan (1803-1866)
    – Emily (1810-1866)
    Does anyone know if they left any descendents? Perhaps there is someone alive today who has Darwinian(!) mitochondria.
    (Or more accurately Wedgewood mitochondria)
    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Darwin-Wedgwood-Galton_family_tree.png

    1. OK, some further sleuthing that should have been done by the reviewers of that British Medical Journal CVS hypothesis

      Regarding Josiah Wedgewood III:
      “He married his cousin Caroline Darwin (1800–1888), the daughter of Robert Darwin and the sister of Charles Darwin. They had four daughters, one of whom died in infancy:

      * Sophia Mary Ann Wedgwood (1838–1839) died in infancy.
      * Sophy Wedgwood (1842–1911)
      * Margaret Susan Wedgwood (1843–1937), married The Reverend Arthur Vaughan Williams and their son was the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.
      * Lucy Caroline Wedgwood (1846–1919)”

      So the composer Vaughan Williams (‘The Lark Ascending’)would have had Darwinian mitochondria!
      By the way there is no reports that Vaughan Williams had any medical condition similar to Darwins and he lived to the age of nearly 86.

        1. Darwin’s siblings do show some evidence of hereditary disease:
          Charles Darwin’s Brother
          Erasmus Darwin

          Charles Darwin’s elder brother, Erasmus Alvey Darwin (1804 – 1881), shared some of his brother’s characteristics. Like Charles, he attended medical school in Edinburgh, but unlike Charles, he graduated and continued to study medicine in London and in Germany. However he never practiced medicine and he never married, although he did have a close relationship with the wife of a friend, the lady being Fanny Hensleigh. He lived a life partly of a socialite and partly of an invalid. Charles, speaking of his sisters and of his brother, recorded: All my sisters are well, except Mrs Parker, who is much out of health; & so is Erasmus at his poor average.

          At an early age Erasmus was described as having ‘rheumatism’ and being very pale. He is also depicted as being ‘lethargic, gentle and retiring’ but also as having ‘kindness, generosity and a brilliantly analytical mind. It is recorded that ‘both brothers suffered periods of inexplicable exhaustion and spent a great deal of their adult lives reclining on sofas’. It is also stated that when their father died both brothers ‘became physically ill’, although, unlike Charles, Erasmus was able to attend the funeral. He was regarded as a chronic invalid throughout his adult life, then in later life had attacks of pain and nausea. Like his the illness of his brother, these attacks would be episodic. Darwin noted of his brother: ‘He takes no wine or smoke, but sticks to his opium with many groans’. Erasmus died with these symptoms in August 1881 at the age of 76. His life-long friend, Fanny, was with him when he died.

          Charles Darwin’s Sisters
          Marianne Parker
          Marianne, Charles’ eldest sister (1798 – 1858), married Dr. Henry Parker in 1824. Even before her marriage she had a reputation for irritability. ‘… of course you know how peevish Maryane (Marianne) is when she is unwell.’ The Parkers had five children, four boys and a girl; their last child, the girl, Mary Susan, being born in January 1836. Marianne died in 1858, at the relatively young age of 60, two years after her husband. ‘We have just heard of my sisters Marianne Parker’s death,— a blessed relief after long continued & latterly very severe suffering’.

          Caroline Wedgwood
          Charles’ second oldest sister, Caroline (1800 – 1888), like Charles, married her first cousin, Josiah Wedgwood III, marrying when she was 37. Their first baby died; they then had ‘three serious daughters, Sophy, Margaret and Lucy’. She had a prolonged period of mental illness well after the birth of her youngest daughter, an illness that lasted for twelve years. Rather than post-natal depression, the illness may have been brought on by the marriage and loss to her of her second daughter, Margaret. Emma, Charles’ wife, writing to her daughter Henrietta, described her as ‘looking so ill and depressed. … Her health is so bad & she feels so desponding about her life & feels so utterly unable to reconcile herself to the loss of Margaret … . She has grown so immensely large & feels so great a figure that she can hardly bear to go anywhere.’
          Caroline became careless in her appearance and forgetful of even the simplest details of managing a household and a family. She recovered from this period of severe illness but was always described as being ‘eccentric’ and ‘secretive’. In her old age she was severely handicapped with arthritis.

          Sophy never married but looked after her mother in her old age. Margaret had married Arthur Vaughan Williams who died when their three children, two boys and a girl, were still young. The youngest daughter, Lucy, married a naval lieutenant, Matthew James Harrison, who spent most of his time at sea.They had three sons and two daughters.

          Catherine Langton
          Catherine (1810 -1866), a younger sister, married Charles Langton in 1863, the widower of her cousin, Emma’s sister Charlotte. Like her mother before her, Catherine was never ‘completely well’ and at the time of her marriage, when she was 53, she was described as being ‘in poor health’ and having a ‘depressive disposition’. At the time of her death Darwin wrote to Hooker: ‘Poor thing she suffers much’. She never had children.

          At the time of her death she was with her older sister, Susan (1803 -1866). Susan had been the surrogate mother of the family after Susannah’s death – the mistress of the household, the keeper of accounts, the schoolmistress who corrected Charles’ spelling, and as well the generous aunt who brought up Marianne’s five children after her death in 1858. She died only a few months after her younger sister; never married and having no children of her own. Although she died at the relatively young age of 63 there is no record of her having had illness.

          In summary, four of five of Charles Darwin’s siblings were sickly; perhaps nowhere near as ill as Charles himself but certainly having vague depressive type illnesses. It could be that their illnesses were ‘contagious’; the sickness of one encouraged the sickness of another. It would seem more likely though that their illnesses were hereditary – after all, they all received their mother’s mitochondria.

  13. BTW, Flam has a “blog” associated with her column, also called Planet of the Apes.

    this week on her “blog”

    It says “blog” right in the URL!

    Hater. 🙂

    (Added to my feeds.)

  17. Well, there has been a published version of The Origin of the Feces. It was an album released by Type O Negative. Scroll down to see the 1994 ‘re-release’ cover, and a little further to the 1992 original cover. While the thumbnail of the original cover is small, it could be considered NSFW unless you do clinical sorts of things:

    http://typeonegative.net/discog.html

    1. Darwin certainly obtained relief from the ‘Water Cure’ and there may have been two, quite separate reasons for this. Darwin’s attacks of sickness were brought on by stress, even by pleasurable events (‘positive stress’). In the various resorts he experienced ‘complete stagnation of mind’, not even thinking of barnacles. Apart from the daily dousing and other sufferings, there was no stress. The other possible mechanism of relief is from vagal nerve stimulation. The vagus nerve is stimulated by water to the face as well as by other physical actions. Patients with CVS today obtain relief from showering and may spend hours under a shower,generally though under a hot shower.
      Darwin (correctly)thought homeopathy to be a nonsense; he would be appalled to know that his case was being cited in its support.

  20. Wait, so Darwin’s sister married Emma Wedgewood’s brother and their grandson was Ralph Vaugh Williams? Wow.

      1. LOTS of people are related to Darwin. There’s the poet Frances Darwin who married Francis Cornford, the great classicist; their son was John Cornford, who fought and was killed in the Spanish Civil War. Tentacles everywhere. Wedgwoods too.

        1. Strictly speaking we are all related to Charles Darwin the only question being do we know how.

          I suspect in Cambridge University it is a bit difficult not to stumble across a known relation of Charles Darwin (by either marriage or blood).

  21. I’m currently reading Darwin’s autobiography on Kindle (where it’s free). The prose is lackluster—as Darwin promised it would be at the beginning of the book—but the details of his everyday existence are endlessly fascinating.

  22. The problem with gastro-intestinal disorders is that they all have pretty much the same symptoms, nausea, vomiting, flatulence, pain, bloating, diarrhoea. It took me seven years to get an accurate diagnosis of my problems (which turned out to be a combination of irritable bowel, lactose intolerance and bacterial overgrowth of the small bowel)and I’m alive in the 21st century. How you’d diagnose a guy dead for over a hundred years I can’t imagine.

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