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11 Prolonged Vomiting and Treatments from Doctors Ayerst, Gully, Brinton, and Jenner On 2 January 1863, after reading how his enemy Richard Owen had mendaciously criticized the work of his friend Hugh Falconer, Darwin had feelings of “burning . . . indignation” that interfered with sleep, and produced an episode of eczema which took “off the epidermis a dozen times clean off.”1 The eczema subsided, and he had no further complaints of illness in January. Emma’s diary records that on 2 February he was “very languid” in the morning and on the next day languid and “sick after great faintness.” A cause for these symptoms was that he was scheduled to present a paper on dimorphic flowers in Linum to a 5 February meeting of the London Linnean Society, and he realistically feared (as he told Hooker) that following the presentation “bad sickness may come on.”2 From 4 to 14 February, Emma recorded in her diary, the Darwins stayed at the London home of Charles’s brother Erasmus. Early in the stay he continued to be ill and was unable to give the Linum paper, so that the paper was read for him.3 After this reading he became better, felt “wonderfully improved” on returning to Down from London, and was able to enjoyably converse and dine with Huxley, Fox, and John Lubbock, and to have no stomach upsets.4 On 21 February Emma wrote in her diary, “Ch. well all this fortnight.” His wellness was then sharply broken by the onset of an illness that would become prolonged and that first resulted from his disturbed feelings on reading Charles Lyell’s book, The Antiquity of Man. For several years he had hoped that Lyell, his old friend and scientific mentor, would overcome reservations and fully support the theory of natural selection. On 4 February, on receiving a prepublication copy of the Antiquity, he had written Lyell that he expected 86 / Chapter 11 the book would “give the whole subject of change of species an enormous advance .”5 On 24 February, having finished reading the Antiquity, he knew his expectation had been futile, and in a letter to Hooker he wrote: “I am deeply disappointed . . . to find that his [Lyell’s] timidity prevents him giving any judgment . The whole discussion I look on as of no more value than a very good Review .” He informed Hooker that Lyell and wife would soon be visiting Down: “I dread it, but I must say how much disappointed I am that he has not spoken out on Species, still less on Man.”6 On 24 February, when Darwin had written Hooker about being “deeply disappointed” in Lyell, Emma wrote in her diary: “Ch. faint in night.” Over the next eight days she recorded that he had persisting episodes of “faintness,” was “languid & heavy” every morning, and “sick several times.” In a 5 March letter to Hooker, after reporting how he continued to be ill with vomiting and weakness, Darwin mentioned some of his pressing worries: Emma had suggested he might have to go to Malvern for hydropathy treatment , his son Horace was “ailing much,” he had not done enough work on the Variation of Animals and Plants and doubted whether he would “ever finish” the book, and he feared that he had been “unreasonable” in his criticisms of Lyell to Hooker. He did not suggest (in this or any of his letters to Hooker) that anger at Lyell could have been a cause for his increased illness. “But,” he told Hooker, “it is no use complaining. One must grin & bear; but a grumble to you, my dear old friend, does one good. A good severe fit of Eczema would do me good, & I have a touch this morning & consequently feel a little alive.”7 Eczema probably made him feel more energetic because of his strongly held belief that disease of the skin meant a relief of disease in his stomach and internal organs. Hooker replied: “I am atrociously idle & prefer writing to you to anyone else. . . . [P]ray God the Eczema has come out & relieved you.”8 In a 6 March letter to Lyell, written after he had cancelled the Lyells’ visit to Down because of his illness, Darwin wrote: “I have been greatly disappointed that you have not . . . spoken fairly out what you think about the derivation of Species.” He added: “I had always thought that your judgment would have been an epoch in the subject. All that is over with me.”9 To this...

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