Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction: Romantic materialism
- 2 Science and sympathy in Frankenstein
- 3 Natural supernaturalism in Thomas Carlyle and Richard Owen
- 4 Wuthering Heights and domestic medicine: the child's body and the book
- 5 Literalization in the novels of Charlotte Brontë
- 6 Charles Darwin and Romantic medicine
- 7 Middlemarch and the medical case report: the patient's narrative and the physical exam
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE AND CULTURE
6 - Charles Darwin and Romantic medicine
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction: Romantic materialism
- 2 Science and sympathy in Frankenstein
- 3 Natural supernaturalism in Thomas Carlyle and Richard Owen
- 4 Wuthering Heights and domestic medicine: the child's body and the book
- 5 Literalization in the novels of Charlotte Brontë
- 6 Charles Darwin and Romantic medicine
- 7 Middlemarch and the medical case report: the patient's narrative and the physical exam
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE AND CULTURE
Summary
At first blush, Charles Darwin may not seem to have much to do with Romantic medicine, or with the narrative and interpretive practices I have been discussing. But in fact, Darwin's thought arises directly out of Romantic medicine, embodying the fullest and, paradoxically, the final expression of Romantic materialism.
Charles Darwin came from a medical family. His grandfather Erasmus Darwin was a renowned physician, as well as a poet. Historian Desmond King-Hele writes,
Patients came to [Erasmus Darwin] from far and wide, and the stories about his almost magical powers became part of Midland folk-lore. King George III wanted Darwin to be his physician, and would no doubt have been better treated during his spells of mental derangement if he had been under Darwin's care: but Darwin would not move south.
Following in his father's footsteps, Erasmus Darwin's son Robert also became a physician of legendary skill, amassing a large fortune from his practice and achieving a high status in the town of Shrewsbury.
Robert's second son Charles – that is, the Charles Darwin who wrote The Origin of Species – was from birth destined for medicine as well. He was named after his uncle, who, as a promising young medical student, cut his finger during the dissection of a cadaver and died of the ensuing infection. Young Charles was initially eager to take up the family profession.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Literature and Medicine in Nineteenth-Century BritainFrom Mary Shelley to George Eliot, pp. 117 - 142Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004