WEBVTT - Thinking Sideways: Charles Darwin's Health 0:00:04.320 --> 0:00:17.279 Thinking Sideways. I don't stories of things we simply don't 0:00:17.280 --> 0:00:22.720 know the answer too. Hello everybody, and welcome again to 0:00:22.800 --> 0:00:27.880 another episode of Thinking Sideways, this podcast where I talk 0:00:27.920 --> 0:00:31.640 in a weird monotone voice. Not really, Hey everybody, This 0:00:31.720 --> 0:00:35.760 is Steve and as always I am joined by Devin 0:00:36.120 --> 0:00:40.280 and Joe and once again we have another mystery to 0:00:40.560 --> 0:00:44.760 bring to you. Yeah. Really, it's not all cats on 0:00:44.800 --> 0:00:48.400 the internet. We know there's there's something else on the internet. 0:00:49.720 --> 0:00:53.640 I'm only talking about the cats. Okay, Well, this week 0:00:53.720 --> 0:00:56.880 we're we're going to talk about a man who is 0:00:56.920 --> 0:01:00.440 revered as the father of the theory of natural selection, 0:01:00.960 --> 0:01:06.240 which be Charles Darwin. And I know that you're asking yourself, well, 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:09.360 what's the mystery about Darwin? Well, it's it's a simple 0:01:09.400 --> 0:01:14.840 and a complex one. Yeah, who is the detective on 0:01:15.080 --> 0:01:25.080 murder of the Orient Express? Maybe it was, well, obviously 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:28.920 somebody will tell us, doesn't matter. Yeah. Anyways, he always 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:34.080 talked about the simple answer and the complex answer. Right, true, 0:01:34.120 --> 0:01:37.480 So we're channeling him today, yes, were we right? No? 0:01:37.520 --> 0:01:43.080 Not really? As I said, the mystery is Darwin's health, 0:01:43.280 --> 0:01:47.760 and unfortunately there's no treap of cover angle here for 0:01:47.800 --> 0:01:51.400 most of Darwin's life. He was plagued with health problems 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:57.680 which medical science both then and now really can't figure out. 0:01:57.920 --> 0:02:00.880 And in fairness, with the kind of testing we could 0:02:00.880 --> 0:02:03.920 do now, maybe we could. But that's absolutely true with 0:02:03.960 --> 0:02:06.480 the technology at the time to go allow that. Yeah, 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:10.400 and but it's it's amazing. Until we tackled this, this mystery, 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:13.560 I was not aware that so many people have been 0:02:13.600 --> 0:02:19.120 researching and hypothesizing about Darwin's condition. Darwin Darwin is a 0:02:19.280 --> 0:02:23.280 very popular topic for a myriad of reasons, so it 0:02:23.360 --> 0:02:26.240 doesn't surprise me, and I'm actually quite happy that there's 0:02:26.280 --> 0:02:29.680 so much research out there. But let's let's get back 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:34.200 to Darwin here. I've got to briefly talk about Darwin. Obviously, 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:36.560 we can't just dive into things. We've got to talk 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:39.360 about him a little bit before we do that. Though, 0:02:39.600 --> 0:02:43.800 I do want to thank Alyssa, who suggested this story 0:02:43.840 --> 0:02:47.080 to us on Facebook quite a while back. And I 0:02:47.160 --> 0:02:49.880 also want to send out a huge thank you to 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:53.320 all of our experts who helped with this story. It 0:02:53.320 --> 0:02:55.400 wouldn't be nearly what it is without those folks. I 0:02:55.400 --> 0:02:58.200 don't think it would be an episode without those Oh no, no, 0:02:58.280 --> 0:02:59.760 I probably would have given up on this like a 0:02:59.800 --> 0:03:02.560 week and a half ago, would have been making a 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:05.600 fool of ourselves or fools of ourselves. Say yeah, the 0:03:05.639 --> 0:03:07.519 only thing I'm gonna probably get wrong at this point 0:03:07.600 --> 0:03:12.560 is pronunciations. So let's talk about Darwin. Most people know 0:03:12.680 --> 0:03:16.640 Charles Darwin usually from one of two things. It's either 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:20.240 On the Origin of Species, which is his book that 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:24.000 he wrote about his theory of natural selection, or it's 0:03:24.040 --> 0:03:27.240 the Galapagos Islands, which he visited when he was on 0:03:27.280 --> 0:03:30.680 the HMS Beagle, or or both of those things. Well, 0:03:30.720 --> 0:03:33.840 it's typically people know one or two primarily, but it 0:03:33.919 --> 0:03:38.440 can be both. Here absolutely right, there's so much more 0:03:38.520 --> 0:03:41.040 to him, and there's so much more than just the 0:03:41.040 --> 0:03:46.040 galop Ghost and so many things that that formed his theories. 0:03:46.800 --> 0:03:51.480 He's really really interesting. I've been reading his Beagle diaries, 0:03:51.600 --> 0:03:55.680 I've been reading his correspondence. Um, I've done a bunch 0:03:55.720 --> 0:04:00.000 of research on Darwin and he's incredibly, incredibly an interest 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:04.800 interesting character and for anybody who's interested, I recommend going 0:04:05.240 --> 0:04:09.720 and reading his stuff. You won't be sorry for it. 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:12.880 And I'll probably make that that statement again, but it 0:04:13.000 --> 0:04:16.320 is just I was really happy to get to do it. 0:04:16.880 --> 0:04:19.200 The only downside was the one thing I wanted to 0:04:19.240 --> 0:04:21.800 return out to be a fourteen volume set that I 0:04:21.800 --> 0:04:25.120 couldn't check out the whole library. Weird. I didn't have 0:04:25.160 --> 0:04:26.960 the time to sit there and read it all. What 0:04:27.000 --> 0:04:29.680 was what was the fourteen volume set? It was fourteen 0:04:29.760 --> 0:04:34.159 volumes of Darwin's writings, letters and all that letters and 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:36.200 stuff like that and stuff about him. Yeah, it was 0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:40.760 looked amazingly interesting, but unfortunately I couldn't sit in the 0:04:40.760 --> 0:04:44.200 basement library for three days and read it. People do 0:04:44.279 --> 0:04:46.440 that all the time. I don't know what your problem is. 0:04:47.520 --> 0:04:52.360 I got that whole work thing whatever. This podcast is 0:04:52.360 --> 0:04:55.320 more important than that. You're right, You're right. I do 0:04:55.440 --> 0:04:59.560 have one funny little personal observation from reading a bunch 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:02.320 of dar and stuff is he was a bit of 0:05:02.320 --> 0:05:07.600 a complainer. I was reading his diary from the Beagle 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:11.280 and then some of his letters, and it was funny, 0:05:11.320 --> 0:05:13.640 you know, he complained about a lot of things. And 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:15.679 maybe that's just because he was stuck on a ship 0:05:15.760 --> 0:05:18.040 for five years straight and had nothing else to do. 0:05:18.080 --> 0:05:19.800 But it was just it struck me as something that 0:05:19.839 --> 0:05:22.880 I would have never suspected. It was very sick on 0:05:22.920 --> 0:05:27.520 a ship we're gonna talk about that in a minute, 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:30.200 I'm pretty sure, and to be fair, I've been complaining 0:05:30.200 --> 0:05:36.080 about the weather all day, So all right, let's get 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:40.799 into a little of the biography of Darwin here. Charles 0:05:40.920 --> 0:05:44.200 Robert Darwin was born on the twelfth of February eighteen 0:05:44.240 --> 0:05:48.640 o nine in Shrewsbury, England. He's the fifth of six 0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:55.279 children of Dr Robert Darwin and Susannah Darwin last night, Yes, 0:05:55.279 --> 0:05:59.800 because they were married Joe. Though he would eventually come 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:02.440 up with his own theories in the world and religion. 0:06:02.920 --> 0:06:06.960 Darwin was raised Unitarian. When he was only eight years old, 0:06:07.279 --> 0:06:11.560 his mother died and she had been exhibiting signs of 0:06:11.960 --> 0:06:16.760 intestinal issues. Some people think that maybe it was stomach cancer, 0:06:16.920 --> 0:06:21.720 and also we don't know. Not surprisingly that the death 0:06:21.760 --> 0:06:24.560 of his mother is seen as a major event in 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:30.080 his life though. Yeah, But but to what degree that 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:33.679 influenced him is debated. I've seen a lot of debate 0:06:33.880 --> 0:06:38.479 about what that did to him later in life. His father, 0:06:38.600 --> 0:06:43.119 Dr Robert Darwin was a doctor and a medical doctor, 0:06:44.000 --> 0:06:46.479 and he decided that his son should follow in his 0:06:46.480 --> 0:06:50.040 footsteps and become a doctor, and he he sent him 0:06:50.080 --> 0:06:54.320 to university's senting to the University of Edinburgh Medical School, 0:06:54.560 --> 0:06:59.640 in though it became apparent pretty quick that Darwin couldn't 0:06:59.720 --> 0:07:03.800 cut it as a doctor. Didn't even really see joke 0:07:03.839 --> 0:07:06.800 in there. The problem was is that he well, he 0:07:06.839 --> 0:07:10.320 considered the lectures boring and the sight of blood made 0:07:10.400 --> 0:07:14.120 him sick. Yeah, that's that's really weird. I mean, I'm 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:17.160 not putting people down if blood blood makes you. Oh no, no, 0:07:17.200 --> 0:07:19.520 not at all. But I mean looking at looking at 0:07:19.520 --> 0:07:22.000 blood actually doesn't bother me in the least. What bothers 0:07:22.080 --> 0:07:24.720 me and why I'm not a doctor or search everything's 0:07:24.720 --> 0:07:28.120 looking at things like intestines because things that are under 0:07:28.160 --> 0:07:31.160 the skin. Yeah, that's that stuff grosses me out. Blood's fine, 0:07:32.760 --> 0:07:35.440 None of that grosses me out at all. So well 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:38.960 you're lucky, then, yeah, we lucky. Maybe we'll need let's 0:07:38.960 --> 0:07:42.920 say about Darwin, obviously, he sort of slacked off with 0:07:43.040 --> 0:07:47.680 his studies. Luckily for us, he took an interest in 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:51.800 what at the time was called the natural histories, and 0:07:52.200 --> 0:07:55.200 while he was at university he was in a student 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:59.080 group that did that studying in the field, and he 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:02.440 really really quite enjoyed it. His father, on the other hand, 0:08:02.800 --> 0:08:08.120 wasn't too amused. He decided Dr Robert Darter when that 0:08:08.280 --> 0:08:12.680 is that if his if his son couldn't be a doctor, 0:08:13.160 --> 0:08:16.760 then he should be a parson, which is a priest. Yeah, 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:19.960 they don't have priests in the Unitarianism, do they. I 0:08:20.000 --> 0:08:22.320 don't believe that's I believe that's why it's a parson. 0:08:23.320 --> 0:08:27.720 It's and And the thing about his father is, I've 0:08:27.960 --> 0:08:31.400 read conflicting accounts that either because he seemed to have 0:08:31.440 --> 0:08:34.320 a lot of control over Charles Darwin's life, at least 0:08:34.320 --> 0:08:36.920 as a young man, was that he was either a 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:39.720 very stern but caring parent, or he was a bit 0:08:39.760 --> 0:08:43.320 of a tyrant. I don't know which. But he decided 0:08:43.600 --> 0:08:46.640 that since Darwin could not be a doctor, that he 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:48.560 would send him to a different school, and he sent 0:08:48.679 --> 0:08:52.680 him to Cambridge. While he was there, they didn't really 0:08:52.760 --> 0:08:55.480 enjoy the studies to be a priest either or a parson, 0:08:56.280 --> 0:09:00.840 so he continued to start study natural histories and it 0:09:00.920 --> 0:09:04.200 was while he was there that he published several papers 0:09:04.480 --> 0:09:08.040 on the natural histories and met quite a few people 0:09:08.080 --> 0:09:10.960 who saw the world in the ways that he was 0:09:11.000 --> 0:09:16.000 developing to see it. Those papers that Darwin wrote kind 0:09:16.040 --> 0:09:19.320 of helped pave the way for him to be selected 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:22.720 as the naturalist aboard the h M. S. Beagle, which 0:09:22.960 --> 0:09:27.880 we touched on briefly before. The Beagle was captained by 0:09:27.920 --> 0:09:31.360 a man named Robert fitz Roy, and fitz Roy was 0:09:31.400 --> 0:09:34.880 planning to take the Beagle out for a second voyage. 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:39.000 The first voyage of the Beagle, which lasted from eighteen 0:09:39.679 --> 0:09:44.880 to eighteen thirty, had surveyed Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. 0:09:45.400 --> 0:09:48.480 Fitz Roy wasn't initially the captain of the Beagle, but 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:52.280 through a series of events he became the captain and 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:56.800 he managed to secure funding for a second voyage to 0:09:56.880 --> 0:09:59.920 do more surveys of the world. And one of the 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:01.720 of things that he wanted is he he knew he 0:10:01.760 --> 0:10:04.920 needed a geologist and he kind of wanted a naturalist, 0:10:05.200 --> 0:10:07.160 but he also it seemed like kind of wanted somebody 0:10:07.160 --> 0:10:09.040 else to talk to, because it turns out being the 0:10:09.040 --> 0:10:12.400 captain of the ship can be a bit lonely, which 0:10:12.559 --> 0:10:15.960 you know, that worked out for him because fitz Roy 0:10:16.000 --> 0:10:18.160 reached out to a number of people that he knew 0:10:18.440 --> 0:10:22.800 trying to find someone, and the second person that was 0:10:22.840 --> 0:10:27.160 suggested to him was a young Charles Darwin. He did 0:10:27.200 --> 0:10:30.320 select Darwin, and Darwin got to go on what ended 0:10:30.400 --> 0:10:35.280 up being a five year voyage. I want people to understand, however, 0:10:35.360 --> 0:10:37.920 that it wasn't as if he just got to take 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:40.840 this trip for free. He had to pay for his 0:10:40.920 --> 0:10:44.400 own way, So he was constantly writing to his family 0:10:44.480 --> 0:10:48.880 for his father, primarily for money, and he also needed 0:10:48.920 --> 0:10:51.760 to to pay for his room and board and food. 0:10:52.840 --> 0:10:54.960 Couldn't he just like wash dishes or something like that. 0:10:56.679 --> 0:10:59.520 I don't think that would have cut it. The other 0:10:59.559 --> 0:11:02.480 thing is it wasn't as if he got some giant 0:11:02.920 --> 0:11:06.920 palatial stateroom on the ship. He was in the map 0:11:07.040 --> 0:11:10.920 room or the chart room. Excuse me. That would be 0:11:11.040 --> 0:11:13.640 a room that was nine ft by eleven ft wide, 0:11:13.920 --> 0:11:17.480 about five ft high, and it had both the Mizzen 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:20.040 mask running through it and a chart table in the 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:22.360 middle which was four ft by six ft. It sounds 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:25.199 like my accommodations when I worked on a ship. Yeah, 0:11:25.360 --> 0:11:28.200 actually sounds like a couple of apartments I've had. Yeah, 0:11:28.320 --> 0:11:31.520 nine by eleven actually, by by ship standards, especially old 0:11:31.640 --> 0:11:34.920 old time ships like that, It's actually pretty spacious, except 0:11:34.920 --> 0:11:38.240 for the fact there was that giant table in the middle. Yeah, 0:11:38.280 --> 0:11:40.240 you know, that sort of ate up a bunch of room, 0:11:40.520 --> 0:11:42.840 or also maybe the fact that other people probably needed 0:11:42.880 --> 0:11:46.440 access to said chart. That's the problem. Yeah, it's not 0:11:46.520 --> 0:11:51.760 exactly a private room, and they roll you off. The 0:11:51.800 --> 0:11:54.520 one thing that I saw that was probably the giant 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:58.800 luxury is there was a bathroom in there and had 0:11:58.840 --> 0:12:01.680 its own bathroom. That's for him. Yes, So that we're 0:12:01.760 --> 0:12:04.960 probably worked out for well. For Darwin, knowing how well 0:12:05.040 --> 0:12:10.359 he traveled by sea, you kind of needed a toilet nearby. 0:12:10.880 --> 0:12:14.000 So the Beagle did go set off on its second voyage, 0:12:14.040 --> 0:12:16.640 and that voyage, which again I said, had lasted for 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:21.280 five years, traveled southwest from England. It traveled to South America, 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:25.079 then down around the southern tip of South America, eventually 0:12:25.120 --> 0:12:29.760 making its way to the Galapagos and Australia. South America 0:12:30.080 --> 0:12:32.839 or South Africa. I'm just gonna put another South America there, 0:12:32.880 --> 0:12:35.320 which there is, because it went from South Africa to 0:12:35.360 --> 0:12:40.080 South America both before then returning home to England. So 0:12:40.160 --> 0:12:42.440 I quite a long voyage, that is, I didn't I'm 0:12:42.520 --> 0:12:44.640 kind of surprised that they were. They were at South 0:12:44.679 --> 0:12:46.920 Africa where they didn't didn't just sail up north in 0:12:46.920 --> 0:12:48.839 the Atlantic. Maybe they didn't want to do the Horn. 0:12:48.920 --> 0:12:50.800 Maybe that seemed even more dangerous. No, they had to 0:12:50.840 --> 0:12:54.679 go around the Horn. They did Africa, Yeah, because they 0:12:54.720 --> 0:12:59.600 went underneath, went up, and then across to South America again. 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:04.200 So they literally did a full navigation of the globe 0:13:04.679 --> 0:13:09.480 before heading north again. And there's there's a number of reasons. 0:13:09.480 --> 0:13:10.800 There was a bunch of stuff they were looking at 0:13:10.840 --> 0:13:12.640 and trying to figure out. But that's the route that 0:13:12.679 --> 0:13:17.720 they took. Whatever um as. As much as I'd like 0:13:17.760 --> 0:13:21.200 to go into details on that trip, I can't. We 0:13:21.320 --> 0:13:24.840 just don't have the time. That would be a show 0:13:24.880 --> 0:13:28.080 that would be hours and hours and hours long, and 0:13:28.160 --> 0:13:30.160 it would be well worth it. But that's not our 0:13:30.200 --> 0:13:33.079 focus today, and we don't consider it an unsolved mystery. 0:13:35.960 --> 0:13:38.080 I do want I do want people to understand, though 0:13:38.160 --> 0:13:40.719 I I didn't really know this as a kid when 0:13:40.720 --> 0:13:42.600 I was growing up and learning about Darwin. Is It's 0:13:42.640 --> 0:13:45.000 not as if he went on this voyage and then 0:13:45.040 --> 0:13:50.360 immediately turned around and penned his theories of natural selection. Yeah, 0:13:50.400 --> 0:13:53.080 he saw one what finch right well, and then he 0:13:53.160 --> 0:13:56.240 was like, oh, I get it now, that's not how 0:13:56.280 --> 0:13:58.880 that happened. No, that's not that happened. Yeah, it was 0:13:58.880 --> 0:14:03.960 actually sitting under an Apple film. That's no. No, he 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:07.280 it took Darwin. He didn't publish On the Origin of 0:14:07.400 --> 0:14:11.720 Species till twenty years after. It took him eight years 0:14:11.760 --> 0:14:13.959 to write the book, but he didn't publish it till 0:14:14.040 --> 0:14:16.320 twenty years later. So it's not as if it was 0:14:16.320 --> 0:14:19.960 an immediate turnaround like we were saying. Yeah, although there 0:14:19.960 --> 0:14:22.280 are probably a lot of political reasons that he wouldn't 0:14:22.320 --> 0:14:26.000 have released it even after eight years. There there is 0:14:26.120 --> 0:14:30.440 a lot of political or religious reasons, and there's a 0:14:30.560 --> 0:14:33.000 lot of good stuff out there about that that goes 0:14:33.080 --> 0:14:36.720 into you know, his conflict with religion and his wife 0:14:36.760 --> 0:14:40.320 was very religious and his struggles with that. There's a 0:14:40.360 --> 0:14:43.160 lot of great content about that. On the Origin of 0:14:43.200 --> 0:14:46.840 Species was not the only thing that Darwin wrote. He 0:14:46.840 --> 0:14:50.000 he wrote goads of papers and books. I mean, the 0:14:50.080 --> 0:14:53.800 guy really was prolific, and he made a lot of 0:14:54.120 --> 0:14:57.320 very systematic observations of the world and put it all 0:14:57.360 --> 0:15:01.360 into writing. What was he capable of sketching? Did the 0:15:01.400 --> 0:15:04.640 sketch animals that he saw? There are sketches, but I 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:07.240 you know, to be honest, I never looked to see 0:15:07.320 --> 0:15:10.840 if the sketches were attributed directly to Darwin. I imagine 0:15:10.840 --> 0:15:13.640 there are some, but a lot of the stuff that 0:15:13.720 --> 0:15:17.800 I find wasn't direct darwin books. That would be more 0:15:17.840 --> 0:15:20.640 a little kind of a compilation. The stuff I saw was, 0:15:21.240 --> 0:15:23.120 you know, it was all his writings. I was reading 0:15:23.120 --> 0:15:27.640 the Beagle Journals, but it didn't have many illustrations. But 0:15:28.040 --> 0:15:31.280 there were some illustrations, and he he did some of them, 0:15:31.360 --> 0:15:33.440 but I don't know how much of it he actually 0:15:33.480 --> 0:15:35.680 did him. I think he did a lot of them. Well, 0:15:35.680 --> 0:15:39.000 I'm sure he had to. But to what degree those 0:15:39.000 --> 0:15:41.360 are published in his work, I'm not sure, because he 0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:44.520 worked with some other people on some of this stuff, 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:46.920 and I honestly I'm not sure. Yeah, he would have 0:15:46.960 --> 0:15:49.080 had to have drawn when he was, you know, on 0:15:49.120 --> 0:15:50.640 the Glop Ghost. It's not as though he had an 0:15:50.680 --> 0:15:52.760 illustrator with him correct, so he would have had to 0:15:52.840 --> 0:15:55.640 draw the observations. And to the degree that they were 0:15:55.720 --> 0:15:59.120 different subtleties which is what he observed, they would have 0:15:59.160 --> 0:16:02.000 to be detailed enough to describe that, I think, and 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:04.600 and it may have well be that, you know, later 0:16:04.640 --> 0:16:06.880 on he had somebody do a better job of it. 0:16:07.360 --> 0:16:12.760 He could within his capabilities. The sad part, as I'm 0:16:12.760 --> 0:16:15.040 sure you all know, is at this point we have 0:16:15.120 --> 0:16:17.680 to talk about the fact that eventually Charles Darwin did die. 0:16:17.840 --> 0:16:23.400 What he's human, Yeah, he is a human mortality. On April. 0:16:24.040 --> 0:16:29.080 On April nineteenth of eighteen eighty two, sadly, Charles Darwin 0:16:29.160 --> 0:16:32.160 did pass away. He was seventy three years old. He 0:16:32.320 --> 0:16:36.120 died of heart failure at his home down House. He 0:16:36.320 --> 0:16:40.080 was with his family. His wife Emma was there, his 0:16:40.640 --> 0:16:44.480 daughter Henrietta, who was his fourth child, and his son Francis, 0:16:44.520 --> 0:16:47.240 who was his seventh child, were there with him. It 0:16:47.360 --> 0:16:51.240 wasn't originally the plan, but Darwin did end up being 0:16:51.280 --> 0:16:56.120 buried at Westminster Abbey. So he is near who is it. 0:16:56.200 --> 0:16:59.520 It's Isaac Newton, so a guy who an apple fell 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:03.040 on his head, yes, and John Herschel. So he's near 0:17:03.160 --> 0:17:08.679 some some very very influential people. That obviously is a 0:17:08.920 --> 0:17:12.240 rather brief overview of Darwin himself. As I said before, 0:17:12.720 --> 0:17:14.920 please go out and do more reading on him. You 0:17:15.000 --> 0:17:18.520 will not be sorry for it. But we do need 0:17:18.560 --> 0:17:21.199 to go to our topic at this point, which is 0:17:21.480 --> 0:17:26.560 his health. Darwin suffered a huge range of symptoms through 0:17:26.600 --> 0:17:30.760 his entire life. One of the things that everybody knows 0:17:30.800 --> 0:17:33.280 and we've talked about a little bit is his sea sickness. 0:17:33.960 --> 0:17:37.400 But that wasn't the only thing that he suffered. I mean, 0:17:37.400 --> 0:17:40.000 while he was on the Beagle, he was extremely ill 0:17:40.119 --> 0:17:42.919 and he was nearly capacitated every time he went to 0:17:43.000 --> 0:17:45.920 see but he it wasn't as if he was at 0:17:46.000 --> 0:17:50.240 sea for the entire five years. The ship was actually 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:54.080 at sea for a total of eighteen months. The rest 0:17:54.080 --> 0:17:57.439 of the time they were he was online, you know, 0:17:57.440 --> 0:18:00.720 they were at places, they were doing and stuff. Yeah, 0:18:00.720 --> 0:18:03.919 they'd spent a month or so in in location. Sometimes 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:05.280 it's a day or two, but a lot of time 0:18:05.280 --> 0:18:08.639 they'd spend weeks or months at places, so he didn't 0:18:08.640 --> 0:18:10.800 have to be on the boat the whole time, luckily 0:18:10.880 --> 0:18:15.200 for him. Yeah, that seasickness or motion sickness did follow 0:18:15.280 --> 0:18:17.240 him for the rest of his life. When he was 0:18:17.280 --> 0:18:20.280 an older man, he actually wouldn't write in carriages because 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:23.840 the motion of the carriage made him ill, so he 0:18:23.920 --> 0:18:26.600 refused to take a carriage. He'd walk or ride a horse. 0:18:26.960 --> 0:18:30.960 So he invented the precursior to car sickness. I don't 0:18:31.000 --> 0:18:34.120 know if he invented it, but he certainly suffered from it. 0:18:34.960 --> 0:18:37.560 So let's go through the list of things that Darwin 0:18:38.280 --> 0:18:42.840 wrote about reported suffered from if you're a hypochondriac, Just like, 0:18:42.920 --> 0:18:45.760 fast forward through this part because I read it and 0:18:45.800 --> 0:18:47.359 I was like, I don't want to do this episode 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:49.280 anymore because I think I'm going to have all of 0:18:49.320 --> 0:18:55.120 the things that we talk about not I kept self 0:18:55.119 --> 0:18:58.000 fanalyzing as I was going through this list. Okay, well, 0:18:58.080 --> 0:19:00.320 let's start at the top. Were already talked out the 0:19:00.480 --> 0:19:04.480 vomiting and faintness of the side of blood, which isn't 0:19:04.520 --> 0:19:08.680 necessarily a physical illness. Yeah, I would say it's maybe 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:13.000 not a symptom. But here is the actual list of symptoms. Vomiting, 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:18.000 memory loss, malaise which is generally feeling sick, tiredness, skin 0:19:18.119 --> 0:19:25.359 problems as in exama and blisters, vertigo, loss of consciousness, cramps, indigestion, 0:19:25.520 --> 0:19:29.520 and gas. I love this. He described it as making airs. Technically, 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:37.080 what he's doing, he is let's see, we've got dizziness, headaches, fainting, hysteria, 0:19:37.200 --> 0:19:41.560 and fits of crying. He's got a rapid heartbeat and 0:19:41.600 --> 0:19:50.920 heart palpitations, cachycardia, yep insomnia, vision problems, muscle spasms, memory loss, depression, 0:19:51.520 --> 0:19:55.119 feelings of impending death. I think I said memory loss twice. 0:19:55.119 --> 0:20:00.919 It must be losing memory. Could you imagine going to 0:20:01.000 --> 0:20:05.440 your doctor with this list? Yeah, I mean no, I'm 0:20:05.440 --> 0:20:07.400 sure he did go to his doctor with this list. Yeah, 0:20:07.440 --> 0:20:10.399 I mean this as a whole. I mean sure, with 0:20:10.880 --> 0:20:13.520 like little bits and pieces. But could you mention taking 0:20:13.560 --> 0:20:17.080 that as one giant list? Wasn't and wasn't in terms 0:20:17.080 --> 0:20:23.920 of memory loss? Wasn't some of it more like lost time? Yeah? 0:20:24.200 --> 0:20:27.000 Wasn't that some of it as well? So that but 0:20:27.080 --> 0:20:29.560 he didn't have he did have times where he was 0:20:30.440 --> 0:20:35.080 like short bouts of it. Wasn't quite dementia, but yeah, 0:20:35.200 --> 0:20:38.480 kind of kind of almost amnesia about sure, But he 0:20:38.520 --> 0:20:41.600 also did lose time, right, that was on all thing. Okay, 0:20:41.680 --> 0:20:43.439 I just wanted to clarify because I had heard that 0:20:43.480 --> 0:20:45.320 in the list, so I wanted to make sure or 0:20:45.400 --> 0:20:47.760 not in the list, but in the research. So I 0:20:47.760 --> 0:20:49.800 just wanted to add it to list. Sorry, Yeah, it's 0:20:49.840 --> 0:20:52.320 important for my theories, Okay, Okay, okay, yeah, because this 0:20:52.359 --> 0:20:55.240 is definitely just a bullet point. Yeah, we're now going 0:20:55.320 --> 0:21:00.560 to go finally into theories. There are forty theories, No, 0:21:00.760 --> 0:21:04.359 we're not doing for We're not doing everybody. All of 0:21:04.400 --> 0:21:08.640 our listeners were just like, no, we're not doing that. 0:21:10.480 --> 0:21:13.760 I think there's about a half dozen er so, but no, 0:21:13.920 --> 0:21:17.919 there's I've picked out some. There are. There's been a 0:21:17.920 --> 0:21:20.439 lot of them. Some of the older ones have really 0:21:20.480 --> 0:21:23.680 been disproven, but some of them are all over the maps. 0:21:23.680 --> 0:21:25.919 So we're just gonna go with kind of a short list. 0:21:26.520 --> 0:21:29.160 One thing I am gonna address early on with these 0:21:29.200 --> 0:21:35.879 theories is Darwin was not healthy for most of his life, 0:21:36.640 --> 0:21:39.840 not only as an adult, but as a child. He 0:21:40.000 --> 0:21:44.199 wasn't extremely healthy. He had some things going on, and 0:21:44.320 --> 0:21:49.200 a lot of these theories will focus on Darwin from 0:21:49.440 --> 0:21:52.680 the day he stepped on the h M S. Beagle forward. 0:21:53.440 --> 0:21:55.600 So that's something that I want to I want to 0:21:55.640 --> 0:21:58.600 bring up so everybody knows I do. There are a 0:21:58.600 --> 0:22:02.520 couple that we'll talk about specifically, but that's kind of 0:22:02.560 --> 0:22:05.000 a general concern that I've had with most of the 0:22:05.000 --> 0:22:09.760 theories that are out there. Theory number one, cyclic vomiting syndrome, 0:22:09.880 --> 0:22:15.399 also known as CVS. Yeah, um, so the medical science 0:22:15.440 --> 0:22:19.199 doesn't really know what causes CVS. What they do know 0:22:19.760 --> 0:22:22.920 is that the symptoms, which a lot of these theories. 0:22:22.920 --> 0:22:26.320 We're gonna talk a lot about symptoms. Uh. Those symptoms 0:22:26.359 --> 0:22:32.600 include vomiting, nausea, headaches, migraines, and occasionally abdominal pain. It 0:22:32.840 --> 0:22:36.280 did some reading, Uh, and this is so bad. But 0:22:36.359 --> 0:22:39.719 people who suffer from this can have up to a 0:22:39.840 --> 0:22:47.120 dozen episodes an hour. Yeah, not fun at all. Um. 0:22:47.280 --> 0:22:49.960 The the other thing that is kind of corroborates this 0:22:50.080 --> 0:22:54.560 is that people who suffer from CVS also have issues 0:22:54.640 --> 0:22:59.000 with motion sickness, and these attacks can be brought on 0:22:59.040 --> 0:23:02.720 the tacks of vomiting can be brought on from both 0:23:02.880 --> 0:23:07.960 positive and negative stimulus, you know, emotional stimulus. So yeah, 0:23:08.080 --> 0:23:13.560 I'm so happy or yeah maybe that's right. Came from 0:23:18.520 --> 0:23:25.600 right now? No more fake throwing up noises. It's not happening. Yeah. 0:23:27.040 --> 0:23:30.240 So we've talked about this, but Darwin was prone to 0:23:30.800 --> 0:23:33.880 being sick and ill and losing his stomach, and not 0:23:34.080 --> 0:23:38.199 just from c sick but there was also psychological and 0:23:38.280 --> 0:23:41.960 social stressors that would set him off. He was known, 0:23:42.160 --> 0:23:45.359 as he put it, to be knocked down by his 0:23:45.440 --> 0:23:49.800 attacks and that could last anywhere from hours to days, 0:23:49.840 --> 0:23:53.880 two weeks. That actually seems to be part of what 0:23:54.240 --> 0:23:57.880 may have delayed being knocked down, him being so ill 0:23:57.960 --> 0:23:59.520 for such lengths of time as part of what the 0:23:59.600 --> 0:24:02.520 ladle out of his writing, because he was taking years 0:24:02.520 --> 0:24:05.080 and years to write things, and yet he would lose 0:24:05.160 --> 0:24:08.840 months and months of time to being so ill to 0:24:09.040 --> 0:24:12.440 cope for what appears to have been some of that 0:24:12.600 --> 0:24:15.480 psychological stresser. One of the things that Darwin did, which 0:24:15.520 --> 0:24:18.399 is this kind of genius and kind of creepy hermit 0:24:18.440 --> 0:24:21.639 old man, is he put mirrors in places in his 0:24:21.720 --> 0:24:24.200 house so he could see who was in the room 0:24:24.320 --> 0:24:27.040 before he walked into it, so that if it was 0:24:27.080 --> 0:24:29.800 a guest that he didn't want to interact with he 0:24:29.840 --> 0:24:31.600 was worried that it was going to set him off, 0:24:31.880 --> 0:24:35.160 he could just about face and walk away. He never 0:24:35.240 --> 0:24:37.320 know you, Oh so and so is in the parlor. 0:24:37.400 --> 0:24:42.359 I'm just gonna go back upstairs. The major problem with 0:24:42.480 --> 0:24:48.280