Volume 1

The life and letters of Charles Darwin : including an autobiographical chapter / edited by his son, Francis Darwin.

  • Charles Darwin
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The life and letters of Charles Darwin : including an autobiographical chapter / edited by his son, Francis Darwin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London. Volume 3 is not available online.

    34/424 page 16
    ]arg;ely was universal, but my father maintained that far more evil was thus caused than good done ; and he advised me if ever I was myself ill not to allow any doctor to take more than an extremely small quantity of blood. Long before typhoid fever was recognised as distinct, my father told me that two utterly distinct kinds of illness were confounded under the name of typhus fever. He was vehement against drinking, and was convinced of both the direct and inherited evil effects of alcohol when habitually taken even in moderate quantity in a very large majority of cases. But he admitted and advanced instances of certain persons who could drink largely during their whole lives without apparently suffering any evil effects, and he believed that he could often beforehand tell who would thus not suffer. He himself never drank a drop of any alcoholic fluid. This remark reminds me of a case showing how a witness under the most favourable cir- cumstances may be utterly mistaken. A gentleman-farmer was strongly urged by my father not to drink, and was en- couraged by being told that he himself never touched any spirituous liquor. Whereupon the gentleman said, ' Come, come. Doctor, this won't do—though it is very kind of you to say so for my sake—for I know that you take a very large glass of hot gin and water every evening after your dinner.' * So my father asked him how he knew this. The man answered, ' My cook was your kitchen-maid for two or three years, and she saw the butler every day prepare and take to you the gin and water.' The explanation was that my father had the odd habit of drinking hot water in a very tall and large glass after his dinner ; and the butler used first to put some cold water in the glass, which the girl mistook for gin, and then filled it up with boiling water from the kitchen boiler. My father used to tell me many little things which he had found useful in his medical practice. Thus ladies often * This belief still survives, and 1884 by an old inhabitant of was mentioned to my brother in Shrewsbury.—F. D.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3