Charles Darwin’s grandfather and physician Erasmus Darwin used a modified family crest with a griffin and banner with three scallop shells, with the motto “E conchis omnia” (everything from shells; Fig. 2). The motto described Erasmus Darwin’s view of transmutation: All life including humans descended and transformed from simpler forms originating from “a single living filament” (King-Hele 1998, 1999). After briefly using the emblem and motto in 1770 on his carriage in the town of Lichfield (near Birmingham), Erasmus removed the controversial motto from his carriage and public scrutiny but continued to use the crest and motto on bookplates in his library. Erasmus’ transmutationist ideas, which were original to him but resembled Lamarckian inheritance of traits acquired through the experiences of life, were kept to Erasmus and his friends until he began publishing them more than 20 years later. The extensive writings of Erasmus Darwin in medicine and natural history are not now widely known, but during the latter half of the 1700s his influence extended well beyond his medical practice in Lichfield and Derby.
Erasmus Darwin’s son (and Charles Darwin’s father) Robert Waring Darwin was also a doctor practicing in central England from 1787 to the 1840s and used the same crest and motto on bookplates in his library. He never publicly proclaimed support for transmutation, but Robert had plenty of reasons to keep quiet, given how vigorously his father Erasmus was attacked after publishing his transmutationist ideas in 1794 (Garfinkle 1955; Desmond and Moore 1991). Robert Darwin did not leave a written legacy to match either his father or son but was generally supportive, despite the oft-quoted rebuke to Charles when he was a teenager, “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family” (Barlow 1958). Robert Darwin had broad interests in natural history, kept gardens and greenhouses he shared with his children, and financially supported Charles for the Beagle voyage and during his subsequent work (Meteyard 1871; Barlow 1958; King-Hele 1999, 2003). This includes the post-voyage years in London and Cambridge (1836–1840) when Charles secured his scientific reputation and secretly conceived of his theory of natural selection.
Charles was raised in an extended family that included the Darwin physicians and the Wedgwood makers of fine china. Many family members attended medical school and/or were known as naturalists (Fig. 3). With liberal religious views and a deep love for science, natural history and active outdoor life, this family instilled in Charles from an early age that life’s diversity has changed over eons of time under the force of natural laws. Erasmus Darwin died in 1802, seven years before Charles was born, and we have little evidence that transmutation was openly discussed by Charles with his father or the rest of the family. Nevertheless, Charles wrote in his autobiography “…it is probable that the hearing rather early in life such views maintained and praised may have favoured my upholding them under a different form in my Origin of species” (Barlow 1958).
The Celebrated Dr. Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin was the youngest of seven children who survived to adulthood. His eldest brother Robert Waring was also scientifically inclined and published a volume on plants, Principia Botanica, an English translation of the Linnaean classification system. The book was often reprinted, including an edition that Charles eventually read (King-Hele 1999). Also in this generation was William Alvey Darwin, a London lawyer who was grandfather of William Darwin Fox, Charles’ lifelong friend—a clergyman, geologist and avid naturalist, and credited by Charles for introducing him to beetle collecting when they were students together at Cambridge (Barlow 1958). The first Darwin on this family tree is Robert Darwin of Elston, who was credited with finding in 1718 a fossilized Jurassic plesiosaur presented to the Royal Society in London by William Stukely (1719).
Erasmus Darwin was a large man, both in body and influence, known as a physician, naturalist, inventor, builder of canals, and poet (King-Hele 1999, 2003). He was called “the celebrated Dr. Darwin” because of his medical knowledge and his extensive poetic verse, especially The Botanic Garden (1789). His medical training at Cambridge, London, and then Edinburgh, Scotland (1753–1756) came during the period when the medical sciences in Europe discarded the notion of the human body as a series of passive hydraulic systems guided by Newton’s physical laws (attributed to Boerhaave in Leiden, the Netherlands). The new view, that medicine and disease must be understood in specific biological terms, was promoted by William Cullen (1710–1790) and colleagues at Edinburgh (Richardson 1893; McNeil 1987; Porter 1998). Here, systems of the body developed by movements of internal vital powers, somewhat analogous to electricity (which was also discovered around the same time). The heartbeat, for instance, could be understood as irritability of nervous fibers and sensitivity of heart muscles for contraction (Greene 1982; Porter 1985, 1998). The human body was an economic system of interacting organs and tissues, with focus on how the parts formed and how substances move among them. In this time period, the idea of reproduction via a preformed homunculus was also overturned. Growth and development was not from a fully formed miniature but by epigenesis of more complex parts from simpler ones (Harrison 1971). This idea is in parallel with and central to the longer-term process of more complex forms arising via transmutation (evolution) from simpler forms.
As a physician, Erasmus Darwin incorporated and promoted biological thought in his practice. In some ways, he was a doctor of his times (i.e., bleeding patients to control fever), but he also pioneered oxygen therapy to treat lung disease and digitalis (foxglove) to relieve irregular heartbeat, and promoted sanitation and small pox vaccination for public health. From the early 1760s, Erasmus was also a founding member of the influential Lunar Society of Birmingham, a group of preindustrial innovators that began with friendships in Edinburgh and expanded to include others with interests in science. The Lunar Society derived its name from monthly meetings held on days with full moons so members could see their way to ride home afterwards (see Richardson 1893). Over time the group included Matthew Boulton (scientific instruments), Josiah Wedgwood (pottery), James Watt (steam power), James Keir (industrial chemistry), Richard Lovell Edgeworth (mechanical inventions), William Withering (medicine), Thomas Day (author), Samuel Galton, Jr. (armaments), and Joseph Priestly (Unitarian minister and chemistry). Erasmus Darwin attended until at least 1788. The Lunar Society typified the period of the Enlightenment in central England and Scotland, where scientific ideas were freed from religious orthodoxy and were applied to improving society, including, for instance, the workings of the Wedgwood potteries. Erasmus Darwin identified himself as a Deist who worked to understand the natural laws breathed into this world by First Causes. An important aspect of Lunar Society thinking and Erasmus Darwin’s transmutationist ideas was that the world and human society were progressively and inevitably improving (Primer 1964, Harrison 1971, Bowler 1974, McNeil 1987).
Besides his own ambition and skill as a physician, Erasmus Darwin had great hopes that his sons would study and practice medicine. Like their father, three sons studied medicine at Edinburgh: Charles (the elder) and Robert Waring, and Francis Sacheverel from a second marriage. Charles died at Edinburgh at age 20, most likely from an infection when he cut his hand while dissecting the brain of a child. Robert Waring followed to Edinburgh in 1783 and Francis Sacheverel in 1804 (Shepperson 1961).Footnote 3 Francis Sacheverel did not practice medicine but maintained interest in natural history along with an assortment of semiwild animals. His son, Edward Levett Darwin, also a naturalist, gained some renown as the author of A Gameskeeper’s Manual in the mid-1800s (Darwin 1888, King-Hele 2003). As a final note on Darwin genealogy, the Victorian eugenicist and statistician Francis Galton was Erasmus Darwin’s grandson and Charles Darwin’s cousin through Violetta Darwin and Samuel Tertius Galton, son of a member of the Lunar Society (see Richardson 1893).
Robert Waring Darwin
Charles’ father is perhaps one of the least understood figures in Charles’ life (Meteyard 1871; Barlow 1958; Kelly 1964; Desmond and Moore 1991; King-Hele 1999, 2003). Mostly, he is described as disapproving of Charles’ life choices, especially after Charles withdrew from medical school at Edinburgh, but this has been exaggerated. Robert Darwin studied and practiced medicine to satisfy his father but succeeded and was known as an acute observer and diagnostician. He also had interests in natural history and maintained extensive gardens and greenhouses stocked with tropical plants.Footnote 4 He married Susannah Wedgwood, who herself kept varieties of fancy pigeons. Although Susannah died in 1814 when Charles was eight years old, this was a house of science and natural history, a place where belief in divine revelation was pushed to the background, and bookplates in the library bore “E conchis omnia.” Charles was greatly fond of his father, visiting him regularly over the years. He wrote in his autobiography that “My father’s mind was not scientific, and he did not try to generalize his knowledge under general laws; yet he formed a theory for almost everything which occurred” (Barlow 1958).