Thinking Sideways: Charles Darwin's Health

I'm only talking about the cats. Okay, Well, this week we're we're going to talk about a man who is revered as the father of the theory of natural selection, which be Charles Darwin. And I know that you're asking yourself, well, what's the mystery about Darwin? Well, it's it's a simple and a complex one. Yeah, who is the detective on murder of the Orient Express? Maybe it was, well, obviously somebody will tell us, doesn't matter. Yeah. Anyways, he always

talked about the simple answer and the complex answer. Right, true, So we're channeling him today, yes, were we right? No? Not really? As I said, the mystery is Darwin's health, and unfortunately there's no treap of cover angle here for most of Darwin's life. He was plagued with health problems which medical science both then and now really can't figure out. And in fairness, with the kind of testing we could do now, maybe we could. But that's absolutely true with

the technology at the time to go allow that. Yeah, and but it's it's amazing. Until we tackled this, this mystery, I was not aware that so many people have been researching and hypothesizing about Darwin's condition. Darwin Darwin is a very popular topic for a myriad of reasons, so it doesn't surprise me, and I'm actually quite happy that there's so much research out there. But let's let's get back to Darwin here. I've got to briefly talk about Darwin. Obviously,

we can't just dive into things. We've got to talk about him a little bit before we do that. Though, I do want to thank Alyssa, who suggested this story to us on Facebook quite a while back. And I also want to send out a huge thank you to all of our experts who helped with this story. It wouldn't be nearly what it is without those folks. I don't think it would be an episode without those Oh no, no, I probably would have given up on this like a week and a half ago, would have been making a

fool of ourselves or fools of ourselves. Say yeah, the only thing I'm gonna probably get wrong at this point is pronunciations. So let's talk about Darwin. Most people know Charles Darwin usually from one of two things. It's either On the Origin of Species, which is his book that he wrote about his theory of natural selection, or it's the Galapagos Islands, which he visited when he was on the HMS Beagle, or or both of those things. Well, it's typically people know one or two primarily, but it

can be both. Here absolutely right, there's so much more to him, and there's so much more than just the galop Ghost and so many things that that formed his theories. He's really really interesting. I've been reading his Beagle diaries, I've been reading his correspondence. Um, I've done a bunch of research on Darwin and he's incredibly, incredibly an interest interesting character and for anybody who's interested, I recommend going and reading his stuff. You won't be sorry for it.

And I'll probably make that that statement again, but it is just I was really happy to get to do it. The only downside was the one thing I wanted to return out to be a fourteen volume set that I couldn't check out the whole library. Weird. I didn't have the time to sit there and read it all. What was what was the fourteen volume set? It was fourteen volumes of Darwin's writings, letters and all that letters and

stuff like that and stuff about him. Yeah, it was looked amazingly interesting, but unfortunately I couldn't sit in the basement library for three days and read it. People do that all the time. I don't know what your problem is. I got that whole work thing whatever. This podcast is more important than that. You're right, You're right. I do have one funny little personal observation from reading a bunch of dar and stuff is he was a bit of

a complainer. I was reading his diary from the Beagle and then some of his letters, and it was funny, you know, he complained about a lot of things. And maybe that's just because he was stuck on a ship for five years straight and had nothing else to do. But it was just it struck me as something that

I would have never suspected. It was very sick on a ship we're gonna talk about that in a minute, I'm pretty sure, and to be fair, I've been complaining about the weather all day, So all right, let's get into a little of the biography of Darwin here. Charles Robert Darwin was born on the twelfth of February eighteen o nine in Shrewsbury, England. He's the fifth of six children of Dr Robert Darwin and Susannah Darwin last night, Yes,

because they were married Joe. Though he would eventually come up with his own theories in the world and religion. Darwin was raised Unitarian. When he was only eight years old, his mother died and she had been exhibiting signs of intestinal issues. Some people think that maybe it was stomach cancer, and also we don't know. Not surprisingly that the death of his mother is seen as a major event in his life though. Yeah, But but to what degree that

influenced him is debated. I've seen a lot of debate about what that did to him later in life. His father, Dr Robert Darwin was a doctor and a medical doctor, and he decided that his son should follow in his footsteps and become a doctor, and he he sent him to university's senting to the University of Edinburgh Medical School, in though it became apparent pretty quick that Darwin couldn't cut it as a doctor. Didn't even really see joke

in there. The problem was is that he well, he considered the lectures boring and the sight of blood made him sick. Yeah, that's that's really weird. I mean, I'm not putting people down if blood blood makes you. Oh no, no, not at all. But I mean looking at looking at blood actually doesn't bother me in the least. What bothers me and why I'm not a doctor or search everything's looking at things like intestines because things that are under

the skin. Yeah, that's that stuff grosses me out. Blood's fine, None of that grosses me out at all. So well you're lucky, then, yeah, we lucky. Maybe we'll need let's say about Darwin, obviously, he sort of slacked off with his studies. Luckily for us, he took an interest in what at the time was called the natural histories, and while he was at university he was in a student group that did that studying in the field, and he really really quite enjoyed it. His father, on the other hand,

wasn't too amused. He decided Dr Robert Darter when that is that if his if his son couldn't be a doctor, then he should be a parson, which is a priest. Yeah, they don't have priests in the Unitarianism, do they. I don't believe that's I believe that's why it's a parson.

It's and And the thing about his father is, I've read conflicting accounts that either because he seemed to have a lot of control over Charles Darwin's life, at least as a young man, was that he was either a very stern but caring parent, or he was a bit of a tyrant. I don't know which. But he decided that since Darwin could not be a doctor, that he would send him to a different school, and he sent

him to Cambridge. While he was there, they didn't really enjoy the studies to be a priest either or a parson, so he continued to start study natural histories and it was while he was there that he published several papers on the natural histories and met quite a few people who saw the world in the ways that he was developing to see it. Those papers that Darwin wrote kind of helped pave the way for him to be selected as the naturalist aboard the h M. S. Beagle, which

we touched on briefly before. The Beagle was captained by a man named Robert fitz Roy, and fitz Roy was planning to take the Beagle out for a second voyage. The first voyage of the Beagle, which lasted from eighteen to eighteen thirty, had surveyed Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. Fitz Roy wasn't initially the captain of the Beagle, but through a series of events he became the captain and he managed to secure funding for a second voyage to

do more surveys of the world. And one of the of things that he wanted is he he knew he needed a geologist and he kind of wanted a naturalist, but he also it seemed like kind of wanted somebody else to talk to, because it turns out being the captain of the ship can be a bit lonely, which you know, that worked out for him because fitz Roy reached out to a number of people that he knew trying to find someone, and the second person that was

suggested to him was a young Charles Darwin. He did select Darwin, and Darwin got to go on what ended up being a five year voyage. I want people to understand, however, that it wasn't as if he just got to take this trip for free. He had to pay for his own way, So he was constantly writing to his family for his father, primarily for money, and he also needed to to pay for his room and board and food. Couldn't he just like wash dishes or something like that.

I don't think that would have cut it. The other thing is it wasn't as if he got some giant palatial stateroom on the ship. He was in the map room or the chart room. Excuse me. That would be a room that was nine ft by eleven ft wide, about five ft high, and it had both the Mizzen mask running through it and a chart table in the middle which was four ft by six ft. It sounds like my accommodations when I worked on a ship. Yeah,

actually sounds like a couple of apartments I've had. Yeah, nine by eleven actually, by by ship standards, especially old old time ships like that, It's actually pretty spacious, except for the fact there was that giant table in the middle. Yeah, you know, that sort of ate up a bunch of room, or also maybe the fact that other people probably needed access to said chart. That's the problem. Yeah, it's not

exactly a private room, and they roll you off. The one thing that I saw that was probably the giant luxury is there was a bathroom in there and had its own bathroom. That's for him. Yes, So that we're probably worked out for well. For Darwin, knowing how well he traveled by sea, you kind of needed a toilet nearby. So the Beagle did go set off on its second voyage, and that voyage, which again I said, had lasted for

five years, traveled southwest from England. It traveled to South America, then down around the southern tip of South America, eventually making its way to the Galapagos and Australia. South America or South Africa. I'm just gonna put another South America there, which there is, because it went from South Africa to South America both before then returning home to England. So I quite a long voyage, that is, I didn't I'm

kind of surprised that they were. They were at South Africa where they didn't didn't just sail up north in the Atlantic. Maybe they didn't want to do the Horn. Maybe that seemed even more dangerous. No, they had to go around the Horn. They did Africa, Yeah, because they went underneath, went up, and then across to South America again. So they literally did a full navigation of the globe before heading north again. And there's there's a number of reasons.

There was a bunch of stuff they were looking at and trying to figure out. But that's the route that they took. Whatever um as. As much as I'd like to go into details on that trip, I can't. We just don't have the time. That would be a show that would be hours and hours and hours long, and it would be well worth it. But that's not our focus today, and we don't consider it an unsolved mystery. I do want I do want people to understand, though I I didn't really know this as a kid when

I was growing up and learning about Darwin. Is It's not as if he went on this voyage and then immediately turned around and penned his theories of natural selection. Yeah, he saw one what finch right well, and then he was like, oh, I get it now, that's not how that happened. No, that's not that happened. Yeah, it was actually sitting under an Apple film. That's no. No, he it took Darwin. He didn't publish On the Origin of

Species till twenty years after. It took him eight years to write the book, but he didn't publish it till twenty years later. So it's not as if it was an immediate turnaround like we were saying. Yeah, although there are probably a lot of political reasons that he wouldn't have released it even after eight years. There there is a lot of political or religious reasons, and there's a lot of good stuff out there about that that goes into you know, his conflict with religion and his wife

was very religious and his struggles with that. There's a lot of great content about that. On the Origin of Species was not the only thing that Darwin wrote. He he wrote goads of papers and books. I mean, the guy really was prolific, and he made a lot of very systematic observations of the world and put it all into writing. What was he capable of sketching? Did the sketch animals that he saw? There are sketches, but I you know, to be honest, I never looked to see

if the sketches were attributed directly to Darwin. I imagine there are some, but a lot of the stuff that I find wasn't direct darwin books. That would be more a little kind of a compilation. The stuff I saw was, you know, it was all his writings. I was reading the Beagle Journals, but it didn't have many illustrations. But there were some illustrations, and he he did some of them, but I don't know how much of it he actually did him. I think he did a lot of them. Well,

I'm sure he had to. But to what degree those are published in his work, I'm not sure, because he worked with some other people on some of this stuff, and I honestly I'm not sure. Yeah, he would have had to have drawn when he was, you know, on the Glop Ghost. It's not as though he had an illustrator with him correct, so he would have had to

draw the observations. And to the degree that they were different subtleties which is what he observed, they would have to be detailed enough to describe that, I think, and and it may have well be that, you know, later on he had somebody do a better job of it. He could within his capabilities. The sad part, as I'm sure you all know, is at this point we have to talk about the fact that eventually Charles Darwin did die. What he's human, Yeah, he is a human mortality. On April.

On April nineteenth of eighteen eighty two, sadly, Charles Darwin did pass away. He was seventy three years old. He died of heart failure at his home down House. He was with his family. His wife Emma was there, his daughter Henrietta, who was his fourth child, and his son Francis, who was his seventh child, were there with him. It wasn't originally the plan, but Darwin did end up being buried at Westminster Abbey. So he is near who is it. It's Isaac Newton, so a guy who an apple fell

on his head, yes, and John Herschel. So he's near some some very very influential people. That obviously is a rather brief overview of Darwin himself. As I said before, please go out and do more reading on him. You will not be sorry for it. But we do need to go to our topic at this point, which is his health. Darwin suffered a huge range of symptoms through his entire life. One of the things that everybody knows and we've talked about a little bit is his sea sickness.

But that wasn't the only thing that he suffered. I mean, while he was on the Beagle, he was extremely ill and he was nearly capacitated every time he went to see but he it wasn't as if he was at sea for the entire five years. The ship was actually at sea for a total of eighteen months. The rest of the time they were he was online, you know, they were at places, they were doing and stuff. Yeah,

they'd spent a month or so in in location. Sometimes it's a day or two, but a lot of time they'd spend weeks or months at places, so he didn't have to be on the boat the whole time, luckily for him. Yeah, that seasickness or motion sickness did follow him for the rest of his life. When he was an older man, he actually wouldn't write in carriages because the motion of the carriage made him ill, so he refused to take a carriage. He'd walk or ride a horse.

So he invented the precursior to car sickness. I don't know if he invented it, but he certainly suffered from it. So let's go through the list of things that Darwin wrote about reported suffered from if you're a hypochondriac, Just like, fast forward through this part because I read it and I was like, I don't want to do this episode anymore because I think I'm going to have all of the things that we talk about not I kept self fanalyzing as I was going through this list. Okay, well,

let's start at the top. Were already talked out the vomiting and faintness of the side of blood, which isn't necessarily a physical illness. Yeah, I would say it's maybe not a symptom. But here is the actual list of symptoms. Vomiting, memory loss, malaise which is generally feeling sick, tiredness, skin problems as in exama and blisters, vertigo, loss of consciousness, cramps, indigestion,

and gas. I love this. He described it as making airs. Technically, what he's doing, he is let's see, we've got dizziness, headaches, fainting, hysteria, and fits of crying. He's got a rapid heartbeat and heart palpitations, cachycardia, yep insomnia, vision problems, muscle spasms, memory loss, depression, feelings of impending death. I think I said memory loss twice. It must be losing memory. Could you imagine going to your doctor with this list? Yeah, I mean no, I'm

sure he did go to his doctor with this list. Yeah, I mean this as a whole. I mean sure, with like little bits and pieces. But could you mention taking that as one giant list? Wasn't and wasn't in terms of memory loss? Wasn't some of it more like lost time? Yeah? Wasn't that some of it as well? So that but he didn't have he did have times where he was like short bouts of it. Wasn't quite dementia, but yeah, kind of kind of almost amnesia about sure, But he

also did lose time, right, that was on all thing. Okay, I just wanted to clarify because I had heard that in the list, so I wanted to make sure or not in the list, but in the research. So I just wanted to add it to list. Sorry, Yeah, it's important for my theories, Okay, Okay, okay, yeah, because this is definitely just a bullet point. Yeah, we're now going to go finally into theories. There are forty theories, No,

we're not doing for We're not doing everybody. All of our listeners were just like, no, we're not doing that. I think there's about a half dozen er so, but no, there's I've picked out some. There are. There's been a lot of them. Some of the older ones have really been disproven, but some of them are all over the maps. So we're just gonna go with kind of a short list. One thing I am gonna address early on with these theories is Darwin was not healthy for most of his life,

not only as an adult, but as a child. He wasn't extremely healthy. He had some things going on, and a lot of these theories will focus on Darwin from the day he stepped on the h M S. Beagle forward. So that's something that I want to I want to bring up so everybody knows I do. There are a couple that we'll talk about specifically, but that's kind of a general concern that I've had with most of the theories that are out there. Theory number one, cyclic vomiting syndrome,

also known as CVS. Yeah, um, so the medical science doesn't really know what causes CVS. What they do know is that the symptoms, which a lot of these theories. We're gonna talk a lot about symptoms. Uh. Those symptoms include vomiting, nausea, headaches, migraines, and occasionally abdominal pain. It did some reading, Uh, and this is so bad. But people who suffer from this can have up to a

dozen episodes an hour. Yeah, not fun at all. Um. The the other thing that is kind of corroborates this is that people who suffer from CVS also have issues with motion sickness, and these attacks can be brought on the tacks of vomiting can be brought on from both positive and negative stimulus, you know, emotional stimulus. So yeah, I'm so happy or yeah maybe that's right. Came from right now? No more fake throwing up noises. It's not happening. Yeah.

So we've talked about this, but Darwin was prone to being sick and ill and losing his stomach, and not just from c sick but there was also psychological and social stressors that would set him off. He was known, as he put it, to be knocked down by his attacks and that could last anywhere from hours to days,

two weeks. That actually seems to be part of what may have delayed being knocked down, him being so ill for such lengths of time as part of what the ladle out of his writing, because he was taking years and years to write things, and yet he would lose months and months of time to being so ill to cope for what appears to have been some of that

psychological stresser. One of the things that Darwin did, which is this kind of genius and kind of creepy hermit old man, is he put mirrors in places in his house so he could see who was in the room before he walked into it, so that if it was a guest that he didn't want to interact with he was worried that it was going to set him off, he could just about face and walk away. He never know you, Oh so and so is in the parlor.

I'm just gonna go back upstairs. The major problem with this particular theory is that CVS primarily appears in children between the ages of three and seven. I don't know that that's I mean, you literally just not five minutes ago, said well, the problem with most of these theories is it doesn't address the fact that Darwin was sick most

of his life. You're right, that's and I didn't see anything that said that Darwin was suffering from as a child, bouts of throwing up every hour on the hour, from multiple times as a child that do we know is cvs the sort of thing that gets progressively worse, Like could it have been that the onset he was just like kind of throwing up but once in a while, and they thought he just has a weak stomach, you know. It's I can't find a lot about Darwin as a

child other than kind of some general statements. And that's probably because if father didn't, you know, sit down and write down little Charles got ill multiple times today because he was probably at work. There's not a whole lot of that. And I do understand that there's kind of that funny division between this one actually talks about him and what could be a child, except that it sounds so extreme sure that I can't see someone who had

and maybe he didn't have that bad. Maybe it wasn't that he was, you know, prone to being ill multiple times an hour continually, as some people that have this extremely bad do. I'm not I'm not positive on that, but it just from from the way that it was described in the in the journals and stuff that I read about it. It sounded to me like it was so debilitating that you couldn't do anything. And I didn't see a lot when or read a lot when Darwin

was on land and not saying in the Beagle. I didn't see a whole lot where suddenly Darwin was on land. It was always yeah, I'm so happy on land, not yeah I'm so happy on land. I've been incapacitated for two days because I've been so ill, just like I was when I was on the ship. So that's that's why I questioned it, because it's almost like a gap, if that makes sense, in in the illness. I don't know, this is This is me shrugging my shoulders. I'm not sure. Yeah,

absolutely so, I don't let's throw that one out. Plenty of other ones. Well, yeah, there there are anothers And I don't know. We'll throw that out, but we will go on to our next theory. The next theory says that Charles Darwin had Crone's disease. Do either of you know much about crones? Yeah, I knew somebody who had crowns. I have some friends. It's not a it's it's a really I feel feel for people who have crones, because

it's not a good thing. Yes, one woman that I know had had to get an operation that took part of a colon out. Yeah, that does happen. There's there's a host of treatments for it today that for people who had it before there weren't. Yeah, and unfortunately, I think that it's not guaranteed that it's not going to come back, even though they took out the unhealthy part of a recovery colon. That's that's that's true. And let's let's talk about crones because that will kind of help

explain some of why. If you don't know. Crone's is an inflammatory bowel disease. It can affect the digestive system anywhere from the beginning which would be the mouth, to the end the anus, so the whole way through. We don't know what causes crones exactly. There's thoughts that it it could be an autoimmune disease, or maybe it's just an immune system overreaction, could be a genetic defect, or it could be caused by environmental factors like diet and

microbes that enter your system. I mean, I don't know. There's probably not, but it could be Yeah, I mean it's possible, it's it's something that we haven't figured out yet. So yeah, most of the people, I guess I've known a couple of people with crones and uh, you know, they've tried you know, varied diets or like moving other places and things like that, and that very rarely helps them.

So the only thing that I've the people that I've known, the only thing that helped them was either I think it's every three months of steroid injection of some kind, or I have a friend to uh he ingests hookworm a certain dosage of it, which is then makes his immune system so busy fighting hookworm that it doesn't go crazy and as intestine. He's been doing it for years and he's never been healthier short of always being on

the drugs. It's better than being on drugs. It's kind of a natural way to go about him provides some nice home for them hookworms. He's a hookworm preserve. I don't know if people are as familiar with us um with Crohn's disease. So like, the symptoms are well, the symptoms are kind of varied and they come on and there's a pretty big age age range. They can come on anywhere between fifteen and thirty. So this potentially could fall within the realm of Darwin because he was twenty

one when he first left with the Beagle. Yeah, and it I mean, I think it can of back to you even younger than that. Sometimes it can. Yeah, it's it's entirely possible. There are you know, sadly, people who begin to show signs of it for seven or eight years old. But as you were asking devon the symptoms they come and go, which you know that's referred to as a flare up and they range from cramping and

bloating to gas or diarrhea or even bleeding of the intestines. Uh, there's sadly and uh there's a possibility of intestinal blockage or constipation and that can cause scarring of the intestines, which can then a cause further damage and be cause vomiting and nausea. And this is this is the insult injury part of it for me, is we talked about that it affects everything from beginning to end. The mouth.

The beginning you people who have crones can develop sores and ulcers in their mouth, which by the way, Darwin had he did he did. Indeed, other symptoms that people can suffer would include fatigue, anemia, and pale complexion. But let's let's go look at the corroborating symptoms that Darwin experience. He had abdominal pain, had constant gas vomiting which specifically was stomach fluids. It wasn't food fatigue, and of course all that was coming and going over the course of

his life. And then he also had skin rashes and boils. So that's that's kind of corroborating. Yeah, there were there were some other symptoms that he had to Yeah, well, you know the thing is is when I was doing the research, there's a couple of medical papers which I've used for part of this that talk about the fact that they believed that Darwin had crones, but he had it specifically in the upper small intestines, and that I read that paper and it's interesting how they can tell

what part of your digestive system is as a problem. Yeah, it is, Well, it's it's because of the difference in the symptoms. When it's in the upper intestines, it's primarily associated with some nausea and vomiting and pain in the upper abdomen, which can become intense, and that again was described by Darwin. He described the origin of the air as somewhere lower down than the stomach, which would kind of align with that location. The symptoms increased after he

eat a large meal, but weren't as bad after small meals. Yeah. Soft foods like plain puddings also didn't bother him. Evidently, his wife Emma Darwin. Her cookbooks were described as being about one half puddings. What kind of puddings are we talking? Are we talking like puddings as we Americans think of puddings? Are we thinking of like bread puddings? Are we think thinking like bread puddings? Stuff like that? I don't think without a lot of protein or fats and more like

plain foods. I gotta be honest, I didn't I didn't actually look up Emma Darwin's cookbook. I don't know exactly what was in that. I just I'm bringing this up because I have something I'm going to add in a second. I just want to kind of like build my case. All right, I got you. I wonder if you can find your cookbook on the internet. Oh, maybe on Amazon. Here's here's a couple more things about when crones affects

the upper intestines. People don't normally have diarrhea as as much, say as people would have the effects in the lower portions of their intentional system, and instead they tend to be they tend to suffer more from constipation, and that's something that later in life Darwin had he ordered animas for that very reason. Of course, a lot of older people tend to get out of constipation too. I don't know why that, and that could just be a symptom

of age. You're absolutely right. Joe Darwin complained he had a couple of other strange complaints that this research seemed to point to us being symptoms of crowns. He complained of pins and needles in his hands and fingers that kept him from working. He also complained of numbness and said his hands felt like they've been dipped in hell fire. This research says that this may be due to damage

of sensitive nerve fibers. According to this researcher, that is a very common thing with Crone's disease, and it's it's attributed to a deficiency in vitamin B twelve and that either whether that's through the lack of absorption or what have you. They're saying that that causes damage to the

sensitive nerve fibers. Yeah. There, And there's a number of other things that they brought up, you know, say sing that the twitching and spasm ng that Darwin suffered was due to hyperventilation, which would have been caused by his incessant vomiting, which would then would mean he'd have CEO two and hydrogen issues in his his respiratory system. I honestly, I didn't dive a whole lot into that, but that's what that pointed out as another sign that it had

to be Crones. But I can just can I just read you a list of symptoms quick, yeah, okay, extreme fatigue, pale skin, weakness, shortness of breath, chest pain, frequent infections, headaches, dizziness or lightheadedness, cold hands or feet, inflammation or soreness of your tongue, fast heartbeat, poor appetite, and uncomfortable tingling or crawling feeling in your extremities. Is a fairly comprehensive

list of iron efficiency, iron deficiency, anemia. Yeah right, So he could be because of Crone's disease, or he could have been an emic his whole life, right, if he had a poor appetite, and he said, oh, my temmy hurts after I eat a lot of food because I don't get enough iron. Well, then he's eating less suff it becomes a vicious cycle, gets worse and worse and worse as he goes on. I think you know that list is pretty comprehensive, and you know all of these things.

It makes a lot of sense to me. It could be from a crone's disease kind of situation because his body is not absorbing it. It could be because he didn't get it. It's possible he like didn't get it as a child out of his diet. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, No, I mean it's that's that's not uncommon, though I correct me if I'm wrong, Devon. Is it not typical that the people who have iron deficiency more often than not, it's more women than men. Not that I'm saying that

men don't have this. No, men get it. I mean, but it's it's not as it's more frequent for women because we bleed more often. I mean, I mean genuinely because our body is to produce more blood. But I'm getting that. That doesn't mean that Darwin couldn't have suffered

from it. I would play iron deficiencies way more common than Crohn's disease, you know, So I don't know, But I don't know how like that seems like something that should have been recognized at the time, you know, doesn't it doesn't It seem like the sort of thing, how do you how do you test for an iron deficiency? Well, I mean they test your blood. I mean either they look at your blood or they do an iron test. But I don't know. I just I don't even know.

I haven't researched this, so I don't even know how well understood blood was in those days, part of the finteenth century. This is this is the joy of doing your show where it's a conversation and suddenly one of us pops the question and we're like, crap, why didn't I look into that? Didn't I look that up? That would have been really easy. Yeah, people know how to use Google. But I think, you know, I don't know.

It seems like a pretty straightforward and that, you know, it wold have intensified when he was on the ship because he really wasn't eating well right, and then by the time he got biscuits, stuff like, probably because he was seasick, right, which whatever I mean, I think that you can even say that it was as simple as he got really seasick and he had this other thing that was a pre existing condition, which you know, kind of caused the snowball effect almost of he wasn't a

healthy man, he was deficient in something. He went on a ship and got seasick, so he was even eating more poorly and feeling sicker and so much stuff that he really wasn't really wasn't getting anything anyways. You know, it gets off, he's fine on land because he's just you know, he's not seasick anymore, and he's eating a little better and he's feeling better and he's out in the sun and you know, and then he gets back

on the ship and it's awful. And then by the time he gets off the ship, he's become so deficient that it just keeps getting worse and worse. I don't know, no, I mean that it could absolutely have caught and if he was if he was a chronic complainer, you know, and he was kind of one of those willful people who was like, well I don't feel good, like I said, I'm just gonna eat putting all the time, not like the steak that I should be eating, you know what

I mean, I don't know. Sorry not to like totally steamroll your Crone's disease. That they could have been crones because of you know, or it could have been iron efficiency or anemia because of crone's. But yeah, no, no, absolutely, I mean these that's one of the things that I found in doing this research. As you find a cause, but then it it just it kind of spider webs out from that central point. So that's very that's very apt, and it could have been any of those. Let's move

on to our next theory. Okay, another theory. Well, the next theory is that Darwin had mitochondrial issues. And we're now going to get into some heavy science. Mitochondrial issues and disorders are caused by dysfunctions in the mitochondria. And you might be asking yourself right now, what is mitochondria. They are specialized components known as organelles of the cells

that are present in all living things except bacteria. What mitochondria basically do is they use the oxygen we breathe in to get energy from the electrons found in our food that we eat, So basically they're they're gently pulling that energy away and that's what powers us. They're they're kind of little fuel packets that we run on. Yeah, and the vast majority of the energy that we have

is generated in that process. So they're they're really important if your mitochondria don't function properly, or or if you were to say, run out of oxygen, your your body does have ways of compensating, and they're not the best ways to make energy. I'm going to say it that way, because that way of making energy is fermentation, which is not a clean process. It's actually a really dirty way of making energy. It's got a lot of toxic byproducts

with like carbon dioxides, acids, hydrogen gas. Lactic acid is another thing, which, of course, when you get enough of that in your body, that's kind of the the achy muscle syndrome. You know, we've work too much, you got built up of lactic acid. Well, your body has ways to either mechanically or chemically get rid of it, but if you have too much, it can cause a lot of ill effects which are highly highly um they're highly negative for you. Interestingly, you as a person. Yeah, each

of us as a person, not specifically this time. Every human, every human gets all of their mitochondria from their mother. And there's some other science that debates that, but we're not going to go into that. But why I bring that up is that Darwin's mother was ill, as we had talked about in the beginning, and she potentially could have had mitochondrial issues herself. Yeah, well he had kids, right, Well,

Darwin had brothers and sisters. He was one of six, and his brothers and sisters all suffered similar issues as him, to varying degrees. He had ten children, Darwin did. Yeah, of the seven that lived past childhood, they were all fine. But that's because if you think about the mitochondrial aspect of it, if his mother had an issue, she would have passed it on to her kids, who, as I said, had issues. Good note, because they got there michondria from Emma.

So it could potentially be that. And it's amazing to me. I didn't even think about this, but Darwin died at seventy three. We were just talking about his kids. All of his kids lived to be in there, those the ones that lived into adulthood seventies, eighties, nearly the nineties. Like it was a really long lived family, which was just kind of crazy to me. I never realized that before.

Well that's that's a long time to live at that. Well, for for Charles himself, I would say yes, because again he was born on eighteen o nine, but his children were born in the eighteen forties four wards, so they were dying in like the nineteen tens to nineteen thirties, where medicines a little better than when their dad was a young man. I'm just saying there's some factors that it advances that would have helped them, but still they were long lived people. Another thing though, that I want

to bring up, because we're still a mitochondria. As much as I know everybody's like next theory, we're not done with mitochondria because this one keeps going. There is mitochondrial issue that is called melas syndrome, and that is mitochondrial mitochondrial and suffer myopathy. Thank you, Joe. I totally said that one like a hundred times, and it worked as

soon as he couldn't do it. That's a hard word, if word, but basically, but basically that's a state where a person doesn't use their their This this syndrome is a state where people don't use their mitochondria as their primary source of gaining energy. So that's again that's a chronic issue where there that's an issue where they chronically have build up of all of those bad things that we talked about in their system, the lactic acid and

everything else. But it's a rare syndrome and it's extremely hard to diagnose because it shares symptoms with I don't know, like eight to ten other syndromes that are out there, like crowns and chronic barfing syndrome, no, like other things that are much more scientific than that. But it does have a host of symptoms that are very similar to Darwin. And again we're gonna go through this. The major ones that are going to be migraines, vomiting, seizures, cognitive problems,

and neurological issues. The prognosis isn't good for people who have this, and those some people who have this syndrome can live to be fifty or sixty. Most people don't make it that long. It would sound like if your body has got to work that hard and it's still getting bad, bad energy and lots of toxins down. Well, yeah, and it's gonna be something that's going to affect you from the very beginning. So this kind of plays into well, this could explain why Darwin was sick as a kid.

He wasn't a well child. But the thing that I don't that makes me think it's not right is that the people that have this, they start experiencing stroke like episodes. And the latest of the latest that comes on is about age forty. Yeah, go ahead, lost time, tachycardia, muscle spasms. I mean, is it required that it's a stroke or is it stroke like symptoms because those sounds stroke like to me, it progressively causes brain damage. If he lost

time and had memory loss, he had brain damage. I mean, even if it I mean, even if it is like a dementia sort of situation, that's brain damage. So he had neurological but he wasn't. He wasn't a tottering, confused man at the end, which at seventy three, if he had been experiencing these stroke like attacks, he would have had extreme brain damage by that time, probably, yeah, which means he would not have been nearly as sharp and

well together in my mind. Well, It's hard, don't These things are always so hard because it's like, how firm is that? You know? It's the like, well, people with this type of cancer die within five years, but then there's the one percent that lives for fifty more years. You know. I think with these sort of things, it's rare, right, and should we be saying, yeah, Darwin had this super rare thing, and also he was the super rare person who no, we shouldn't. But I do think that some

of his symptoms could be stroke. Like that's all I wanted to say, and I will I will back you up with that with this bit of information, which is one of Darwin's sons. He went to college, he had a promising career. I cannot at the moment think of what that career was. But instead he went back and he was basically his father's research assistant and secretary and

helped him with a lot of the writing. I don't want to smear Darwin's name, but it is entirely possible that his son compensated and covered some of that, you know, protect your father, that's a very natural reaction. I don't know that that's true, but it could have been, and that maybe Maybe you're right. Maybe it was worse than we know, and that's why we didn't know. It's let's

move on to another theory one may have heard of. Yes, I think most people have heard of this, and I'm not crazy about this theory, but I went ahead and in the in the spirit of what we do, I included it. And that theory is lactose intolerance. With the bazilion versions of milk that's out there. I'm guessing that most people know what lactose intolerance is, but if you don't,

here's what it is. It's the intolerant. The lactose intolerance is the inability of humans, most the adults, though sometimes it is children, to be able to digest lactose, which is a sugar found in milk and other dairy by products or is it byproduct or is it a product product. It's a product Okay, direct byproducts suddenly didn't sound right

to me. Uh, it's caused by Lactose intolerance is caused by low levels of lactasse, which is an enzyme that you have in your body that allows you to break down lactose via digested You break it down into little bits and pieces so that you can observe it and use it. I mean, that's the simplest version to do it.

For folks that have lactose intolerance, the symptoms are gonna be or they could be bloating in cramps of the in the abdomen, flatulence, diarrhea, nausea, rumbling stomach, or potentially vomiting, and this would all follow consuming dairy products. Studies I've read for this theory go as such foods such as sugar, bacon, butter, and any desserts seemed to set off symptoms in Darwin. And this is according to this researcher. I didn't see this corroborating anywhere else, just just so I had that

on the board. They also said that Darwin had a sweet tooth and that the majority of his wife's recipes involved heavy cream those puddings we talked about before. To make things worse, typical remedies of the time for feeling ill were of the nineteenth century. Of that time were to have a warm milk as a nightcap, so that could have aggravated his symptoms if it was indeed lactose intolerance.

You know, um, when he was at sea in the Beagle that his symptoms should have gotten better, right, because he wouldn't. I mean maybe they had cheese on board. I don't know, well, but they would have hard cheeses which don't have lactose in Um. Yeah, I had the very same thoughts. So actually that's a great question to segue. What about Celiac disease, though, which is gluten intolerance, which has the same kind of symptoms plus anemia. I'm sorry, I there's been so much on gluten. I just like

the real version of it. Celiac disease is the real version of it. It you know, includes all of these symptoms, right, pretty much all of his stuff, but also causes you know, iron deficiency, which we talked about earlier, could have caused a lot of his symptoms arthritis, depression, and anxiety, seizures, mouth sores, head sores. Those are you know again, this is that rabbit hole right of like we just we

could piggyback on every single one. But I think if we're going to do an intolerance, gluten intolerance makes way more sense than lactose intolerance in my mind. Yeah, and I immediately would have ruled out. But but you know the thing, I mean, you both have a great point about well, what if, why was it? What was symptoms have been better on the Beagle, And wouldn't he have probably not been getting that much milk when he was

traveling and he's on land. He would have been getting more on land than he would have on the ship. He was not always in major cities. He'd be hanging out with indigenous people's so it's not as if they've got a lot to spare and they'd be like, hey, Mr Darwin, here's a jug of milk, Like, I don't think that that would be that common of a product. But he definitely wouldn't have had it on the ship. That's not so they don't keep perishables on they don't.

That wouldn't have been the cause for a sea sickness. And and my other problem with this is, and again I know this is a rabbit hole, but lactose intolerance doesn't cause memory loss. It doesn't cause, as far as I can tell, muscle spasms outside of the gut. So there's is why Celiaxes might chose an intolerance because it cause those things. I don't know, I know, I know it is completely possible. Yeah, absolutely, Actually I'm shocked that

nobody's come up with that already. If nobody has Scarlett the paper, well, yeah, four, which they do the thing. I'm sorry, I don't know how to write science stuff. It's inescapable. Is how you start your paper? ESCA? Yes, well let's uh okay, well let's let's let's get away from the intolerance one theories that we're talking about. We have at least one more. We've got more than one more to go. We've got two more to go, so we're almost done there. This theory is that everything that

Darwin suffered was psycho smatic. Actually it could have literally all been in his head psychosomatic conditions which are now referred to in the d s M five. If you don't know what the d s M five is, it's the Diagnostics Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders. But in the volume five, yes, thank you, in the ds M five they've I guess it's changed from volume four to volume five. They've now put it under kind of a general heading,

which is a somatic symptom disorders. It's when someone believes that they have a physical illness or an injury where there is no apparent physical cause for said symptom and it's not a psychological issue or just a disorder. So schizophrenia is something that is a psychological disorder, but psycho smatic things don't have anything specific that can be pointed to. Some people say that it's almost like hypochondria and they're crazy,

and these people aren't crazy. They they truly and wholly believe that something is wrong, and it can manifest itself in real and sometimes debilitating symptoms which can really really do bad things to people, and it can cause degrees of pain which are excruciating. There's one of the the examples that I guess I got, which is probably the best generalization of how this work that I've ever read,

is as follows. A person is concerned about their health and they think they have a heart problem, So they constantly focus on what they were, what they're experiencing, and what's going on with their body, and that constant worry initiates their basic feary action, which is an increase in heart rate. Suddenly they realize their heart is beating faster. That validates that they're right, that there is something that is wrong with their heart, and that starts the cycle again.

Suddenly they get even more afraid and their heart rate goes up even higher, and it works on and on and on. That That is, in its simplest form, how the psychosomatic conditions operate. Folks that have this, they seem to be able to well, it's it's it's inadvertently influenced their body's functions. It's you've heard mind over matter, but this is mind over body and to a point that it can be detrimental. Well, I mean I think everybody

can do that to some extent. I mean you can you know, say I kind of don't feel good, I really don't feel good. Uh, and just like you kind of work yourself into that, you know, mix, or like you're hanging out with somebody who's sick and then later and yeah, you take one cough and suddenly you're you have it, or you know, somebody says, oh is that an ant on? You know, it's fine, and suddenly your skin is crawling. You know it's that. But the differences

is that way more extreme? Yes, it's it's much more extreme, and it's it tends to be much more as a long term and since you know, pain is a signal from body to your brain and sense, it's routed basically into your brain. Your brain processes and recognizes it as pain. It's entirely conceivable that your brain could actually manufacture pain signals for itself. Could I mean, it's like, yeah, it's control, no, but yeah, it really is. It's it's the computer that

operates everything about you. So it could be misfiring signals because it it's just some other part of it is decided that this is going on and it sends the signal. I mean, it's this is um It's a very murky area when you start getting into conditions like this and in the brain. The most common things though that people experience or or report it's gonna be heart palpitations, vomiting, lack or shortness of breath, diarrhea, pain in the back

and joint, some muscles, head pains, aches, and dizziness. And there are there are theories out there that this is a coping mechanism for some other larger emotional stressor I've seen stuff that said that this is what was wrong with Darwin, that he had a psychosomatic issue and it was all tied back to the death of his mother. Again, I understand that that's going to be a very large and traumatic event I don't know. I don't see any

huge ties to it. I've also seen the same thing proffered, except saying that it's tied to his resentment or hatred of his father, who again, as they said before, was he's either described as very stern or a tyrant. So we could be you know, these these folks are pointing and saying, well, it's got to be because of his dad,

a right. You know, I think both of those are a little a little thin though, because like back in the day, in his day, it was not at all in common to lose a parent at a very young age. So that would have been a hell of a lot of sick people. Yeah, yeah, that's that's a normal thing. Or like, hey, how many brothers and sisters did he have? He had six? He was one of six, right, and so for it to all affect them all right, because

they were all sick, right, correct. So I don't know, to different degrees, that seems weird to me too, that everybody would be suffering from the same kind of psychosomatic Well, okay, and if if well we can we can also flip the tables on it and say, if it is from a major death situation, like that. Darwin had ten children, three of whom died at a very young age, and his first I think it was his first child died and his very the first and the tenth died at

in infancy if I remember right. And then one of the girls died I think she was eight or ten, I'm not positive off the top of my head. But why didn't the other seven have these kind of issues with the loss of their sibling or I mean, do you know what I'm saying, like, why is it more prevalent?

So I'm not saying I'm not I'm not definitely not trying to say that anything negative against the folks that experience these kind of symptoms, but it seems that it'd be rare that that many siblings would all experience this the exact same way and have it. Yes, yeah, that that is an anomaly to me. There are detractors for

this particular theory. We might be detractors, we might be a little bit, but well, you know what's really funny is that I don't mean to get off track, but all of these uh, these medical research papers that I read, they would espouse why they were right, and then it almost seems as if they knew the authors of the other papers, because they would specifically go after things that were in the other papers, saying this is why that theory is wrong, and that that's where I got some

of the the issues with the Darwin having a psycho somatic conditions bit, and I'll just I'll just summarize it here, which is people say, well, he wouldn't have had that, because if if it was that, then stress situations for his work should have been much worse and it should have almost prevented him from working. One of the things that's pointed out is that he never had a quote unquote attack problem when he was writing on the Origin of Species, which I don't buy because it took him

eight years to write the damn thing. So I don't know how they validate that. Uh, there is some evidence that says that he did have stressful situations, but they say it wasn't. Is when he wrote his work on on corals, which took him I believe it was three and a half years. He was only working on it, what was it twenty three months out of that time, and and investigating corals wasn't all that confrontational, whereas on the Origin of species I mean that that was gonna

was a poop storm. He was basically killing God and everything that we knew about science up to that date with that theory, Well, I don't think it really kills God. Actually, well there's there unless unless you're a creationist, of course, But well no, there's actually a lot of good stuff about he and his wife and their debates on God and stuff like that and what his theory had on it. But that's that's you know, that stuff is out there and really good, and we're not going to go into that.

I guess, you know. My question would be did he have really big episodes when his kids died? Like is their correlation there, because that's a pretty big stressful thing, and is that documented. I do know that Darwin suffered greatly after the death of his daughter the she was, like I said, she was eight to ten. I almost want to say her name was Annie. I wish I'd written this down the other two too. Did he suffer? I don't know how much he suffered. I haven't seen

as much of that. His His last son, the tenth child, died very quickly. Uh, and I believe his first child didn't make it more than a year. At the most, I could be wrong on that. Games like, after your first kid dies, maybe maybe you're gonna suffer a hell of a lot more than probably. I mean, not to be insensitive, Yeah, but the thing about it is, though, is it it was not uncommon for kids to die.

You It's like if you have if you have a kid who's like, to say, a couple of weeks old, and they die, you know, I'm sure that's gonna hurt really bad. But but if you've got a daughter who's like eight ten years old, you've been hanging out with it for all these years, you know, and you think she's made it past the hump of dying and you know, dying in young childhood, and all of a sudden she's taken from you. Anyway, that's gotta hurt pretty bad. Yeah. I want to say she got scarlet fever which had

been sweeping through the area. Yeah, I mean, it's gonna I'm not, you know, trying to say that we're not that, but I think it doesn't make sense to me that, you know, he those would be documented cases. But I just don't think this is a good theory anyway. On board with a psychosomatic condition, I did say his his his offspring had a pretty good survival rate for those days. Yeah, they really did seven of ten. That's pretty good. That's good for that era. You're right. I mean they were

also a bit in a wealthy family. That really helps PA. Yes, let's now go on to the last theory. Yeah, we're actually at the end of theories almost. Our final theory is that Darwin was suffering from chagas disease. The assassin beetle. I really again, this is another one I have issues with, but I'm going to run it through. Is the theory says that Darwin contracted a parasite while he was on his excursions in South America. And the theory it doesn't

pin down a date. There's two potential dates that this might have happened. And I've actually I actually because I had the Beagle Diaries. I read the descriptions on these dates or the notes and entries. One of them is going to be September of eighteen thirty four or late September, or the other one is in late March of eighteen thirty five. The eighteen thirty four date works for me because Darwin describes a lot of symptoms of illness that

could corroborate with this. The eighteen thirty five date gets brought up because lo and behold. The bug itself is mentioned in his writings, Uh they there was a swarm of locusts, And then later on he says a bug bit him and he thinks it was this bug. This well, this bug is called well, it can be called the kissing bug or the assassin bug. But if Darwin he he missed, he missnamed it, he got the name wrong

in his diaries, it's the benchuka bug. These things are really really not a good looking bug, got a weird like probiscus on them almost. I mean it's it's it's definitely it's a biting insect. They they're kind of like a flee or tick in terms of they live off of the blood of other animals. Problem is they also have a tendency to pack around a parasite, and that parasite is gonna be tried penas soma cruizy, which is an hasty little parasite. It's not a good thing, and

it affects people in two stages. The acute stage, or the first stage, last for several weeks and can be displayed possibly as fever, fatigue, body aches, muscle pain, headaches, rash, loss of appetite, diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting anybody. But can I get any more symptoms I can throw? That was a huge um I do I do? Before we get too far into the second phase, want to talk about one thing that comes up that I don't that really

makes me think this isn't right. And that is one of the most notable signs of infection with this parasite, which is called Romana's sign, and that is a swelling of the eyelid, which appears on the side of the body that the infection entered from. Seems like he would have mentioned, Yeah, and if you look at pictures of people who are showing this sign, it's not as if their eyelid is just a little swollen. It's the eyelid

swollen and drooping from the weight. It's very very obvious. Yeah. Well, we'll talk about the chronic stage, or the second phase of this, which doesn't always appear. Not everybody it gets it. The symptoms of the chronic stage are heart damage and heart rhythm anomalies, and those tend to kill. There are also going to be digestive issues and massive weight loss. That's that's over a long period of time though, right,

it's over a long period of time. Understand it as you get the initial information and then like twenty years later, then you die. That is correct. That is correct. And again, as with all of these papers, I found attractors saying this couldn't be what he was suffering. One of them specifically says that Darwin began showing signs of the chronic phase four years after these, after eighteen thirty five, so in eighteen thirty nine. Though I could never they never

say specifically what it is. They're referencing that he was showing That told them that he was getting it so early. But I do agree that I don't think that this is what's going on, because if he had this parasite, it knocks about you know, if you live a long time, it will knock ten years off your life, and it causes major, major heart problems, and you suffer major heart

problems for quite a while. I mean swelling of the heart that slows you down and really you're bed ridden, you can't do anything, which does to me, doesn't match up with what we know about Darwin, and he was out climbing rocks and hiking and doing things like that. If he had a heart condition, I don't see him doing that. You know. The thing is too is again, what I know about shock is that if he had it, he got it at such a young age, he would

not have lived to be seventy three. If he actually had it exactly would have been twenty three, twenty four. He would have died in his forties, maybe his fifties. He wouldn't have lived forty sixty years with it, or forty or fifty years with So that's that's my problem with it. Um YEA believe it or not. Thank God, we don't have any more theories on that. I don't want to lift off any more symptoms. I think I have them all. Now I am ready to diagnose the patient. Okay,

Dr Joe, but on your stethoscope and let's have it. Yeah. I'm going to go with Crone's disease for a hundred points um and I prescribed to aspirin. Good luck. How about you, doctor Dr Devon? I yeah, I think Crone's disease.

I think the thing that I pushed the most for is that he definitely had anemia in my mind, he definitely had anemia what caused that, But I don't know Crone's disease, maybe celiac disease, maybe some just he was just iron deficient or be twelve bad diet possible, it happens, we're going to prescribe anything of a steak steak, think steak actually CREAMI of weight is great if you're iron deficient. Yeah, it really has a huge levels of iron in it. Yeah. Oh,

I didn't know that. I personally, I don't. I don't know that any of these are right. I think that it's kind of as I've done this before with most stories. I think it's kind of a combination. I think that Darwin probably did have some mild intestinal issue. I don't know necessarily that it was Crown's. But when you think about the way Darwin approached science and everything he did, I mean, he was very methodical in his observations and

his writings. He really really focused and thought and spent a lot a lot of time observing it and just going over and over and over it. I can see him doing the same thing with his health. I can see him saying, wait, well, I made airs in the morning and at lunch but I didn't do it this afternoon, and then the next day. Oh, I made airs all

three times. Something's wrong? What's going on? Like having to check it out to the point that he may have made it worse inadvertently by just focusing so much on it. I mean, to be honest, we all have things that happen to our intestines that we don't track because that's just your intestines. It's it's one of those things. And I thought, I thought to myself, you know, I should actually start keeping closer track of what eat so I can see which ones make me get their quote. I

never get around to doing it. I've noticed a certain things, certain things I've definitely drawn the connection. But if I kept a careful list of everything that I ate and drank, then I would have a pretty good idea of everything. I think I would too, but because there are certain things I can't eat or drink. But I also think that I don't do that because then you can't help. But oh, well, suddenly something's going on, so what else

is it? And then you're like a friend of mine who basically just eats rice it's on a rice diet and taking supplement pills and it's because of crones and he's on it's an elimination diet, cut it all out and start to add things in. But this poor guy still has such a small palette of what he can eat. So I, personally, I think that it's a combination. Ye says you can only have one disease something. No. I really wish that that was the case for a lot of people, the disease only. Uh yeah, So I think

you're right out. That could have been he could have had half a dozen things. Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna close this one out. People are probably gonna want to know where to find some of the stuff that we've talked about, and that's going to be on our website, which is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. You can find this episode, you can find some of the links to some of the real or some of the research. Some

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