Charles Darwin’s ailments are ‘typical of Lyme disease’ in UK - The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/science...f-lyme-disease-from-uk?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

 

ME is another possible diagnosis which has been discussed about Darwin. Guess we'll never know.

I read he tried among other cold, outdoor showers. Don't know if they were helpful for him.

 

According to this article:

Of course, there was a time when peptic ulcers were considered a self-reinforcing product of "emotional stress." That time has passed. Has anyone alerted Sir Simon, I wonder?

 

Unfortunately the article you quote isn't available in European Countries due to data protection.

 

“While hypochondria undoubtedly played a part in Darwin’s misery“

How on earth can they know that !

Just think if he’d been around today he might have been put on exercise and CBT, I see that chronic Lyme isn’t even recognised, what are all those people with persistent symptoms post Lyme infection being diagnosed with?

 

Strange. It's just seems to be the website of a small county newspaper in Montana. It's a 2011 article by a local doctor about how peptic ulcers are now treatable with antibiotics.

 

It is strange, if he might have had a condition resembling aspects of ME, that he was not diagnosed with neurasthenia. Are we not "reliably" informed that that was the fashionable diagnosis for all things ME-like?

 

Wikipedia has a reasonable page on Darwin's health, though I admit I've only scanned it briefly. Poor Darwin, he really did have a bad time of it! There's an interesting list of the possible ailments that have been suggested as causes for Darwin's ill health.

@Forbin, I found a page suggesting Darwin suffered from various gastrointestinal illnesses, it's a report from a historical medical conference in Maryland. I wonder if it might be what the article that you quoted may have been based on.

 

Wasn’t that reserved more for women ? It’s also odd the article doesn’t mention the ME and IBS possibilities, perhaps because they don’t recognise them as genuine illness or perhaps because they won’t consider that a great, esteemed medical scientist had them.

 

I would have thought so, just because the word conjures up images of 19th century tintypes of women splayed on fainting couches - but it turns out that it was mainly men who were diagnosed with neurasthenia, which was thought be a consequence of the fast-paced, energy-sapping qualities of American urban life in the second half of the 1800's.

This 2016 article in The Atlantic is quite hilarious in relating how non-specific the diagnosis was. It makes the late-1980's notion that neurasthenia was synonymous with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome seem ridiculous, simply because neurasthenia was apparently synonymous with nearly everything, including physical diseases and forms of mental illness that had not yet been distinguished.

For some "modern" researchers to proclaim that, "Oh yes, we've seen CFS before, back when it was called neurasthenia," is just ludicrous, as the 19th century diagnosis would have captured just about everyone whose illness was not recognized back then.

 

I think class was also a factor. The Wikipedia page talks about professionals, and those with idle time (presumably because they could afford it), being more likely to get the neurasthenia label too. So a rich wife of a politician or lawyer might get the more respectable diagnosis, while a working class woman might be a hysteric.

 

I think there may be something that needs examining in the question of whether neurasthenia was predominantly a male or female diagnosis. There seems to be potentially a discrepancy in the evidence. I have just been checking Shorter's article in the CIBA foundation book from 1993. He certainly describes it as largely a female condition. My recollection is that Wessely broadly follows that line. This does seem at odds with the overworked businessman type (not to mention the shell-shocked soldier). Further research is called for-as the saying goes. Is this another flaw in the model?

 

The article I linked to above touches on the issue of class in the diagnosis of neurasthenia...

 

I am beginning to wonder whether the papers printed in the CIBA book accurately reflect what was said in the presentations. In the discussion following Shorter's paper Buchwald states:

I was interested Dr Shorter, in your reference to the differential application of diagnoses, and your suggestion that historically, people with similar complaints could receive different diagnoses according to their gender; for example, men were more likely to be given a diagnosis of neurasthenia, while women tended to be labelled as hysterics. To a certain degree these biases are still present today.

I have been unable to locate this in the paper. I shall have a rest and look again.

EDIT my doubts on this subject were first aroused on rereading the summary of the conference in the MRC papers in the National Archive files. It seems that either it is a poor precis, or different things were said to what the papers in the book indicate

 

I'm not sure if you're looking for Shorter's paper "Chronic fatigue in historical perspective" from the May 1992 CIBA conference, but it can be seen here starting on page 6.

The book was originally published in 1993, but this citation seems to say it was first published online in 2007.

There's an S4ME thread on the psychosocial papers contained within the book here.

 

Thanks for that. I have the book. Its just that I cannot see the reference to the male/female distribution in the paper, which is what made me wonder if different emphases were made during the actual delivery. I begin to wonder whether the whole Shorter/Wessely narrative about neurasthenia is designed to avoid the cliché in the room - hysteria.

 

Darwins home in Kent ‘Downe House’ is today run by English heritage and is open to the public for an entrance fee of around a tenner.

If anyone gets the opportunity I would recommend a visit, there were many indications of an illness very similar to ME.

Darwin was mostly housebound for much of his life after falling chronically ill following foreign travel.

Doctors could not determine the cause of ill health and suggested a psychiatric cause.

Many different treatments were tried and hydrotherapy seemed to help somewhat.

At the far end of the gardens (around 100 metres away) was a perfect pacing circle (200 metres) in a quiet wooded area, where he would walk and kick a pebble aside to record each circuit.


Think the theory is he had a mitochondrial disorder however even with the limitations imposed by illness, he wrote many books including the Origin of Species during this time.