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

You all won't be surprised to learn that guru Sir Simon Says is absolutely certain that Darwin was a somatoformer.

It was in a doco about Darwin I saw around 15-20 years ago on cable (History Channel?), before I even had internet. I knew of Wessely then by name and his basic position on ME/CFS, but not anything about him as a person or how he operates.

What struck me about him was his utter certainty about his diagnosis. Not a glimmer of self-doubt.

Like all megalomaniacs and cultists.
 
Forbin said:
According to this article:
It is thought that Charles Darwin suffered from [peptic] ulcer disease while on his famous voyage and upper intestinal bleeding was his cause of death.
Click to expand...
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?
Click to expand...

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

451: Unavailable due to legal reasons
We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact Editor@RavalliRepublic.com or call 866-839-6397.
Click to expand...
 
“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?
 
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! :emoji_cry: 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.
 
chrisb said:
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?
Click to expand...
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.
 
Cinders66 said:
Wasn’t that [neurasthenia] reserved more for women ?
Click to expand...

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.
The great twin afflictions of that day were hysteria and neurasthenia, stoutly sex- typed in this as in everything else. Hysteria was (nearly always) the woman's illness and neurasthenia the man's.
https://www.nytimes.com/1984/09/09/books/hysteria-was-for-women-neurasthenia-for-men.html
Click to expand...


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.
This vagueness meant that the diagnosis was likely given to people suffering from a variety of mental and physical illnesses, as well as some people with no clinical conditions by modern standards, who were just dissatisfied or full of ennui. “It was really largely a quality-of-life issue,” Schuster says. “If you were feeling good and healthy, you were not neurasthenic, but if for some reason you were feeling run down, then you were neurasthenic.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/03/the-history-of-neurasthenia-or-americanitis-health-happiness-and-culture/473253/
Click to expand...

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.
 
Last edited:
Forbin said:
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.
Click to expand...
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?
 
adambeyoncelowe said:
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.
Click to expand...
Agree with this but I imagine in reality any working class person with ME would just have to work until they dropped dead or end up in the workhouse and then dropped dead.
 
The article I linked to above touches on the issue of class in the diagnosis of neurasthenia...
It was thought that “if you were lower class, and you weren't educated and you weren’t Anglo Saxon, you wouldn’t get neurasthenic because you just didn't have what it took to be damaged by modernity,” Lutz says.

In reality, members of the upper and middle classes were the ones who could afford to see a neurologist and get the diagnosis in the first place. They could afford tonics from advertisements, and afford the expensive, time-consuming treatments. But even within this more well-off population, there was a sharp divide between how the disease was conceptualized and treated for men and for women.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/...icanitis-health-happiness-and-culture/473253/
Click to expand...
 
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
 
Last edited:
chrisb said:
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
Click to expand...


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.
 
Forbin said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom