DARWIN, Erasmus, a physician, poet, and medical writer, was born at Elston, near Newark, in Nottinghamshire, on the 12th December 1731. He was the fourth son of Robert Darwin, Esq., and received the early part of his education at Chesterfield school, under the Rev-Mr Burrows, of whom he always spoke with great respect. He was entered, with two of his elder brothers, at St John’s College, Cambridge; and, being intended for the practice of physic, he took the degree of bachelor in medicine in 1755, defending in his thesis an opinion, that the motion of the heart and arteries is produced by the immediate stimulus of the blood. During his residence in Cambridge, Mr Darwin was elected to one of Lord Exeter’s scholarships, worth about sixteen pounds per annum, which, from the meagreness of his father’s income at that time, was esteemed a desirable acquisition. After having prepared himself for his future profession, by an attendance on the lectures of Dr Hunter in London, and by a severe course of study at Edinburgh, he contemplated the metropolis as the proper theatre for his exertions. Deterred, however, by the want of a proper introduction, and the improbability of obtaining immediate patronage, Dr Darwin thought it altogether more advisable to settle in the country. The first place to which he went, in the capacity of physician, was Nottingham, where he was entirely disappointed in his hopes of practice; he therefore removed to Lichfield, with letters of introduction to Lady Gresley and the Rev. Mr Seward. Here his great capacity and various acquirements were most justly appreciated. He resided at Lichfield during a great number of years, in the enjoyment of a very extensive reputation, and a very profitable practice, the foundation of which is supposed to have been laid by his success in restoring to health a gentleman of fortune in the neighbourhood, whose recovery was despaired of by a numerous circle of friends and acquaintances.

In the year 1757 Dr Darwin married Miss Mary Howard, daughter of Charles Howard, Esq. By this lady, who died in 1770, he had five children, two of whom died in infancy. The eldest son, Charles, he educated to his own profession, but he died in the twentieth year of his age, very soon after he had finished his course of studies at Edinburgh, where he gained considerable reputation, by endeavouring to furnish a criterion for distinguishing pus from mucus. Soon after the decease of his wife, Dr Darwin commenced his laborious work, the Zoonomia, which, however, he did not think proper to publish till long afterwards.

In 1778 he obtained a lease of a picturesque spot of ground about a mile from Lichfield, where a cold bath was erected by Sir John Flayer, an eminent physician in the beginning of the last century. There is a grotto, surrounded by projecting rocks, from the edges of which trickles a perpetual shower of water. This place became his favourite retreat and amusement; here he formed a botanic garden, and began his poem on the Loves of the Plants, the scenery of which, “as adapted to love scenes, and being thence a proper residence for the modern goddess of botany,” is taken from these sequestered shades.

In 1780 Dr Darwin was called to attend Colönel Sacheverel Pole of Radbourne-hall, four miles from Derby; and a few months after the decease of the colonel, he married his relict, Mrs Pole, with a jointure of L.600 per annum. The marriage of Dr Darwin occasioned his immediate removal from Lichfield to Radbourne, where he resided two years, until he got accommodated with a house in Derby. In this last situation he remained till about two months before his death, when he removed to Breadwall Priory, about three miles from Derby, which was a commodious and peaceful retirement for his old age.

During the last years of his life, Dr Darwin was much subject to inflammation of the chest and lungs; and he had a very serious attack of this disease in the course of the spring of 1801, from which, after repeated bleedings, he with difficulty recovered. On the 10th of April 1802, he was attacked with a severe shivering fit, followed by a corresponding hot one, and accompanied with symptoms of inflammation of the lungs. His surgeon, Mr Hadley, took from him, in the course of the day, twenty-five ounces of blood. The fever was removed, and in two or three days he became, to all appearance, quite well. But, on the 17th, as he was walking in his garden with Mrs Darwin, and a lady of about his own age, the latter remarked, that he would have sufficient employment for ten years in bringing all his plans about the place to perfection. “You, madam,” he replied, “have as good a prospect as any body I know, of your age, of living ten years; I have not.” Mrs Darwin remarked his good looks, spirits, and strength. He said, “I always appear particularly well immediately before I become ill.” He sat with his family in the evening, conversing with his usual cheerfulness, went to bed, rose at six on the following morning, and wrote some letters till after seven, when he was seized with a chilly fit, which increased, and was attended with thirst. He then sat down by the kitchen fire and drank a considerable quantity of butter-milk; but feeling himself much indisposed, he lay down on a sofa, when, becoming cold and torpid, he was raised up, and placed in an arm-chair, where, without pain or any emotion, he expired, a little before nine, in the seventy-first year of his age.

Dr Darwin left a widow and six children, three boys and three girls, by his last marriage. There was also another child, who died in infancy. Besides these, he left two natural daughters, whom he had established in a school at Ashbourne, and for whose instruction and assistance lie composed and published his Treatise on Female Education.

During the whole of his life, Dr Darwin was remarkable for great benevolence of disposition, and it was particularly conspicuous in the care which he took even of the lowest animals. The keenness of his feelings on this subject has been attributed to the strong impression made upon his mind by a representation of the tortures of the inquisition, which was shown to him at an early age. He had frequently expressed a strong desire that the termination of his existence might be without pain, having always looked upon death as the less evil of the two. He was of a middle stature, in person gross and corpulent; his features were coarse, and his countenance heavy; if not wholly devoid of animation, it certainly was by no means expressive. In his gait and dress he was rather clumsy and slovenly, and frequently walked with his tongue hanging out of his mouth.

His conversation abounded with very unequal sallies of wit. When he found himself engaged with a powerful antagonist in argument, he had sometimes recourse to ridicule, a weapon which he did not always handle with dexterity, for he was affected with an impediment in his speech, which rendered his enunciation scarcely intelligible.

About the age of twenty-one, Dr Darwin was seized with a fit of the gout, in consequence of which he totally abstained from all fermented liquors, not even tasting small beer, nor a drop of any kind of wine; but he ate plentifully of meat, and all kinds of vegetables and fruit, using as his drink, at meals, chiefly water alone, or cream and water, with tea and coffee between them. By this abstinence from fermented liquors, he kept quite free from gout for fifteen years, and also from some other complaints to which he had been subject. He then indulged [7:7:632]himself occasionally with a little wine and water, cyder and water, or the like, but was speedily admonished into his former temperance by a paroxysm of the gout. He was in the habit of eating a large quantity of food, and his stomach possessed strong powers of digestion. His advice frequently was, “Eat, or be eaten ;” but he took every opportunity to impress a dread of all fermented liquors on the minds of his patients, whose diseases he was too ready to represent as originating in the frequent use of them. In the Botanic Garden he has also taken an opportunity to express his strong antipathy against fermented and spirituous liquors, by comparing their effects to that of the Promethean fire: “The ancient story of Prometheus, who concealed in his bosom the fire he had stolen, and afterwards had a vulture perpetually gnawing his liver, affords so apt an allegory for the effects of drinking spirituous liquors, that one should be induced to think the art of distillation, as well as some other chemical processes, such as calcining gold, had been known in times of great antiquity, and lost again. The swallowing of drams cannot be better represented in hieroglyphic language, than by taking fire into one’s bosom; and certain it is, that the general effect of drinking fermented or spirituous liquors is an inflamed, schirrous, or paralytic liver, with its various critical or consequential diseases, as leprous eruptions on the face, gout, dropsy, epilepsy, and insanity.”

The various productions of Dr Darwin’s fanciful and philosophical pen have long since been exposed to public criticism, and received an ample share, as well of obloquy as of applause. Still, however, he has claims to celebrity, from the literary lustre which adorns his character as a medical philosopher, a philosophical agriculturist, and a poet.

The pretensions of Dr Darwin as a medical philosopher rest chiefly on his Zoonomia. In whichever point of view this work be considered, whether as a mere repository of curious natural and medical facts, or as a scheme and system of pathological and physiological disquisition, it must ever be allowed to possess distinguished merit. As a philosophical agriculturist Dr Darwin is entitled to high consideration. A small portion of his Phytologia is devoted to a fanciful system of vegetable physiology; the second part, divided into three sections, treats of the economy of vegetation; and the third, on agriculture and horticulture, is divided into six sections. Dr Darwin, in his capacity of poet, does not stand very high in the estimation of some. His cadences are not sufficiently varied for a poem of such length as the Botanic Garden ; indeed there is an evident mechanism in the construction of his lines, which it is by no means pleasant to detect. But in some of his minor effusions he is particularly happy. The beautiful little song to May is exquisitely finished; and it would be difficult to find thirty lines in the Botanic Garden to rival in dignity and pathos the “Address to Swilcar’s Oak,” introduced in the Phytologia.

As a prose writer Dr Darwin was incorrect; his grammatical errors are numerous, and he was even deficient in orthography. In the year 1758 he published, in the Philosophical Transactions, “An attempt to confute the opinion of Henry Earl, concerning the'ascent of vapour ;” and “An account of the cure of a periodical haemoptoë, by keeping the patient awake.” This was followed by “Experiments on animal fluids in the exhausted receiver.” He inserted in the Derby Mercury, an elegy written at Matlock, and addressed to Mrs Darwin; another piece occasioned by the appearance of a most fatal distemper among horned cattle, at Calke, near Derby; and a third article on the occasion of the earthquake, which was felt at Derby and in the surrounding country. In 1782 the Botanical Society of Lichfield published a translation of Linnaeus’s Systema Vegetabilium, the execution of which was principally confided to Dr Darwin. His other works have already been mentioned in the course of this biographical sketch. He left a poem entitled The Temple of Nature, which was published after his death.