Illness Helped Theory Evolve Panic Disorder Forced Darwin To Stay Indoors, Focus On Concept Of Evolution, Researchers Say
Charles Darwin might never have revolutionized biology with his theory of evolution if he had not suffered from chronic mental illness that turned him into a scholarly recluse, a provocative new study concludes.
Before he was out of his 20s, Darwin succumbed to a mysterious, debilitating condition that various authorities attributed over the years to bad nerves, tropical disease, arsenic poisoning, intellectual exhaustion, dyspepsia, “suppressed gout” or other complaints.
That condition, two physicians argue in today’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, was most likely a form of panic disorder aggravated by agoraphobia. The combination kept the celebrated naturalist removed from society and probably forced him to focus on the epochal concept of natural selection, according to Thomas J. Barloon and Russell Noyes Jr. of the University of Iowa College of Medicine.
“Had it not been for this illness,” they write, “his theory of evolution might not have become the all-consuming passion that produced ‘On the Origin of Species.”’
Panic disorder, which affects an estimated 13 million Americans, manifests itself in unexpected attacks of extreme anxiety, with symptoms including rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath, trembling, sweating, nausea and dizziness. The condition frequently occurs in combination with agoraphobia, an acute dread of being outside.
In a journal, Darwin (1809-1882) described his malady as a “sensation of fear … accompanied by troubled beating of the heart, sweat, trembling of muscles.” It was exacerbated by unfamiliar locations or the absence of a reassuring companion. Darwin often turned down invitations to travel, citing fear of “novelty and excitement.”
The onset of panic disorder usually occurs between late adolescence and the mid-30s. Darwin was 27 when his illness first became severe.
He had been a gregarious collegian, intrepid traveler and vigorous outdoorsman. But by 1837 - only a year after his return to England after a five-year voyage to South America and the Pacific - he began to complain of an “uncomfortable palpitation of the heart,” according to a biography by Adrian Desmond and James Moore.
The symptoms arose shortly after he started a secret notebook, filled with speculations about the “transmutation” of species over time, that 22 years later would become his elaboration of the theory of evolution.
Symptoms persisted after marriage to Emma Wedgwood and lasted until the last decade of his life. In the interim, he was tormented by anxiety and incessant stomach problems. “A third of his working life was spent doubled up, trembling, vomiting and dousing himself in icy water,” Desmond and Moore write.
The “water cure” was prescribed in 1849 by a physician who believed “cold water over the body” would “stimulate the circulation and draw the blood supply away from the inflamed nerves of the stomach,” Darwin’s biographers write. Darwin flourished under the treatment.
James C. Ballenger, of the department of psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina, said the new study is “entirely credible and convincing.”
Though the “water cure” may have had no physiological effect, Ballenger said, “the placebo effect is incredibly effective in panic disorder, and as many as 60 or 70 percent of patients transiently lose their symptoms.”