Much has been written about the chronic ill health of Charles Darwin, who, shortly after his epochal Beagle voyage, retreated to the country, where he lived out his life as a virtual recluse.
What was wrong with him? Panic disorder, according to psychiatrist Russell Noyes and radiologist Thomas J. Barloon of the University of Iowa College of Medicine in Iowa City, writing in the 8 January Journal of the American Medical Association. Darwin, born in 1809, had an active youth. But at 28, a year after returning from the 5-year voyage on the Beagle, he started having "sensations of fear" and soon moved with his wife to a house in Kent. Until his death in 1882, Darwin suffered symptoms of severe anxiety, from heart palpitations, lightheadedness, and shortness of breath to trembling, hysterical crying, and nausea and vomiting. He spent a lot of time "treading on air and vision," which the authors say suggests feelings of depersonalization. He feared going out, the agoraphobia often seen with panic disorder, writing in 1837 "anything which flurries me completely knocks me up afterwards and brings on violent palpitation of the heart."
Doctors puzzled over Darwin during his life and have been doing so ever since his death, positing such diagnoses as parasitic diseases, arsenic poisoning, depression, epilepsy, and inner-ear disorder. But the symptoms clearly add up to panic disorder, say Noyes and Barloon. That diagnosis "really is very convincing," concurs Columbia University psychiatrist Jack Gorman.
As for poor Darwin, there may have been compensations for his travails. "[I]ll-health ... has annihilated several years of my life [but] has saved me from the distraction of society," he wrote. Conclude the authors: "Had it not been for this illness, his theory of evolution might not have become the all-consuming passion that produced On the Origin of Species."
