What was Darwin, so far as his endocrine composition was concerned?  In the first place his father was a variety of pituitocentric, of the post-pituitary inferior type, six feet two inches tall, exceedingly corpulent, and, in the eyes of his son, the sharpest of observers and the most sympathetic of men.  He wished to make a physician out of his son in order to carry on the medical tradition of the family:  Erasmus Darwin was a physician before him.  His son, however, showed no inclination for so learned and confining a profession and had to be reproached by his father in these immortal words:  “You care for nothing but shooting dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.”

Cambridge came after Edinburgh, as he was rushed from medicine into the clergy.  But in vain.  A friendship struck up with a naturalist, Henslow, settled his career for him.  Henslow heard of a trip of general exploration the ship Beagle was to take and recommended Darwin as naturalist.  The captain at first would not hear of the proposal because of Darwin’s nose, a typical pituitary proboscis.  But his prejudices were overcome, and Darwin sailed.

It was upon this voyage that Darwin made himself the greatest naturalist of all time, and at the same time infected himself with the virus of neurasthenia.  At Plymouth, while waiting for the ship to sail, he complained of palpitation and pain about the heart, probably due to a transient hyperthyroidism, brought on by excitement.  During the voyage, which lasted five years, he was afflicted often by sea-sickness.  A ship-mate relates that after spending an hour with the microscope he would say “Old Fellow, I must take the horizontal for it” and lie down.  He would stretch out on one side of the table, then resume his labors for a while when he again had to lie down.  Already fatigability had to be fed with rest.  A serious illness that Darwin claimed affected every secretion of his body acted probably as the exhausting drain upon his adrenal potential.

The return to England was the date of onset for a record of continuous illness, aggravated by his marriage, apparently, for his misery increased progressively after it.  So much so that he was forced to leave London altogether so as to avoid the strain of social life, even that of meeting his scientific friends or attending scientific society meetings fatiguing him to exhaustion.  After such occasions there would be attacks of violent shivering, with vomiting and giddiness.  It was necessary for him to impose upon himself an absolute regime of daily routine.  Any interference with it upset him completely, and made it impossible for him to do any work.  Early morning was the only time for physical as we; as mental exertion.  Evening found him thoroughly used up, with every move an effort.  Insomnia made him its prey.  A curious sensitiveness to heat and cold distressed him.  In 1859, when the “Origin of Species” appeared, he wrote to a friend that