From 1837 Charles Darwin was frequently incapacitated with stomach pains, vomiting, severe boils, heart palpitations and trembling. In one of his letters he wrote that he could not able to work for one day in every three and was "altogether too dispirited to write". His declining health prevented him from attending his own father's funeral 11 years later in 1848 - by which time he was also suffering from fainting spells and spots before his eyes. In fact, he believed he was dying. (There has been modern medical speculation as to Darwin's pathology - some theories believe he may have caught Chapas disease from insect bites in South America, others that he had a severe case of Menieres disease, and yet more that say he may have had systemic lactose intolerance .... but nobody really knows. It wasn't nice, anyway, poor man.)
Finally, in 1849 he sought treatment in Malvern from a Dr James Manby Gully, a physician who owned a hydrotherapy spa. Dr Gully was initially recommended to Darwin by Captain Sullivan of HMS Beagle, and his cousin William Darwin Fox who knew two friends who had benefitted by Dr Gully's care. Gully was a medical graduate of Edinburgh university, and (like Darwin who had given up the study of medicine at the same place because he hated the brutality of surgery and the dubious science behind primitive prescribing) disliked much of then current medical practice. Gully was also a homeopath.
Poor old Darwin must have been desperate by then. He had seen a number of conventional physicians who had failed to alleviate any of his symptoms. He was so desperate, in fact, that he took his entire family to Malvern (150 miles away from where they lived, which is a long old way by horse and carriage especially if you keep being sick all the time) where they stayed for several months. After being at Gully's spa for 9 days, Darwin lamented about being given prescriptions of homeopathic remedies, although he still took them.
Charles Darwin wrote:I grieve to say that Dr Gully gives me homeopathic medicines three times a day, which I take obediently without an atom of faith.
However, just a few days later Darwin wrote:
Charles Darwin wrote:I have already received so much benefit that I really hope my health will be much renovated.
After 8 days a skin eruption broke out all over Darwin's legs, which pleased him as he had already noticed his physical symptoms and low mental state were improved if such a thing happened. He went a whole month without vomiting (unusual for him) and gained weight. He surprised himself by being able to walk 7 miles. After a month of treatment he admitted Gully was not a quack after all. After 16 weeks he felt like a new man, and soon after returned home to get on with his work. Seven years later in 1856 he acknowledged that Gully's treatment was so successful that "never (or almost never" the vomiting returns".
However, Darwin was still extremely sceptical about homeopathy:
Charles Darwin wrote:You speak about homeopathy, which is a subject which makes me even more wrath even than does claivoyance. Clairvoyance so transcends belief, that one's own ordinary faculties are put out of the question, but in homeopathy common sense and common observation come into play, and both these must go to the dogs, if the infinitesimal doses have any effect whatsoever.
Obviously, as Darwin himself believed, it was the water (hydrotherapy) that did it.
Nihil timendum est
CW 
