Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwinwas an English physician. One of the key thinkers of the Midlands Enlightenment, he was also a natural philosopher, physiologist, slave-trade abolitionist, inventor and poet. His poems included much natural history, including a statement of evolution and the relatedness of all forms of life. He was a member of the Darwin–Wedgwood family, which includes his grandsons Charles Darwin and Francis Galton. Darwin was a founding member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, a discussion group of pioneering industrialists and...
ProfessionDoctor
Date of Birth12 December 1731
ask time
No, Sir, because I have time to think before I speak, and don't ask impertinent questions.
afar drag drive field flying rapid shall slow soon thy wings
Soon shall thy arm, unconquered steam! afar / Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car; / Or on wide-waving wings expanded bear/ The flying chariot through the field of air.
bows climbs eagle eye golden homage rising step
With zealous step he climbs the upland lawn, And bows in homage to the rising dawn; Imbibes with eagle eye the golden ray, And watches, as it moves, the orb of day.
bar cold flows follow glowing hissing mass red stroke turn
Stroke follow strokes, the sparkling ingot shines,/ Flows the red slag, the lengthening bar refines;/ Cold waves, immersed, the glowing mass congeal,/ And turn to adamant the hissing Steel.
acquire beneath born breathing countless feet forms groups larger life limbs move organic pierce powers successive unseen vegetation waves
Organic life beneath the shoreless waves Was born and nurs'd in ocean's pearly caves; First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass, Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass; These, as successive generations bloom, New powers acquire and larger limbs assume; Whence countless groups of vegetation spring, And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing.
pain loss mind
I much condole with you on your late loss... pains and diseases of the mind are only cured by Forgetfulness;--Reason but skins the wound, which is perpetually liable to fester again.
running sex father
The Reproductions of the living Ens From sires to sons, unknown to sex, commence... Unknown to sex the pregnant oyster swells, And coral-insects build their radiate shells... Birth after birth the line unchanging runs, And fathers live transmitted in their sons; Each passing year beholds the unvarying kinds, The same their manners, and the same their minds.
children cutting blood
Another thing very injurious to the child is the tying and cutting of the navel string too soon, which should always be left till the child has not only repeatedly breathed but till all pulsation in the cord ceases. As otherwise the child is much weaker than it ought to be, a part of the blood being left in the placenta which ought to have been in the child and at the same time the placenta does not so naturally collapse, and withdraw itself from the sides of the uterus, and is not therefore removed with so much safety and certainty.
nature pain heart
By firm immutable immortal laws Impress'd on Nature by the GREAT FIRST CAUSE, Say, MUSE! how rose from elemental strife Organic forms, and kindled into life; How Love and Sympathy with potent charm Warm the cold heart, the lifted hand disarm; Allure with pleasures, and alarm with pains, And bind Society in golden chains.
science anxiety disease
The hypochondriac disease consists in indigestion and consequent flatulency, with anxiety or want of pleasurable sensation.
drug credit disease
Opium is the only drug to' be rely'd on-all the boasted nostrums only take up time, and as the disease [is] often of short duration, or of small quantity, they have gain'd credit which they do not deserve.
life life-is states
Life is a forced state! I am surprized that we live, rather than that our friends die.
kings sorry war
I am sorry the infernal Divinities, who visit mankind with diseases, and are therefore at perpetual war with Doctors, should have prevented my seeing all you great Men at Soho to-day-Lord! what inventions, what wit, what rhetoric, metaphysical, mechanical and pyrotecnical, will be on the wing, bandy'd like a shuttlecock from one to another of your troop of philosophers! while poor I, I by myself I, imprizon'd in a post chaise, am joggled, and jostled, and bump'd, and bruised along the King's high road, to make war upon a pox or a fever!
thinking disease physicians
There are some modern practitioners, who declaim against medical theory in general, not considering that to think is to theorize; and that no one can direct a method of cure to a person labouring under disease, without thinking, that is, without theorizing; and happy therefore is the patient, whose physician possesses the best theory.