Memoirs of the life of Dr. Darwin : chiefly during his residence in Lichfield, with anecdotes of his friends, and criticisms on his writings / by Anna Seward.

  • Seward, Anna, 1742-1809.
Date:
1804
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memoirs of the life of Dr. Darwin : chiefly during his residence in Lichfield, with anecdotes of his friends, and criticisms on his writings / by Anna Seward. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    Equal success, as in the case of Mr. Inge, continued to result from the powers of Dr. Darwin's genius, his frequent and intense meditation, and the avidity with which he, through life, devoted his leisure to scientific acquirement, and the inves- tigation of disease. Ignorance and timidity, super- stition, prejudice, and envy, sedulously strove to attach to his practice the terms, rash, experimental, theoretic; not considering, that without experimen- tal theory, the restoring science could have made no progress; that neither time, nor all its accumulation of premature death, could have enlarged the circle, in which the merely practical physician condemns himself to walk. Strength of mind, fortitude unap- palled, and the perpetual success which attended this great man's deviations from the beaten track, enabled him to shake those mists from his reputa- tion, as the lion shakes to air the dewdrops on his mane. In 1757, he married Miss Howard, of the Close of Lichfield, a blooming and lovely young lady of eighteen. A mind, which had native strength; an awakened taste for the works of imagination; ingenuous sweetness; delicacy animated by spright- liness, and sustained by fortitude, made her a capable, as well as fascinating companion, even to a man of talents so illustrious....To her he could,