Dr's Casebook: In the footsteps of Charles Darwin in Ilkley

Last week I spent a few pleasant days in Ilkley and was interested to learn that Charles Darwin spent the autumn of 1859 in the town.

Dr Keith Souter writes: He arrived on October 4 to take the water cure at Wells House, a hydropathic spa hotel, and to anxiously await the publication of his book.

He was exhausted from writing the Origin of Species, the ground-breaking book which would shake the very foundations of religion and belief.

While he was in Ilkley his publisher sent him a review copy of the book on November 2, but the book was not published until November 24.

He duly started on revisions for the second edition, while he awaited reactions and reviews by his naturalist colleagues.

Sadly, Darwin was plagued by ill health all his life. He was subject to all manner of symptoms, ranging from cramps, dizziness, bouts of melancholy, palpitations and nausea and vomiting.

He took all the conventional treatments of the day, including laudanum and bismuth salts for his stomach, but hydrotherapy in the form of cold water baths and douches, and drinking the spring waters seemed to give him the most benefit.

Darwin liked to walk and regarded his twice daily walks as an important part of his intellectual routine. Back in the grounds of his home at Down House in Kent he walked a gravel track that he called his ‘thinking path’. He strolled and reflected as he did rounds of the path, each time kicking a stone from a pile of pebbles on the path.

I find it an amusing parallel that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote that his fictional detective Sherlock Holmes could have a three pipe problem to solve, whereas Charles Darwin would declare that some ideas were four pebble problems.

There is a Darwin Walk in Ilkley, that starts at the Darwin Garden at the top of the town below Ilkley Moor. It visits Wells House where there is a blue plaque, and a boulder of Millstone Grit with an image of the great man on it. It also takes in views of White Wells where the original spring is located and which became the inspiration for Ilkley’s water cure.

I enjoyed walking it and imagining the great scientist walking ahead of me kicking pebbles as he thought about evolution and pushed back the frontiers of knowledge.