38 Facts About Erasmus Darwin

Erasmus Darwin's poems included much natural history, including a statement of evolution and the relatedness of all forms of life.

Erasmus Darwin turned down an invitation from George III to become Physician to the King.

Erasmus Darwin was born in 1731 at Elston Hall, Nottinghamshire, near Newark-on-Trent, England, the youngest of seven children of Robert Erasmus Darwin of Elston, a lawyer and physician, and his wife Elizabeth Hill.

The name Erasmus Darwin had been used by a number of his family and derives from his ancestor Erasmus Darwin Earle, Common Sergent of England under Oliver Cromwell.

Erasmus Darwin obtained his medical education at the University of Edinburgh Medical School.

Erasmus Darwin settled in 1756 as a physician at Nottingham, but met with little success and so moved the following year to Lichfield to try to establish a practice there.

Erasmus Darwin was a highly successful physician for more than fifty years in the Midlands.

Erasmus Darwin married twice and had 14 children, including two illegitimate daughters by an employee, and, possibly, at least one further illegitimate daughter.

In 1775, Erasmus Darwin met Elizabeth Pole, daughter of Charles Colyear, 2nd Earl of Portmore, and wife of Colonel Edward Pole ; but as she was married, Erasmus Darwin could only make his feelings known for her through poetry.

When Edward Pole died, Erasmus Darwin married Elizabeth and moved to her home, Radbourne Hall, four miles west of Derby.

Erasmus Darwin had been a Freemason throughout his life, in the Time Immemorial Lodge of Cannongate Kilwinning, No 2, of Scotland.

Charles Erasmus Darwin's name does not appear on the rolls of the Lodge but it is very possible that he, like Francis, was a Mason.

Erasmus Darwin died suddenly on 18 April 1802, weeks after having moved to Breadsall Priory, just north of Derby.

Erasmus Darwin's body is buried in All Saints' Church, Breadsall.

Erasmus Darwin is commemorated on one of the Moonstones, a series of monuments in Birmingham.

Erasmus Darwin then wrote The Loves of the Plants, a long poem, which was a popular rendering of Linnaeus' works.

Erasmus Darwin wrote Economy of Vegetation, and together the two were published as The Botanic Garden.

Erasmus Darwin's works were read and commented on by his grandson Charles Darwin the naturalist.

Erasmus Darwin based his theories on David Hartley's psychological theory of associationism.

Erasmus Darwin was familiar with the earlier proto-evolutionary thinking of James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, and cited him in his 1803 work Temple of Nature.

Erasmus Darwin offered the first glimpse of his theory of evolution, obliquely, in a question at the end of a long footnote to his popular poem The Loves of the Plants, which was republished throughout the 1790s in several editions as The Botanic Garden.

Erasmus Darwin's poetry was admired by Wordsworth, while Coleridge was intensely critical, writing, "I absolutely nauseate Darwin's poem".

Erasmus Darwin regretted that a good education had not been generally available to women in Britain in his time, and drew on the ideas of Locke, Rousseau, and Genlis in organising his thoughts.

Erasmus Darwin contends that young women should be educated in schools, rather than privately at home, and learn appropriate subjects.

Some women of Erasmus Darwin's era were receiving more substantial education and participating in the broader world.

Erasmus Darwin established a lifelong friendship with Benjamin Franklin, who shared Erasmus Darwin's support for the American and French revolutions.

The members of the Lunar Society, and especially Erasmus Darwin, opposed the slave trade.

Erasmus Darwin attacked it in The Botanic Garden, and in The Loves of Plants, The Economy of Vegetation, and the Phytologia.

In 1761, Erasmus Darwin was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.

Erasmus Darwin experimented with the use of air and gases to alleviate infections and cancers in patients.

Erasmus Darwin conducted research into the formation of clouds, on which he published in 1788.

Erasmus Darwin inspired Robert Weldon's Somerset Coal Canal caisson lock.

In 1792, Erasmus Darwin was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.

However, Erasmus Darwin had speculated on these sorts of events in The Botanic Garden, A Poem in Two Parts: Part 1, The Economy of Vegetation, 1791:.

Erasmus Darwin was the inventor of several devices, though he did not patent any: he believed this would damage his reputation as a doctor.

Erasmus Darwin encouraged his friends to patent their own modifications of his designs.

In notes dating to 1779, Erasmus Darwin made a sketch of a simple hydrogen-oxygen rocket engine, with gas tanks connected by plumbing and pumps to an elongated combustion chamber and expansion nozzle, a concept not to be seen again until one century later.

Erasmus Darwin House, his home in Lichfield, Staffordshire, is a museum dedicated to him and his life's work.