Darwin’s Chronic Illness

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Our book is an exploration of Charles Darwin’s mysterious illness and a proposed solution to its nature. In the first half of the book, the first five chapters, we introduce the problem and then give the history of his illness, with its symptoms, followed by a survey of the previously proposed explanations, discussing how they have failed to give a convincing explanation. We then look at the pattern of apparently related illnesses in Darwin’s family tree and explain the clue they provide, that his illness might have been a form of mitochondrial genetic disease, leading to chronic illness. The following three chapters give the basics of mitochondrial biology, explore how Darwin’s specific symptoms might well have reflected mitochondrial deficiency, and describe how the idea might be tested (and the difficulties of doing so). The final chapter returns to Darwin the man and how our hypothesis relates to his deep interest in evolution, and to some major chronic diseases in the world today, and how his illness may be related to them.</jats:p>