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From T. L. Brunton   26 April [1879]1

50, Welbeck Street, | Cavendish Square, W.

April 26th.

My dear Sir

I regret that I have not paid as much attention to the Zoonomia as the work certainly deserves and that I cannot at present give the information you wish2 I think I may learn something within the next few days. As it is for a German work you may be interested to notice that Dr. Darwin seemed to be acquainted with the discovery made by Rosenthal in 1872 of the paralysis of vessels by exposure to heat.3 I send a copy of the British Medical Journal containing an article I wrote on Rosenthals discovery. When you have finished with it I should like it back as I have no other copy. I should mention however that the passage in Zoonomia to which I refer is not perfectly clear.4

Yours very truly | T Lauder Brunton

Footnotes

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter to T. L. Brunton, 25 April 1879.
2
CD had asked about the influence of Erasmus Darwin’s Zoonomia (E. Darwin 1794–6) on medical practice (letter to T. L. Brunton, 25 April 1879).
3
CD’s biographical sketch was intended as a preliminary notice to an English translation of Ernst Krause’s account of Erasmus Darwin’s scientific work (Krause 1879a). Isidor Rosenthal had published his discovery in Zur Kenntniss der Wärmeregulirung bei den warmblütigen Thieren (Understanding heat regulation in warm-blooded animals; Rosenthal 1872, p. 12).
4
Brunton had published an article on ‘catching cold’, in which he used Rosenthal’s discovery to explain why sudden changes of temperature, particularly from higher to lower than normal blood temperature, resulted in a cold (British Medical Journal, 28 June 1873, p. 735). In a passage in Zoonomia, Erasmus Darwin had stated that the ‘sensorial power of irritation’ of cutaneous capillaries was exhausted by heat, and not regained for some time after being subjected to a lower temperature (E. Darwin 1794–6, 2: 570). CD mentioned this anticipation of a modern discovery in Erasmus Darwin, p. 109.

Bibliography

Darwin, Erasmus. 1794–6. Zoonomia; or, the laws of organic life. 2 vols. London: J. Johnson.

Erasmus Darwin. By Ernst Krause. Translated from the German by W. S. Dallas, with a preliminary notice by Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1879.

Krause, Ernst. 1879a. Erasmus Darwin, der Großvater und Vorkämpfer Charles Darwin’s: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Descendenz-Theorie. Kosmos 4 (1878–9): 397–424.

Rosenthal, Isidor. 1872. Zur Kenntniss der Wärmeregulirung bei den warmblütigen Thieren. Erlangen: Eduard Besold.

Summary

Regrets he has not given Zoonomia the attention it deserves. Informs CD that Erasmus Darwin may have anticipated a discovery about paralysis of vessels by exposure to heat [see Erasmus Darwin, p. 109].

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-12014
From
Thomas Lauder Brunton, 1st baronet
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
London, Welbeck St, 50
Source of text
DAR 99: 183
Physical description
ALS 2pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 12014,” accessed on 24 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-12014.xml

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