From Lawson Tait 8 August 1876
Birmingham
Aug 8/76
My Dear Sir,
Thanks for your prompt & kind compliance with my wish.1
I trust you will forgive me saying that your objection seems to me to arise from mixing up the idea of moral evil with physical evil or suffering Strange though it may seem the moral question seems to me the simpler of the two.2
I will not at present take up your time with my notions on the origin of diseases, but I am gradually forming a theory by which it will be brought under the great rule of evolution. But the question is so complicated that it wants the most cautious handling & the better plan would be follow the example of Fritz Muller and take one disease and work out the proof of your theory there as he did in the Crustaceans3 But unfortunately we do not know exactly the natural history of any one disease! An awful want, hindering the progress of Medical Science in every direction.
I purpose to take syphilis as my example because we know more about it than about any other disease & it is the only one to which we have anything on history attached But, then, it is a subject we cannot make acceptable to the public. Yet the sexual question is the most important field for our studies & the process of evolution
Yours faithfully | Lawson Tait
I send you a review on my article by Mr. George Dawson4
Footnotes
Summary
Proposes to work on the origin of diseases; is going to study syphilis.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-10574
- From
- Robert Lawson (Lawson) Tait
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Birmingham
- Source of text
- DAR 178: 35
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 10574,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-10574.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 24