History of the RSM
Feature of the month - November
View the letter [PDF 141k]Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin’s letter of 25 July 1868 acknowledging his election as member of The Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society.
At this time Darwin was on holiday in the Isle of Wight where he and his family stayed for six weeks in a cottage owned by the photographer Julia Cameron.
He wrote to Alfred Russel Wallace: “We have been here for five weeks for a change, and it has done me some little good; but I have been forced to live the life of a drone…”
The Darwins’ stay in the Isle of Wight, however, did have its diversions: they received a visit from the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, Charles sat for a portrait photograph for Mrs Cameron, and he evidently found time to catch up on his correspondence.
Previous features of the month:
- October 2007 - John Elliotson
- September 2007 - Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus
- August 2007 - The Medical and Surgical History of the British Army
- July 2007 - Monica Baldwin
- June 2007 - Rudyard Kipling
- May 2007 - How the RSM came to be Number One in Wimpole Street
- April 2007 - John Snow