Feature of the month - February 2009
Charles Darwin
February 2009 sees the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of the naturalist Charles Darwin. In November 2007 an article appeared on this web site concerning Charles Darwin's letter of July 25th 1868 acknowledging his election as member of The Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, the forerunner Society to the Royal Society of Medicine.
A further search of the RSM Archives has turned up the proposal paper for Darwin's honorary election to the Society, illustrated here. It is signed by members of Council. From that same occasion, and pasted into the same album, are proposal papers for Darwin's fellow naturalists Joseph Dalton Hooker, Director of the Botanical Gardens at Kew, and Thomas Henry Huxley. Another eminent medical man elected that day as an Honorary Fellow was the surgeon Hippolyte Baron Larrey, son of Dominique Jean Larrey, the famous French military surgeon.
Unfortunately, the album is in poor condition and cannot, at present, be consulted. However, if the necessary conservation work can be carried out in sufficient time, the album will form part of an exhibition planned for November 2009 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species.
Previous features of the month:
- January 2009 - John Clare
- December 2008 - Prospero Alpini
- November 2008 - Robert John Thornton
- October 2008 - Robert Willan
- September 2008 - John Parkinson
- August 2008 - Florence Nightingale
- July 2008 - John Bostock
- June 2008 - William Morton
- May 2008 - William Withering
- April 2008 - Mary Toft
- March 2008 - James Wolveridge
- February 2008 - Percival Willughby
- January 2008 - Bills of Mortality
- December 2007 - Inter-Allied Conferences
- November 2007 - Charles Darwin
