Pioneer of Natural Selection: William Charles Wells of Charleston

William Charles Wells is one of those historical figures who should be better known than he is. He was the first person to propose the theory of natural selection, decades before Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace. He was also the first to explain why dew forms on grass.

Wells was born in Charleston [then Charlestown], South Carolina in 1757 of Scottish immigrant parents. His father, Robert Wells, established a successful business as a printer, bookseller, and newspaper publisher in the town. [Image: Wells Shop, 71 Tradd Street]

When he was eleven, William's parents sent him to Scotland for education. Upon completion of his preparatory studies two years later, he attended Edinburgh University for a year. 

During his time in Scotland he made several lifelong friendships. One of his closest friends was David Hume, nephew of the famous philosopher of the same name. It is very likely he met the philosopher himself or at least became familiar with his ideas. 

Wells returned to Charleston in 1771 and started a medical apprenticeship under Dr. Alexander Garden, one of the most respected physicians in the town. Garden was also a respected naturalist for whom Linnaeus named the gardenia. 

In 1775, Wells left Charleston abruptly for London. The move was prompted by the beginning of the American War for Independence. He had refused to sign a document calling for armed resistance to the British government. His father, an ardent Loyalist, had already gone to London earlier that year.

The following year he enrolled again at the University of Edinburgh and studied medicine. In 1778 he returned to London and took a course of lectures under the famed anatomist William Hunter. He was also accepted as a surgeon's pupil at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. 

In 1779 he enlisted as a surgeon in a Scottish regiment in the Netherlands. According to his own account he resigned his commission due to ill-treatment by his commanding officer. He challenged the officer to a duel, but the officer refused to respond.

Wells then enrolled in the University of Leiden and prepared a dissertation, On Cold. He submitted it to Edinburgh in 1780 and received his M.D.

In May 1780, the British captured Charleston. Wells returned early in 1781 to manage his family's affairs there. For more than a year he wore many hats: he worked as a printer, bookseller, merchant, and a trustee for the properties of some of his father's friends. He also served in the Loyalist militia. 

When the British evacuated Charleston in December 1782, Wells removed to St. Augustine, where he established the first weekly newspaper in Florida, The East Florida Gazette. The paper did not last long, however. The British returned Florida to Spain in 1784 as part of the treaty ending the American War for Independence. [Image: one of the surviving issues of the The East Florida Gazette

From Florida, Wells returned to London and lived near or with his parents. His father Robert had prospered there initially as a printer on Fleet Street, but fell into heavy debt before his death in 1794.  

After returning to London, Wells devoted himself to medical and scientific pursuits. He became one of the physicians to the charitable Finsbury Dispensary in 1790 and joined the medical staff of St. Thomas's Hospital in 1798 as an Assistant Physician. 

Two years later, he was appointed Physician at St. Thomas. He never prospered particularly in medicine, however, a fact he attributed in part to his exclusion from the prestigious Royal College of Physicians. Membership was then effectively restricted to M.D.s from Oxford and Cambridge.

For several years in the early 1800s he campaigned unsuccessfully to open the membership of College to graduates of all recognized medical schools. 

In 1793 his intellectual reputation was sufficient to get him elected to the Royal Society of London, one of the world's most prestigious scientific associations. He was later elected to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 

After his return to London, he lived for a time at Salisbury Square, Fleet Street. He later moved to Sergeants Inn, a short distance away on the same street. [Image: Sergeants Inn, Fleet Street, where Wells lived in his later years. It is currently a boutique hotel] 

Wells made several important contributions to medical and scientific research. In 1814 the Royal Society awarded Wells the Rumford Medal for his groundbreaking Essay on Dew. Through painstaking research on many a chilly morning, he was the first to establish that the cause of dew formation was condensation of water under specific conditions of temperature, temperature change, and the conductivity of materials.  

Later Victorian scientists, including Sir John Herschel and John Tyndall, praised Wells' Essay on Dew as a model of inductive method. Herschel used it as the main example of the method in his Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, calling it "beautiful." 

In 1813 Wells presented a paper to the Royal Society entitled "Some observations on the causes of the differences of color and form between the white and negro races of men." His object was to try to explain the origins of the human "races," which he equated with "varieties." 

In the course of the presentation, he stated the principle of natural selection 45 years before Darwin and Wallace.  After discussing the artificial selection of domestic breeding of animals, he goes on to propose that the different varieties of humankind are the result of selection by nature: 

"[What was done for animals artificially] seems to be done with equal efficiency, though more slowly, by nature, in the formation of varieties of mankind, fitted for the country which they inhabit. Of the accidental varieties of man, which would occur among the first scattered inhabitants, some would be better fitted than the others to bear the diseases of the country. This race would multiply while the others would decrease, and as the darkest would be best fitted for the [African] climate, at length they would become the most prevalent, if not the only race."

The paper was published in 1818, but Darwin and Wallace were not aware of it when they presented their joint paper on natural selection in 1858. After Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859, an American clergyman alerted him to the existence of Wells' work.

In later editions, Darwin acknowledged that Wells was likely the first person to have hit upon the principle of natural selection, although he noted correctly that Wells had limited it to humans and "certain characters alone," not the entire spectrum of life. Ironically, Darwin himself did not directly apply natural selection to humans in The Origin of Species. That came later, in The Descent of Man (1871). 

Wells died of heart disease in 1817. He left behind a brief memoir of his life. It was published the following year, along with his Essay on Dew and the paper in which he proposed the idea of natural selection.

He is buried next to his parents at St. Bride's, Fleet Street, which was known as "The Printer's Church" because of the concentration of printing establishments on Fleet Street. A memorial his sister Louisa erected to Wells and their parents was destroyed by German bombs in World War II.

Louisa Wells Aikman was herself a music score collector and author. She was banished from South Carolina as a Loyalist in 1778. She recorded her experiences in A Voyage from South Carolina to London (London, 1779). Another of Wells' sisters, Helena, was the author of several books, including two novels. Wells never married and had no known children. 

Sources: The main source for Wells' life is his short memoir mentioned above.   

An overview of Well's life and a detailed analysis of his work can be found in N.J. Wade, Destined for Distinguished Oblivion: the Scientific Vision of William Charles Wells (New York: Springer, 2003)

  

 

Isambard Kingdom Brunel: The Second Greatest Briton?

In 2002, the BBC aired a TV series called 100 Greatest Britons. The show was based on a TV poll designed to see who British people considered the greatest Britons in history. The series included ten episodes featuring the top ten vote getters. Viewers were invited to vote after each program. 

The original poll included some surprises, including Guy Fawkes, who was executed for his role in attempting to blow up Parliament in 1605. He didn't make the final ten, but I suspect he might if the poll were held now. 

Less of a surprise due to her recent demise, Princess Diana came in third, beating Darwin, Newton, and Shakespeare. It seems that the voters viewed her as a more significant historical figure than three of history's greatest geniuses. But, you know, royals.... 

Perhaps most surprising was that an engineer came in second of the the top ten. He led the polling for weeks only to be edged out in the end by a comedian, Winston Churchill.

Yes, Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859) was voted the second greatest Briton of all time! Never heard of him? Shame on you. He was surely one of the greatest engineers of all time.

One reason for Brunel's high rank in the poll was the fervent campaigning of the students of London's Brunel University -- which as you can guess, was named for I. K. Brunel.

Although few English folk in these Brexit days may like the fact, Brunel was half French. His father, Marc Brunel, was a refugee from Napoleonic France who married an English woman. Marc was also an engineer. 

Isambard followed in his father's footsteps. His first major project was assisting Marc in the construction of the first tunnel under the Thames (1825-43). The Thames Tunnel, connecting Rotherhithe and Wapping, continues to operate as a railway tunnel for the London Overground. [Images: Thames Tunnel in the 1840s, before it became a railway tunnel, and train exiting the tunnel at Wapping in 1870]

In 1831, Isambard designed one of the great landmarks of the West Country, the superb Clifton Suspension Bridge across the Avon Gorge in Bristol. He designed many other notable bridges, including the Royal Albert Bridge across the Tamar River in Plymouth, which opened in the year of his death, 1859. [Images: Bridges]

In 1833, Brunel became chief engineer of the Great Western Railway, an enormous project that ran from London, Paddington to Bristol and later, Exeter in Devon. Brunel designed nearly everything, including stations, tunnels, and viaducts, and the Royal Hotel in the spa town of Bath. The Box Hill Tunnel was the longest in the world when it opened at 1.41 miles. Brunel designed it so that the sun would rise at the entrance on his birthday! 

In conjunction with the railway, Brunel designed a system in which  passengers could buy a ticket in London that would take them all the way to New York by rail and steamship. For the purpose, he designed a new ocean-going steamship, The Great Western (1838). At 236 feet, it was the longest ship in the world when launched. Its maiden voyage proved the practicality of transatlantic commercial steamship travel. [Image: The Great Western on its maiden voyage]

This success led Brunel to design a larger (322 ft) steamship: The Great Britain (1843). It is considered the first modern ship because Brunel used propellers instead of paddle wheels to drive it, and built it of iron instead of wood. It has survived to this day and can be visited in Bristol harbor. [Image: Launch of the Great Britain]

In 1852, Brunel began work on a monster iron steamship, the Great Eastern. At almost 700 feet (210m) long, it was the largest ship built before the beginning of the 20th century. It was originally an d fittingly called the Leviathan. [Image: Great Eastern] 

The Great Eastern was designed to carry 4000 passengers, far more than any other ship of the time. Brunel intended it for service to India and Australia, but that was not to be. 

Construction was marred by cost overruns and technical problems, and it proved uneconomic as a passenger ship. It was simply too big for its time. There were just too few customers who could afford the price of filling its cabins. Brunel himself died before its first voyage. 

The Great Eastern was not a complete failure. It was used to lay the first transatlantic telegraph cable from London to New York in 1866, bringing about instant communication between Europe and America. It ended its life as a floating music hall and a floating billboard for Lewis's Department Store. 

To our great loss, The Great Eastern was sold and broken up for scrap in 1889-90. But Brunel had his revenge in 2002 by being named the second greatest Briton. 

 

  

Imagine If You Will: The World Before Vaccination

Imagine if you will, a world in which 1 child in 3 or 4 does not survive infancy. A world in which one-half of children or more do not reach their 21st birthday. A world in which the average life span is in the 30s. 

That world was reality not so very long ago. In the late 19th century, when my grandparents were born, the average life span in the UK, then one of the most advanced countries in the world, was still only in the 40s. Both my grandmothers died at age 42. None of my grandparents lived to see me, not that that would have been the highlight of their lives. 

Human longevity began increasing slowly in the late 18th century, then increased rapidly during the 20th century, despite devastating world wars and the worst pandemic in modern times. 

The developments that made this increase possible were many: improvements in food production, sanitation, housing, personal hygiene, and medicine. In the world of medicine, antisepsis (from the 1840s) antibiotics (from 1940s), and numerous pharmaceutical and surgical advances all contributed to the increase in longevity. 

I would argue that the most important medical breakthrough has been the development of vaccines. The first vaccine was that for smallpox, generally credited to Edward Jenner, an English physician, who announced his discovery to the world in 1796. 

At that time smallpox was perhaps the most feared disease plaguing the world. Mortality often exceeded 20 percent of those infected, compared to about 1 percent for Covid19. Survivors could suffer long-term impairment: often a pock-marked face, sometimes a loss of sight or hearing. 

Jenner (or a friend of his) also gave us the words "vaccine" and "vaccination." They derive from the Latin for "cow" -- vacca. Why "cow"? you may ask. His vaccine consisted of cowpox matter, a milder but related disease once common in cows.

Jenner's vaccine has a backstory. He was not the first to use cowpox matter to prevent smallpox. An English farmer, Benjamin Jesty, had used it about twenty years before. But Jesty did not publicize it. Jenner did and reaped a fortune. 

A different method of smallpox prevention was widely used in parts of the world before Jenner's discovery. Inoculation, as it came to be known, involved purposely infecting healthy people with smallpox matter from the pustules. 

Ordinary folk in China, Africa, and the Ottoman Empire had used some variety of the procedure for some time before knowledge of it came to Western Europe and America in the early 18th century. (See Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Smallpox Inoculation)

Inoculation was highly controversial. Some opponents rejected it on religious grounds, others from the fear that it could spread the disease. It could also kill. About 1 inoculated person in 100 died. 

In contrast, the natural disease often produced a case mortality rate of 20 percent or more. In some populations, mortality approached 80-90 percent. 

These facts help explain both the opposition to inoculation and the desire for it. In British North America, where it became common after the 1720s, some communities tried to ban it, but public demand for it was powerful, especially during epidemics, and in some towns general inoculations took place at public expense. 

Interestingly, as the American Revolution approached, many colonials demanded inoculation to give them "liberty" from a dread disease, not as an infringement of their freedom. 

During the American War for Independence, General Washington ordered the inoculation of all soldiers in the Continental Army, a move that helped secure victory over the British.  

The soldiers obeyed Washington's order. In fact, many of them were demanding it, even inoculating themselves when it was still prohibited. Compare that to the attitudes of today's anti-vaxxers.

Twenty years after Washington's directive, news of Jenner's vaccine began to spread around the world. In many countries it became mandatory and free. When my family emigrated to America from the UK in 1952, we had to provide proof of smallpox vaccination to be admitted. I still have a faint imprint of the scar on my left arm. 

Eventually, in 1979, the vaccine achieved something unique. The World Health Organization declared that smallpox had been eliminated from the world. 

No other vaccine has achieved this yet, although the polio vaccine has nearly eradicated a disease that terrified parents in the early 20th century. 

One reason why the smallpox vaccine was so successful is that the causative virus is highly stable. In some types of diseases, notably influenza, the causative organism mutates often. 

Vaccines do not always provide complete or lasting immunity. But the array of vaccines science has developed since Jenner has saved hundreds of millions of lives. 

Below is a list of some of the main ones, and the year in which each vaccine was first developed or approved (In some cases, more effective vaccines came later):

Cholera -- 1880

Rabies -- 1885

Tetanus -- 1890

Typhoid Fever -- 1896

Bubonic Plague -- 1897

Tuberculosis -- 1921

Diphtheria -- 1923

Scarlet Fever -- 1924

Pertussis (Whooping Cough) -- 1926

Yellow Fever -- 1932

Typhus -- 1937

Influenza -- 1937 (first of many)

Polio -- 1952

Measles -- 1963 

Mumps -- 1967

Rubella (German Measles) -- 1970

Pneumonia -- 1977

Meningitis -- 1978

Hepatitis B -- 1981

Chicken Pox -- 1984

Hepatitis A -- 1991

Lyme Disease -- 1998

Human Papillomavirus  (Causes Cervical Cancer) -- 2006

Malaria and Dengue Fever -- 2015

Ebola -- 2019

Covid-19 -- 2020

PS. I contracted several of these diseases in my youth because no vaccines yet existed. They included measles, rubella, and chicken pox. I recently had the chicken pox vaccine to prevent shingles, a painful disorder that often attacks older people who contracted chicken pox as a child. 

The Elephant in the Environmental Room: Global Population

Nearly every day we hear news about the ongoing climate disaster, which is about much more than climate change. It is about environmental destruction, air, soil, and water pollution, food and water shortages, species extinctions, unprecedented floods, fires, storms, and more. They are all related.

We hear about these things, but do our minds really comprehend it all? Media coverage of the looming catastrophe is too limited to have the required impact. Besides, most people have more important things to attend to, like the lives of celebrities and the everyday struggle to survive -- or making a fortune from destroying the environment.  

Even if the reporting on climate change was increased considerably, discussion of the problem largely ignores one of its main causes: the pressure of human population.  

This is the "elephant in the room." Too many people ignore its connection to major global problems. To name a few: disposal of human wastes, lack of clean water, food shortages, child and spousal abuse, the energy crisis, urban congestion.   

For many reasons, some of them good, population control is a highly controversial subject. A media dependent upon advertising revenue tiptoes around it at best, ignores it at worst. The rest of us do so at our peril.

For many millennia, the human population of this globe we inhabit counted in the thousands or millions, not billions as now. 

Around 1750, the world entered a period of sustained population rise. By 1800 it was close to a billion for the first time. Few people noticed. In fact, many people believed the human population was declining.

One who disagreed was Thomas Malthus, an Anglican parson. He first published An Essay on Population in 1796. Malthus warned of the tendency of unchecked population growth to outstrip resources, leading to famine, disease, and war. Malthus called these disasters "natural checks" to population growth.

These natural -- and horrible -- checks bring populations back into line with resources for a time. But human beings are forgetful. As soon as things get better, they procreate themselves into a renewed cycle of suffering. Would it not be better, Malthus wrote, to avoid this vicious circle by limiting our numbers by "artificial" checks? 

Malthus received abundant criticism. Some observers proclaimed him a Cassandra, a prophet of doom. Others denounced his suggested method of reducing population. He called it "self-restraint." By this he meant, in effect, sexual abstinence. Many critics viewed that as laughable, given the power of human sexual drives.

Some methods of contraception existed even in those days. But they were associated with prostitution, promiscuity, and sin. As a clergyman, Malthus could not or would not suggest artificial contraception. In fact, he denounced all such things as "vice." 

Malthus did gain a following. But many of those who accepted his diagnosis of the problem rejected his solution as impractical. These "Neo-Malthusians" argued that the only practical way to limit population was by spreading knowledge of, and improving, methods of contraception. 

Disseminating such knowledge was illegal in most countries, however, and could result in fines or imprisonment. In any case, the efforts of the Neo-Malthusians did little to curb the growth of the human population globally.

By 1900, it had reached around close to 2 billion, roughly twice the 1800 population. During the next century, despite two devastating world wars and the worst pandemic in modern history, it soared to more than 6 billion. It is currently (2021), close to 8 billion. Projections vary, but experts estimate that it could reach twice that number by 2100. 

Some experts claim that the earth can support far more people than it currently does. That may be true, but at what level of existence? And with what consequences for the rest of the natural world?

Even in prosperous, "peaceful" countries millions struggle merely to survive. In less prosperous nations, about two billion are living in conditions no better than those of the preindustrial world. Often worse, because these unlucky people are packed into festering, fetid slums with inadequate supplies of clean water and sanitation. 

A common and humane answer to this is the need to raise their standard of living through education, women's rights, social security, improved housing, health care and the like. No friend of mankind can oppose such improvements. But a few billion new consumers will put additional pressure on an already distressed natural environment. 

Malthus's "natural checks" could eventually reduce the human population to environmentally sustainable levels. But such a "solution" would involve immense suffering and may come too late to save the natural world.

We have the means to curb population. Humans must learn to limit their numbers. The superrich will find a way to maintain a high standard of life -- at least until there is no longer a way to be found. I suppose they will go off to Mars at that point. We can do better here on earth, if we will it.

Sweet William, Stinking Billy, and the Battle of Culloden

William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland (1721-1765), is unique in British history. He had two flowers named after him. One is called "Sweet William," the other, "Stinking Billy." The names reflect a sharp division of opinion about his suppression of the Jacobite Rebellion in 1746. [Image: Cumberland, by Joshua Reynolds, 1750s]

The Rebellion began the previous year when his cousin Charles Edward Stuart landed on the West Coast of Scotland with a small band of supporters. He had come from France to claim the British throne for his father James, known in history as the Old Pretender, or James "III". 

Charles' grandfather, James II, had been deposed by the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Afterwards, the Catholic Stuarts had been banned from the royal succession and supplanted by their closest Protestant relatives, the German Hanoverians. In 1745, the second of this line, George II, occupied the throne. [Image: Charles Edward Stuart, by Ramsay, 1745)

Charles' undertaking was extremely risky. Britain and France were at war, but the French government had given him little support beyond good luck. Charles landed with a small group of supporters and raised the Stuart standard at Glenfinnan, at the head of Loch Shiel. A  monument there commemorates the landing.

The iconic Glenfinnan viaduct nearby carries the trains of the West Highland Railway, including a steam excursion train called the Jacobite Express. Fans of Harry Potter will be familiar with the scene.

Charles sent out a call to the Highland Clans to join him in restoring his family to power. Thousands of Highlanders, many of them Catholic, but not all, rallied to his cause. After all, the Stuarts were a Scots dynasty. Charles's makeshift army quickly seized Edinburgh and defeated a Hanoverian army sent by King George II. 

The Jacobites marched on into England, meeting little resistance. They reached Derby, less than 150 miles from London. Panic gripped the capital. 

Derby turned out to be the high tide of the Jacobite advance. Although the Hanoverians were unpopular, few Englishmen (or Lowland Scots) had joined Charles' army. He wavered, then ordered a retreat to Scotland. 

George II sent an army in pursuit. He selected his son William, Duke of Cumberland to command it. On April 16, 1746 Cumberland's soldiers caught up with the Jacobite army at Culloden Moor, near Inverness. The ranks of William's army contained many Scots, mostly Lowlanders, but some Highlanders as well. In fact, there were more Scots in Cumberland's army than in that of Prince Charles. For Scots, this was a civil war. 

The mostly Highland army Charles led had been thinned by desertion and losses. His men were hungry, exhausted, and greatly outnumbered. Their artillery lacked proper ordinance. Nevertheless, he ordered an attack. What followed was more of a massacre than a battle, with waves of Highlanders cut to pieces by Hanoverian artillery, musket fire, and bayonets.  

Basking in victory, William made the move that brought him infamy, and not only in Scotland. Asked by his officers what they should do with the remnants of the enemy army, he wrote on the back of a playing card, "No Quarter." 

The victorious English and Lowland soldiers butchered hundreds of surrendering and fleeing clansmen. Others were hunted down over the following weeks and months and killed, often along with family members. More were captured and taken to Edinburgh or London, many to be executed for treason. 

When news of the victory reached London, a flower was named for him. It is called "Sweet William" (Dianthus). 

Political opponents of the government in England had a different reaction. Learning of the widespread massacres, they began to call William "Butcher Cumberland."

Scottish Jacobites also named a flower after Duke William. They relabeled the common ragwort "Stinking Billy." Generally regarded as a weed, it has a strong smell and is poisonous to horses. 

Culloden was the only success of William's otherwise undistinguished military career. From the late 1750s, he devoted himself to horse racing and politics. In 1765 he became Prime Minister, but died a few months later, aged 44. 

Charles Edward Stuart fled after the battle and spent months in hiding before returning to France. After his father died in 1766, he became known as the "Young Pretender." He died in Rome in 1788 having engaged in numerous affairs, an alcoholic. He had no legitimate children, and his wife had left him, claiming that he had abused her. Thus ended the Stuart line.

Nineteenth-century Romantics dubbed Charles "Bonnie Prince Charlie."  He became the subject of several songs, including the "Skye Boat Song" and "The Bonnie Moorhen." Inexplicably, some Scots continue to revere him, although he led the country into disaster and then abandoned it to a life of wining and dining on the Continent. 

Culloden was the last battle fought on British soil.