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)

  

 

Darwin's Bulldog Bites Soapy Sam: The Oxford "Debate" over Evolution, 1860

In June 1860, seven months after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, scientists gathered at the Oxford University Museum. The occasion was the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Darwin himself was not in attendance, due to illness. (Image: Oxford Museum of Natural History, as it is today)

The meeting lasted a week but the main event took place on Saturday June 30. It was preceded by a long, tedious presentation by Professor John W. Draper of New York University. His subject was the intellectual development of Europe considered in relation to Darwin's theory. 

The discussion that followed is often called the Huxley-Wilberforce Debate after two the key participants, biologist and comparative anatomist Thomas Henry Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce, the Anglican Bishop of Oxford. 

Their clash has gone down in history as a dramatic moment when evolutionary science, represented by Huxley, self-styled "Darwin's Bulldog" delivered a knockout blow against religion, championed by the Bishop, nicknamed "Soapy Sam." 

How Wilberforce got his nickname is a matter of debate, but he is supposed to have explained it good-humoredly, saying that although often in hot water, he always came out with clean hands. 

The caricatures below are of Wilberforce and Huxley, by "Ape" from Vanity Fair, 1869 and 1871. The artist, Carlo Pellegrini, often signed his work "Ape." It was not a reference to anthropoids, fitting as that might be. It was Italian for "Bee." Pellegrini could sting as well as amuse.

The reality of the Great Debate is more complicated than the legend. No official record exists of the discussion. Those who attended left conflicting recollections of what was said. The main lines are clear enough, however.

Wilberforce and Huxley were not the only participants in the discussion. Both of them were supported by prominent scientists and clergymen, which renders a strict "Science v. Religion" interpretation problematic. Both, however, came to the meeting with the intent of defending their respective positions on "Darwinism."

Huxley's most notable ally at Oxford was the renowned botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker. Darwin's closest friend, Hooker was the Assistant Director of Kew Botanical Gardens. He later became its Director.

Several prominent scientists supported Wilberforce. Among them was Robert Fitzroy, who had commanded the expedition during which Darwin had conceived the outlines of natural selection. After The Origin appeared, Fitzroy is supposed to have declared that he wished he had never taken Darwin along on the Voyage of the Beagle. (Image: Robert Fitzroy)

Fitzroy was a first-rate meteorologist who devoted much of his life developing an effective system for warning ships of approaching stormy weather. He was also a devout Christian literalist. His main contribution to the Oxford Debate seems to have been raising a large Bible over his head and beseeching the audience to believe in God rather than man -- the man in this case being Darwin. 

(Image: HMS Beagle in Tierra del Fuego) 

Another of Bishop Wilberforce's supporters was Richard Owen, professor of biology. An accomplished comparative anatomist and paleontologist, Owen is perhaps best known for coining the word "dinosaur. " His greatest achievement was campaigning for and overseeing the establishment of the vast and wonderful Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London (below).

Owen had written a highly critical review of Darwin's Origin after its publication. He had also helped Wilberforce to write a longer review of his own. Owen encouraged Wilberforce to speak at the Oxford meeting and coached him on the main points of attack. 

Owen did not deny the idea of evolution itself, and some of his views have influenced modern evolutionary theory. But he claimed that Darwin had oversimplified the developmental process, that humans were a unique species, and that all life developed according to designed (divine) laws. (Image: Richard Owen)

Darwin ascribed Owen's hostility to the Origin to jealousy of the attention it brought to Darwin. Owen had also attacked Huxley and Hooker as Darwin's "short-sighted disciples." In particular, Owen had ridiculed Huxley for suggesting that humans were descended from an ape-like creature. 

At the 1860 debate, Bishop Wilberforce used scientific arguments, largely supplied by Owen, to counter Darwin's position. But what made the encounter famous (eventually) was Wilberforce's question, directed at Huxley, which went something like this: 

"Is it through your grandfather or your grandmother that you claim descent from a monkey?" 

Many years later Huxley wrote that hearing that, he turned to the man sitting next to him, Dr. Benjamin Brodie, and said, "The Lord hath delivered him (Wilberforce) into my hands" 

Huxley had not sought this encounter. He had intended to skip the session and head for home. Wilberforce was a famous and accomplished orator. Huxley, not yet the great public speaker he later became, did not relish butting heads with the Bishop. He was persuaded to stay and "defend the cause" by Robert Chambers, a Scottish journalist. 

Chambers had published a book advocating evolution in 1844. The Vestiges of Creation was a bestseller that aroused a huge furor. Huxley, then an evolutionary skeptic, had written a hostile review of the Vestiges, but the two men were now on the same side. Chambers believed that Huxley's knowledge of comparative anatomy could carry the day.

Huxley countered Wilberforce by defending the main points of Darwin's theory of natural selection. Then he finished with the famous declaration that he would not be ashamed to have a monkey for his ancestor. What he would be ashamed of was to be descended from a man who used great gifts to obscure the truth. 

According to later accounts, this put-down of Wilberforce left the audience in an uproar. One woman is reported to have fainted at seeing a bishop treated so disrespectfully. Or, maybe her corset was too tight.

History generally credits Huxley as the winner of the Great Debate. At the time, that was not so clear. Many contemporaries thought Wilberforce had the best of it. Never a shrinking violet, he was sure he had. 

Hooker claimed that Huxley did not adequately defend the arguments of the Origin and added the audience couldn't hear much of what he said anyway. Hooker, who spoke after Huxley, claimed that it was he and not Huxley who done the best job of countering Wilberforce's attacks. Scientists are human, after all.  (Image: Joseph Hooker)

The debate at Oxford did not receive a huge amount of attention at the time. It became legendary as a pivotal moment in the history of science only decades later. The monument memorializing the debate (below) was erected 150 years later outside the Oxford Museum.

Owen feuded with Huxley and Hooker for many years. Their disagreements became more than intellectual. Darwin, once friendly with Owen, wrote in 1871: "I used to be ashamed of hating him (Owen) so much, but now I will carefully cherish my hatred and contempt to the last days of my life."

Interestingly, Huxley and Darwin remained on good terms with Wilberforce after the debate. Darwin had gone to Cambridge with the aim of entering the church as an Anglican minister. Even after he returned from the voyage aboard the Beagle, he seems to have retained that aim for a time. 

In 1839, Rev. John Bachman of Charleston, himself an accomplished naturalist, was visiting England. He met Darwin and asked him what he was going to do with the rest of his life. Darwin replied, he intended to become a bishop. 

If Darwin was serious then he soon abandoned that intention. In his autobiography he explained that he no longer believed in God. His family removed those passages from later editions.  

The Oxford Debate may not have been the clear seismic event some later accounts claimed. But it remains an important and fascinating moment in the history of science. 

  

 

 

Tennis: the Early Years, 1874-1930s.

(Image above) "Lawn Tennis" by Louis Prang, 1887.

Lawn tennis evolved from a much older medieval game. Real tennis, as it is usually called nowadays, is played in indoor courts with walls the balls can be hit off of.[1] Originally, the balls were hit with the hand, first bare, then gloved. This gave it its French name, jeu de paume. Rackets replaced hands in the 16^th century and sore hands gave way to sore elbows.

Real tennis was widely played in the “courts” of Europe, and it is still played in the UK and a few other countries. Several real tennis courts survive at Oxford, Cambridge, Hampton Court Palace and Falkland Palace in Scotland. Henry VIII and Mary Queen of Scots both loved the game. Legend has it that Henry was playing it at Hampton Court while Anne Boleyn was being executed. The image below is of the real tennis court at Falkland Palace in Fife, Scotland.

Real tennis probably originated in France, and it was in the royal tennis court at Versailles that one of the most pivotal events of the French Revolution occurred. When an angry Louis XVI ordered them locked out of their chamber during the meeting of the Estates-General in June 1789, representatives of the Third Estate moved to the nearby royal tennis court and took an oath not to disband until they had produced a constitution. The “Tennis Court Oath” was the effective beginning of the revolution. [Image: Jacques David, “The Oath of the Tennis Court” c. 1794]

The man often credited with inventing lawn tennis was an Englishman, Major Walter Clopton Wingfield, but others in the UK and America had a hand in its creation. The first lawn tennis club opened in Leamington Spa in 1874. Wingfield patented an hourglass-shaped court and published a book of rules for lawn tennis in the same year. In 1875, the Marylebone Cricket Club drew up a slightly different set of rules which, with some changes, govern the sport today. Wingfield’s odd-shaped court did not catch on, either, being replaced by the rectangular court we know today. [Image: Wingfield’s hourglass court and his book of rules.]

One of the hourglass courts survives at the house of scientist Charles Darwin, at Down in Kent.  

1875 proved an important year for lawn tennis in another way. A croquet club in Wimbledon, England, adopted lawn tennis as a second sport, setting aside one lawn for the new game. The Croquet Club  was founded by “six gentlemen” in 1868. The Wimbledon club held its first gentlemen’s singles championship in 1877 to raise funds. At the same time, it changed its name to the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club. The first “Wimbledon” champion, Spencer Gore, was nonchalant about it all. “Lawn tennis,” he said, “will never rank among our great games.” 

Great or not, the game soon became fashionable among the leisured and moneyed classes. Companies began to advertise equipment and outfits for playing tennis. As the ad below shows, the outfitters borrowed some fashions from existing sports such as boating, golf, and cricket. 

Despite the emphasis here on male attire, ladies also quickly took up the game. Playing tennis in long skirts on top of layers of petticoats, bustles, corsets, long drawers and stockings must have been a major challenge.

During the 1880s, lawn tennis had become the main focus of Wimbledon’s AELTC. In 1882, its members voted to drop “croquet” from the club’s name. In 1884, the Wimbledon club added ladies’ singles and gentlemen’s doubles championships. In 1913, the AELTC added ladies’ doubles and mixed doubles. International competition began in these early years. The US Open began in 1881, the French Open (now Roland Garros) in 1891, and the Australian Open in 1905. The Davis Cup, originally called The International Lawn Tennis Challenge, began in the late 1890's. The image below shows an International  Challenge match in Melbourne in 1912.

Lawn tennis might have really taken off at that point, if it hadn’t been for the outbreak of The Great War in 1914. For the next four years, many tennis countries were preoccupied by the military struggle. Amidst the appalling carnage, tennis competitions were halted.

On a less grim note, the war helped to change fashions, particularly for women. Petticoats, bustle and corset gave way to simpler, more comfortable modes of dress, using much less fabric, which was needed for military uniforms. The new fashion trends passed into women’s tennis attire. The French phenomenon Suzanne Lenglen paved the way at Wimbledon in the 1920s in a daring, some thought scandalous, outfit exposing her arms and a bit of thigh. 

Women were quicker to adopt a new style of attire than men. Most of them continued to play in long trousers into the 1930s and beyond. In 1933, the UK's Bunny Austin became the first male player to appear on Wimbledon Centre Court in shorts, shocking at least some observers of the game.  [Valerie Warren, Tennis Fashions: Over 125 Years of Costume Change (Wimbledon, 2002]

By the 1930's, lawn tennis had matured as a game and produced superlative athletes. It was no longer played only on lawns but was yet to produce mega incomes for the top players.  

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[1] The word “real” seems to imply that lawn tennis is artificial, but likely derives from the Spanish and Portuguese word for royal, “real.” It is often called "royal tennis" in the UK.

Darwin and Darwinism in Victorian Cartoon and Caricature

The publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871) provided plentiful material for the cartoonists and caricaturists. One of my favorites is this one, published in Punch in the year of Darwin's death, 1882. It plays on the fact that Darwin had also written the definitive work on earthworms. A worm emerging from CHAOS is evolving into a variety of questionable primate forms before emerging as a proper Victorian gentleman tipping his hat to Darwin, portrayed as a Greek philosopher. Scientific it isn't, but it is a worthy tribute to the great scientist.    

Many of the caricatures of Darwin highlighted the then frightening notion that man was descended from an ape or monkey, although Darwin stressed that humans were not descended from any existing primate species but from earlier, extinct forms. 

Punch published the two below in 1861, one of an ape arriving for a Victorian formal affair, the other of an ape asking about his relationship to homo sapiens. 

Intentionally or not, "Monkeyana" had definite racist overtones. In the 1780's Darwin's grandfather, Josiah Wedgwood, had produced a medallion for anti-slavery organizations in England in which an enslaved African in chains asked the same question. 

Darwin himself was sometimes presented as an ape-like man, or apes were portrayed as resembling him. The four below are from the 1870's, after the publication of the Descent of Man.

The last of these four, from Punch, was inspired by Darwin's book on climbing plants, reissued in 1875.

But Darwin was not the only famous person to be associated with apes, as this 20th century poster shows.