My ancestor’s private memories of Darwin

04 February 2009

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Sir Norman Moore was Charles Darwin’s doctor and friend for many years. Charlotte Moore, his great-granddaughter, reveals the intimate recollections in his private correspondence

Darwin wrote a glowing testimonial when Moore applied for promotion at Bart’s, and later asked him to become his own doctor. On 25 March 1882 Moore wrote in his medical casebook: ‘Valetudo conquassata. [Approximately, his health is shattered]. Chest rounded. Cardiac dulness almost absent. Heart: no murmur action feeble... No doubt dilated. Artery at wrist somewhat hardened... Attacks of pain in chest at night seemingly due to air in stomach he says... Urine: no albumen.’ Ten days later he was summoned again. ‘Says his pulse has been irregular all his life... Never had ague. Not even on Beagle travels... Seems to me very feeble.’ Moore was right; the health of the ‘head sage’ was indeed shattered. Frank telegrammed with news of his father’s death on 19 April.

Moore wrote to Frank, ‘Your father... said that... he was anxious that his end might not be one of gradually increasing and prolonged suffering and he added that he wished this as much for his friends as for himself. It is a thing,’ he said, ‘that I have always dreaded.’

‘There was something in your father which seemed to me superior even to his scientific greatness... I shall always remember him, in addition to all his fame, as a man whose spirit and mind made me feel him one of the kindest and best of his time.’