Erasmus Alvey Darwin

Erasmus Alvey Darwin (29 December 1804 – 26 August 1881), nicknamed Eras or Ras, was the older brother of Charles Darwin, born five years earlier. They were brought up at the family home, The Mount House, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. He was the only other son besides Charles, the fourth of six children of Susannah (née Wedgwood) and Robert Darwin, and the grandson of Erasmus Darwin and of Josiah Wedgwood, a family of the Unitarian church. He was a member of the semi-secretive Cambridge Apostles society, a debating club largely reserved for the brightest students. Education He was educated at Shrewsbury School between 1815–1822 as a boarder, and as a frail and studious boy his interest was in books and plants rather than friends. His mother died in 1817 and he was joined at the school by his brother Charles in September 1818. Darwin became bored with the classical curriculum and took an interest in chemistry, with Charles as his assistant. They had a garden shed at their home fitted out as a laboratory. In 1822 Erasmus went on to a medical course at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he studied Chemistry under Professor James Cumming. When it came to be time for his one-year external hospital study in 1825 he went to the University of Edinburgh, accompanying his younger brother who was just starting a course there in medicine. They planned ahead, Erasmus thinking "It will be very pleasant our being together, we shall be as cozy as possible", arriving early at Edinburgh to make social contact with old friends of the family in Whig society, and so "we can both read like horses". Erasmus enrolled with John Lizars, a "charming" and respectable surgeon on the other side of Surgeon's Square from his chief rival as a private tutor, the flamboyant Robert Knox who two years later became embroiled with the body-snatchers Burke and Hare. Near the end of March, Erasmus finished his hospital study, leaving Charles behind, and enrolled in a London anatomy school. By 1828 Erasmus was ready to sit his Bachelor of Medicine exam at the University of Cambridge, and early in the new year he was accompanied to Cambridge by his brother Charles who had given up on medical studies and was now starting a course to qualify as a clergyman. That summer he went on a Continental tour to Munich, Milan and Vienna, and on his return home during the Christmas holiday he and Charles visited London, touring the scientific institutions.