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“We conclude that it may well be that he had some justification for his worry about his offspring. But it’s not all genetic doom and gloom – three of his sons were so prominent that they were knighted by Queen Victoria for their achievements.”
The research is published in the current issue of the journal BioScience.
-source https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...t%20species.&usg=AOvVaw0c4ZQt90Q8jSwqR45-b9SLDarwin himself was sickly, and contemporary researchers have theorized that he suffered from Chagas disease inflicted by insects in South America during his voyage on the HMS Beagle.
He obsessively logged information about his own health, which may have influenced his interest in his children’s health, Berra said. But he also recognized from his botanical research that the long tradition of intermarriage between the Darwins and the Wedgwoods – a common practice among prominent families in Victorian England – might have had the unintended consequence of harming the health of his children.
Darwin’s third child, Mary Eleanor, lived for only 23 days and died in 1842 of an unknown cause. Annie, his first daughter and second child, died in 1851, and his last child, Charles Waring, died at 18 months of scarlet fever in 1858.