The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online

RECORD: Darwin, C. R. 1886. [Words attributed to Darwin: 'It is a wonder that we are alive'.] In Thomas Lauder Brunton, On disorders of digestion, their consequences and treatment. London; New York: Macmillan, p. 47.

NOTE: The words attributed to Darwin are given here in bold. This appears to be a misquotation from Darwin's 19 November 1881 letter to Brunton: "How any one of us keeps alive for a day is a marvel!" Correspondence vol. 29, p. 549. The exact article Darwin was referring to was not revealed in the correspondence, but is cited here by Brunton:

Brunton, 1880. Indigestion as a cause of nervous depression. The Practitioner: A Journal of Therapeutics and Public Health, 25 (Oct. and Nov.) A3647

[page] 47

As a rule people are now fully alive to the risks they run from poisoning by sewer-gas, or, to put it more widely, from poisoning by products of decomposition outside the body; but perhaps we do not all keep before us so clearly as we ought the fact that inside the body there are all the conditions for the formation of putrefactive products, and the most favourable arrangement for their rapid absorption. As the late Mr. Darwin once remarked to me, after reading my paper on Indigestion and Nervous Depression: "It is a wonder that we are alive," running, as we do, a constant risk of poisoning by the products of our own digestion.

Citation: John van Wyhe, ed. 2002-. The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. (http://darwin-online.org.uk/)