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From Lawson Tait   17 March [1875]1

7, Great Charles St. | Birmingham.

March 17

Dear Sir,

Another matter I should like to draw your attention to. I send by this post a short essay which I wrote a few months ago and I should like you to read pp 58–632

I think there is a pathological interest in the curious tumours mentioned there which bears on evolution

The more I think over some of the problems of pathology the more I lean towards the view that their solution will be aided by regarding them from a “Darwinian” point of view.3

When you have read the passage referred to and have leisure I should be much gratified by having your opinion about it.

“Hypererchetic”, coined from “υπεrεrχομαι I act over or beyond” gives it more meaning.4

Yours truly, | Lawson Tait

I suppose I may include the contents of your letter about “tails” in my note on the subject?5

CD annotations

7.1 I suppose … subject? 7.2] scored red crayon

Footnotes

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter to Lawson Tait, [13–15 March 1875].
2
Tait sent his essay The pathology and treatment of diseases of the ovaries (Tait 1874); CD’s annotated copy is in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL.
3
In Tait 1874, pp. 58–63, Tait discussed the formative origin of such structures as teeth, bone, and cartilage in what he referred to as ‘dermoid cysts’ of the ovary. He argued that the development of these structures in the cysts could only be accounted for by CD’s theory of pangenesis (Tait 1874, p. 60). CD had outlined his provisional hypothesis of pangenesis (hereditary transmission) in Variation 2: 357–404.
4
Tait hypothesised, ‘It may be that the ovum has in it the origin-buds of certain tissues, and that, under exceptional hypererchetic action, they may go on to the rudimental formation of these tissues without a fusion with the male germ’ (Tait 1874, p. 60). Tait’s transcription of the Greek word included two Roman letter ‘r’s rather than the Greek letter rho (‘ρ’).
5
Tait quoted from CD’s letter to him of [13–15 March 1875] in Tait 1875a, p. 127.

Bibliography

Tait, Lawson. 1874. The pathology and treatment of diseases of the ovaries; being the Hastings prize essay of 1873. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

Variation: The variation of animals and plants under domestication. By Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1868.

Summary

Sends a short essay [The pathology and treatment of diseases of the ovaries (1874)] on which he would welcome CD’s opinion. Believes problems of pathology can be attacked by regarding them from "Darwinian" point of view.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-9892
From
Robert Lawson (Lawson) Tait
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
Birmingham
Source of text
DAR 178: 4
Physical description
ALS 3pp †

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 9892,” accessed on 20 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-9892.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 23

letter

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