Was Darwin Lactose Intolerant?

You knew it, didn't you? You just knew it. All that controversy over evolution – and it's all our fault.

Sorta. Anthony K Campbell and Stephanie B Matthews recently published a History of Medicine article in the Postgraduate Medical Journal (2005;81:248-251) that makes a case that Charles Darwin's lifelong illnesses were really symptoms of "systematic lactose intolerance."

Here's the abstract:

After returning from the Beagle in 1836, Charles Darwin suffered for over 40 years from long bouts of vomiting, gut pain, headaches, severe tiredness, skin problems, and depression. Twenty doctors failed to treat him. Many books and papers have explained Darwin’s mystery illness as organic or psychosomatic, including arsenic poisoning, Chagas’ disease, multiple allergy, hypochondria, or bereavement syndrome. None stand up to full scrutiny. His medical history shows he had an organic problem, exacerbated by depression. Here we show that all Darwin’s symptoms match systemic lactose intolerance. Vomiting and gut problems showed up two to three hours after a meal, the time it takes for lactose to reach the large intestine. His family history shows a major inherited component, as with genetically predisposed hypolactasia. Darwin only got better when, by chance, he stopped taking milk and cream. Darwin’s illness highlights something else he missed—the importance of lactose in mammalian and human evolution.

Not everybody buys this, of course, but just think if Darwin had made the connection in the 19th century. That sure would have made those long years in the 1970s before I got diagnosed a lot more fun.

If only Darwin had been smarter…