Wade Nicholas J
School of Psychology, University of Dundee, Dundee DD1 4HN, UK.
J Hist Neurosci. 2010 Apr 8;19(2):85-104. doi: 10.1080/09647040903504807.
In the biography of his grandfather (Erasmus Darwin), Charles Darwin hinted that his father (Robert Darwin) had received parental assistance in conducting and writing his medical thesis (which concerned afterimages). The experiments also involved visual vertigo, and they were elaborated by the senior Darwin in his Zoonomia, published in 1794. Erasmus Darwin's interpretation was in terms of trying to pursue peripheral afterimages formed during rotation; it was at variance with one published two years earlier by William Charles Wells, who had investigated the visual consequences of body rotation when the body is subsequently still. Wells penned two retorts to the Darwins' theory; although they were not accepted by Erasmus, he did devise a human centrifuge, models of which were employed in later studies of vertigo. Wells's ideas on evolution were expressed in a paper delivered to the Royal Society (in 1813) but not published in its Transactions. Commenting on the case of a white woman, part of whose skin was black, he proposed a process of change that was akin to natural selection. His ideas were acknowledged by Charles Darwin in the fourth edition of On the Origin of Species.
在其祖父伊拉斯谟·达尔文的传记中，查尔斯·达尔文暗示他的父亲罗伯特·达尔文在撰写医学论文（关于后像）的过程中得到了父母的帮助。这些实验还涉及视觉性眩晕，资深达尔文在其1794年出版的《动物法则》中对这些实验进行了详细阐述。伊拉斯谟·达尔文的解释是试图追踪旋转过程中形成的周边后像；这与两年前威廉·查尔斯·韦尔斯发表的观点不同，韦尔斯研究的是身体静止后身体旋转对视觉的影响。韦尔斯对达尔文父子的理论进行了两次反驳；尽管伊拉斯谟没有接受，但他确实设计了一台人体离心机，其模型在后来的眩晕研究中得到了应用。韦尔斯关于进化的观点在一篇提交给皇家学会（1813年）的论文中有所表述，但未发表在《皇家学会学报》上。在评论一名部分皮肤为黑色的白人女性的案例时，他提出了一个类似于自然选择的变化过程。他的观点在《物种起源》第四版中得到了查尔斯·达尔文的认可。
