Charles Darwin regained his health when he sampled Malvern’s famous waters, says Chris Upton.

This is the year of Charles Darwin (and of Matthew Boulton and Abraham Darby and George Frederick Handel etc).

We all know that Charles Darwin was a native of Shrewsbury, of course, and that he attended the Grammar School there. But the man who transformed the way we see ourselves and the world around us has other Midland connections, too.

Darwin attended a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Birmingham, for example, and lodged in New Street.

But the place which must claim, after Shrewsbury, the chief connection with the great scientist is Great Malvern in Worcestershire. There is, with perfect timing, an exhibition on the man and the town currently running in the priory church. Quite how the man who did more than any to undermine literal biblical truth would feel about that, is open to speculation.

Many found their way to Malvern in the first half of the 19th century, not for the fine views or the fresh air, but for their health. And it was not the opportunity of hauling oneself up the Worcestershire Beacon that was important, but the lure of the clearest, cleanest water in all England. As one wag had it:

The Malvern water, says Doctor John Wall,

Is famous for containing just nothing at all.

It was back in 1756 that John Wall, a founding physician at the Worcester Royal Infirmary, declared the Malvern spring water the purest of them all, and from that point onwards Malvern became a spa town and a health resort. The great and the good of Victorian England – Thomas Carlyle, Lord Tennyson, Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, to name just a few – came to sample it.

The Malvern water cure, however, was not simply a matter of knocking back a few pints of the stuff, but a veritable endurance test. One bathed in it as well as drank it, steamed and shivered in it, paddled and sat in it. If it did not kill you, there was the distant possibility that it might cure you.

It was in 1849 that Charles Darwin and his family came to Malvern in an effort to improve his health. Darwin was not in fine fettle as he reached his 40th year.

“All this winter I have been bad enough,” he wrote to a friend, “with dreadful vomiting every week. I was not able to do anything one day out of three...I thought I was rapidly going the way of all flesh.”

It was time, therefore, to devote a little less space to the origin of species, and a little more to himself. As it happened, Darwin already owned a copy of The Water Cure and Chronic Disease by Malvern’s leading water doctor, James Manby Gully. From theory, then, to practice, and to see what the miraculous Dr Gully could do for him.

In early March 1849 the Darwins – husband, wife and children – took a spacious, late Georgian house called The Lodge (now called Hill House), off the Worcester Road, and moved to Malvern. The spot was perfect for recuperation, with or without the water. The Lodge had a garden of three acres, perfect for the young Darwins to play in, and behind this, woods stretching up to the Beacon. It even had its own fountain of spring water. The family ended up staying four months.

Dr Gully imposed a punishing regime.

“At a quarter before seven I get up,” wrote Darwin to his sister, “and am scrubbed with a rough towel in cold water for two or three minutes, which, after the first few days, made and makes me very like a lobster.” Darwin took this as a good sign.

This was only the start of the punishing daily routine. Next came a glass of Malvern water, a 20-minute walk, followed by a spell with his feet in cold water (with mustard) and more rubbing. Next came dinner, a nap and the routine began all over again. And all this had to be done wearing wet linen, regularly “refreshed”, and wrapped in a mackintosh.

“I like Dr Gully very much,” added Darwin, surprisingly. “He is very kind and attentive.”

James Manby Gully had been practising in Malvern for seven years when the Darwins arrived, and had a reputation of dealing sensitively with “men of genius”. Tennyson was a patient of his, as were Thomas and Jane Carlyle. He understood, at the very least, the effects of over-work on the Victorian constitution.

If Darwin had embarked upon the whole process with some doubts about the efficacy of the water cure, he was soon convinced that his health was improving. As far as I can see, Darwin did not take into account the switch to a simpler diet, more sleep, more exercise, no work, and a great deal less tobacco and alcohol. The chances are that the scientist’s improved condition was more the result of all of this than anything involving wet sheets.

By June 1849 Charles Darwin was seeing the benefits of a change of lifestyle. He told a friend that the constant vomiting had ceased, and that he was now able to walk two or three miles a day. Darwin found it curious that the constant scrubbing of his outer layer had so improved his inner organs, but that appeared to be the case.

By July Darwin was able to pronounce himself “absolutely cured” and extolled the miraculous power of the Malvern waters. Indeed, he cursed the fact that he had not discovered them five or six years earlier. The family returned to Kent in triumph.

But Malvern did not treat all so kindly, and the following year the Darwins and Great Malvern were to renew their acquaintance.

And this time the outcome was to be far from happy.