DARWIN, ERASMUS, a physician, a poet, and medical writer, was born at Elston, near Newark, in Nottinghamshire, on the 12th December 1731. He was the fourth son of Robert Darwin, Esq. He received the early part of his education at Chesterfield school, under the reverend Mr Burrows, of whom he always spoke with great respect. He was entered, with two of his elder brothers, at St John's college, Cambridge; and, being intended for the practice of medicine, took the degree of M. B. in 1755, defending in his thesis an opinion, that the motion of the heart and arteries is produced by the immediate stimulus of the blood. During his residence in Cambridge, Mr Darwin was elected to one of Lord Exeter's scholarships, worth about 161. per annum, which, from the meagreness of his father's income at that time, was esteemed a desirable acquisition. After having prepared himself for his future profession, by an attendance on the lectures of Dr Hunter, in London, and by a severe course of study at Edinburgh, he contemplated the metropolis as the proper theatre for his exertions. Deterred, however, by the want of an immediate introduction, and the improbability of obtaining immediate patronage, Dr Darwin thought it altogether more advisable to settle in the country. The first place to which he went, in the capacity of a physician, was Nottingham, where he was entirely disappointed in his hopes of practice; he removed, therefore, to Litchfield, with letters of introduction to Lady Gresley and the reverend Mr Seward. Here his great capacity and various acquirements were most justly appreciated; he resided at Litchfield during a great number of years, in the enjoyment of a very extensive reputation, and a very profitable practice, the foundation of which is supposed to have been laid by his success in restoring to health a gentleman of fortune in the neighbourhood, whose recovery was despaired of by a numerous circle of friends and acquaintances.
In the year 1757 Dr Darwin married Miss Mary Howard, daughter of Charles Howard, Esq. by his wife, Elizabeth Foley: she died in 1770. By this lady he had five children, two of whom died in their infancy: the eldest son, Charles, he educated to his own profession, but he died in the 20th year of his age, very soon after he had finished his course of studies at Edinburgh, where he gained considerable reputation, by endeavouring to furnish a criterion for distinguishing pus from mucus.
Soon after the decease of his wife, Dr Darwin commenced his laborious work, the Zoonomia, which, however, he did not think proper to publish till about eight years since.
In 1778 he obtained a lease of a picturesque spot of ground, about a mile from Litchfield, where a cold bath was erected by Sir John Flayer, an eminent physician in the beginning of the last century: there is a grotto, surrounded by projecting rocks, from the edges of which trickles a perpetual shower of water. This place became his favourite retreat and amusement: here he formed a botanic garden, and began his poem on the "Loves of the Plants," the scenery of which,