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Medical historians celebrate Darwin for his Zoonomia (or The Laws of Organic Life; 1794–96), an ambitious two-volume work aiming to classify facts about animals, to set out laws describing organic life, and to catalog diseases with their treatments. Unlike some contemporary physicians, Darwin endorsed active intervention with drugs and mechanical...
The English physician Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin, offered in his Zoonomia; or, The Laws of Organic Life (1794–96) some evolutionary speculations, but they were not further developed and had no real influence on subsequent theories. The Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus devised the hierarchical system of plant and animal classification that is...
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