1. REBUILDING THE HEART IN DARWIN’S YEAR José M. Sánchez Ron

9. For Darwin, Nature was a great puzzle, formed by pieces coming from disciplines as various as embryology, morphology, taxonomy, anatomy, zoology, botany, geology, biogeography, palaeontology, variations of animals and plants induced by domestication, hereditary mechanisms and human psychology

10. DARWIN’S BOOKS - The Voyage of the Beagle (1839) - The Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle (editor), 5 parts in 3 volumes (1840- 1843) - The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs (1842) - Geological Observations on the Volcanic Islands visited during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle (1844) - Geological Observations on South America (1846) - A Monograph of the Sub-Class Cirripeada (vol. 1: The Lepadidae; or Pendunculated Cirripides [1851]; vol. 2: Sessile Cirripedes [1854]), A Monograph of the Fossil Balanidea and Verrucidae (1854) - On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preserva­tion of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859) - On the Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilised by Insects, and on the Good Effects of Intercrossing (1862) - The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (1868) - The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871) - The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) - Insectivorous Plants (1875) - The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom (1876) - The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species (1877) - The Power of Movement in Plants (1880) - The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms with Observations on their Habits (1881)

16. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859): “Can… be thought improbable, seeing that variations useful to man have undoubtedly occurred, that other variations useful in some way to each being on the great and complex battle of life, should sometimes occur in the course of thousands of generations? If such do occur, can we doubt… that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the last degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection.”

17. “Variations useful… on the great and complex battle of life”. “Individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others”. “Preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations”. Does this mean that Natural Selection acts only in the positive, improving species? Also, in The Descent of Man (1871), Darwin wrote: “Beneficial variations of all kinds will thus, either occasionally or habitually, have been preserved, and injurious ones eliminated.” However, improvement, is a time-dependent concept. Time- dependent because natural selection arouses from changes in some of the conditions in which species live, and conditions, physical conditions change on the course of time.

19. Darwin was well aware that the “improvements” produced by evolution entail a manifold of consequences. For example, the action of evolution on organs may originate rudimentary or atrophied organs. The Origin of Species: “Organs or parts… bearing the stamp of inutility, are extremely common throughout nature. For instance, rudimentary mammae are very general in the males of mammals: I presume that the ‘bastard-wing’ in birds may be safely considered as a digit in a rudimentary state… [These] rudimentary organs [not entirely developed, may] sometimes retain their potentiality… An organ useful under certain conditions, might become injurious under others, as with the wings of beetles living on small and exposed islands; and in this case natural selection would continue slowly to reduce the organ, until it was rendered harmless and rudimentary”.

21. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871): “Man in the rudest state in which he now exists is the more dominant animal that has ever appeared on the earth. He has spread more widely than any other highly organised form; and all others have yielded before him. He manifestly owes this immense superiority to his intellectual faculties, his social habits, which lead him to aid and defend his fellows, and to his corporeal structure. The supreme importance of these characters has been proved by the final arbitrament of the battle for life. Through his powers of intellect, articulate language has been evolved; and on this his wonderful advancement has mainly depended. He has invented and is able to use various weapons, tools, traps, &c., with which he defends himself, kills or catches prey, and otherwise obtains food. He has made rafts or canoes on which to fish or cross over the neighbouring fertile islands. He has discovered the art of making fire, by which hard and stringy roots can be rendered digestible, and poisonous roots or herbs innocuous… These several inventions, by which man in the rudest state has become so pre- eminent. Are the direct result of the development of his powers of observation, memory, curiosity, imagination, and reason.”

23. “Evolution has no eye for the future –it does not operate with a view to the attainment of teleological ends or typological goals. In particular, neither evolution nor the presence of particular characteristics can properly be characterized as a steady march of progress towards traits beneficial (in our minds) to the species as a whole.” (N. Shanks and R. A. Pyles)

24. DARWINIAN MEDICINE “One basic tenet of Darwinian medicine comes from adaptationist thinking, that diseases arise because humans exist in a mismatch between the current world and the world in which our species evolved and adapted, and that humans suffer from a series of trade-offs between high fitness in the pass and reduced fitness in the present.” (Michael Antolin, 2009)

25. The heart, an “atrophied organ”? The role of stem cells

26. The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (1868)

27. “It may be convenient fist briefly to discuss that co-ordinating an reparative power which is common, in a higher or lower degree, to all organic beings, and which was formerly designated by physiologists as the nisus formatives. Blumenbach and others have insisted that the principle which permits a Hydra, when cut into fragments, to develop itself into two or more perfect animals, is the same with that which causes a wound in the higher animals to heal by a cicatrice. Such cases as that of the Hydra are evidently analogous with the spontaneous division or fissiparous generation of the lowest animals and likewise with the budding if plants. Between these extreme cases and that of a mere cicatrice we have every gradation. Spallanzani, by cutting off the legs and tail of a Salamander, got in the course of three months six crops of these members... At whatever point the limb was cut off, the deficient part, and no more, was exactly reproduced.”

28. “Even with man, as we have seen en the twelfth chapter, when treating of polydactylism, the entire limb whilst in a embryonic state, and supernumerary digits, are occasionally, though imperfectly, reproduced after amputation… This power of regrowth does not, however, always act perfectly: the reproduced tail of a lizard differs in the forms of the scales from the normal tail: with certain Orthoptereous insects the large hind legs are reproduced of the smaller size: the white cicatrice which in the higher animals unites the edges of a deep wound is not formed of perfect skin, for elastic tissue is not produced till long afterwards.’ The activity of the nisus formatives,’ says Blumenbach, ‘is I an inverse ratio to the age of the organised body.’ To this may be added that its power is greater in animals the lower they are in the scale of organisation; and animals low in the scale correspond with the embryos of higher animals belonging to the same class... Salamanders correspond in development with the tadpoles or larvae of the tailless Batrachians, and both posses to a large extent the power of regrowth; but not so the mature Batrachians.”