Erasmus Alvey Darwin

Erasmus Alvey Darwin (29 December 1804 – 26 August 1881), nicknamed Eras or Ras, was the older brother of Charles Darwin, born five years earlier, and also brought up at the family home, The Mount House, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. He was the only other boy in the family, the fourth of six children of Robert and Susannah Darwin (née Wedgwood), and the grandson of Erasmus Darwin, and of Josiah Wedgwood, a family of the Unitarian church. See also Darwin — Wedgwood family. He was a member of the semi-secretive Cambridge Apostles society, a debating club largely reserved for the brightest students.

He attended Shrewsbury School 1815–1822 as a boarder, and as a frail and studious boy his interest was in books and plants rather than friends. His mother died in 1817 and he was joined at the school by his brother Charles in September 1818. Eras became bored with the classical curriculum and took an interest in chemistry, with Charles as his assistant. They had a garden shed at their home fitted out as a laboratory.

In 1822 Eras went on to a medical course at Christ's College, Cambridge where he studied Chemistry under Professor James Cumming. When it came to be time for his one-year external hospital study in 1825 he went to Edinburgh University, accompanying his younger brother who was just starting a course there in medicine. They planned ahead, Erasmus thinking "It will be very pleasant our being together, we shall be as cozy as possible", arriving early at Edinburgh to make social contact with old friends of the family in Whig society, and so "we can both read like horses". Erasmus enrolled with John Lizars, a "charming" and respectable surgeon on the other side of Surgeon's Square from his chief rival as a private tutor, the flamboyant Robert Knox who two years later became embroiled with the body-snatchers Burke and Hare. At the end of his hospital study year Erasmus enrolled in a London anatomy school, leaving Charles behind.

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