William Charles Wells MD FRS FRSEd (1757–1817), was a Scottish-American physician and printer. He lived a life of extraordinary variety, did some notable medical research, and made the first clear statement about natural selection.[1] He applied the idea to the origin of different skin colours in human races, and from the context it seems he thought it might be applied more widely. Charles Darwin said: "[Wells] distinctly recognises the principle of natural selection, and this is the first recognition which has been indicated".[2]
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Wells was the second son of Robert and Mary Wells. Wells' parents were both Scots who had settled in South Carolina in 1753. He is the brother of Helena Wells. Wells was born in Charleston, and sent to school in Dumfries, Scotland at the age of eleven. After he completed his preparatory school studies he attended the University of Edinburgh.
Wells returned to Charleston in 1771 and became a medical apprentice under Dr. Alexander Garden, a naturalist and physician, who himself was a pupil of Charles Alston, Director of the Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh. In 1775, soon after the commencement of the American war, he left Charlestown suddenly, and went to London. He had been called upon to sign a paper the object of which was to unite the people in a resistance to the claims of the British Government. This he would not do. Between 1775 and 1778, Wells studied medicine and passed the preliminary exams at Edinburgh, but did not yet take his degree. In the autumn he returned to London, and attended a course of William Hunter's lectures, took instructions in practical Anatomy, and became a surgeon's pupil at St Bartholomew's Hospital.
In 1779 he went to Holland as a surgeon in a Scottish regiment. There he received ill treatment from his commanding officer, and resigned his commission. On the day on which he received his dismissal from the service, he challenged the officer to a duel: the officer refused to respond. Wells then moved to Leiden, where he prepared his dissertation at the University of Leiden. This was the Inaugural Thesis, published at Edinburgh in 1780 when he took the degree of Doctor of Medicine; the subject of his thesis was Cold (De frigore).
Early in 1781 he returned to Carolina to put his family's affairs in order. He was "at the same time an officer in a corps of volunteers; a printer, a bookseller, and a merchant, a trustee for some of his father's friends in England for the management of affairs of considerable importance in Carolina; and on one occasion exercised, at the instance of the Colonel Commandant of the militia, the office of Judge Advocate, in conducting a prosecution in a general court martial of militia officers." [3] When the British withdrew from Charleston in December 1782, he traveled to St. Augustine, Florida. There he published the East Florida Gazette, the first weekly newspaper printed in Florida. Other publications during the British period of Florida included the Address of the principal inhabitants of East Florida. He returned to England in 1784 to practice medicine.
In 1790 he was appointed one of the Physicians to the Finsbury Dispensary, and remained so until 1798. In 1793 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1798 he was elected Assistant Physician to St Thomas's Hospital; and in 1800 became one of the Physicians. From about 1800, his health was uncertain, and he led a more limited life which was nevertheless fairly productive in medical research.
Wells was elected to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1814, and the same year the Royal Society of London awarded him the Rumford Medal for his Essay on Dew. He died in 1817 after suffering symptoms of heart malfunction (auricular fibrillation).[4]
Wells was the elder of three British medical men who formulated evolutionary ideas in the period 1813–1819. He was, arguably, the most successful in this endeavour; the others were James Cowles Prichard and William Lawrence.
In 1813 a paper by Wells was read before the Royal Society; it was published in 1818. This was Two Essays... with some observations on the causes of the differences of colour and form between the white and negro races of men. By the Late W.C. Wells…with a Memoir of his life, written by himself.
Wells was clearly interested in how different races might have arisen.[5][6][7] After some preliminary remarks on the different races of man, and of the selection of domesticated animals, he observes that:
Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace were not aware of this work when they published their theory in 1858, but later Darwin acknowledged:
Credit for the first appreciation of natural selection could therefore go to Wells rather than to Edward Blyth or Patrick Matthew. The triumph is limited to the extent of being applied only to skin colour, and not, as Darwin and Wallace did, to the whole range of life.[9] A form of the idea had already been set out by an earlier Edinburgh author, James Hutton, but in that case the effect was limited to improvement of varieties rather than the formation of new species.[10]
Most of his writings on medical subjects are contained in the second and third volumes of the Transactions of a Society for the Promotion of Medical and Chirurgical Knowledge 1811-12:
All sources depend ultimately on Wells' own account of his life.