Charles Darwin (1809-82), the founder of evolutionary theory.

The ailment Lifelong bouts of vomiting, abdominal pain, flatulence, headaches and anxiety. Diagnosed by Victorian physicians as “nervous dyspepsia”, his condition remains a mystery today.

The treatment In 1849 Darwin visited Malvern to undertake Dr James Gully's “water cure”. He described his daily regimen in a letter to his sister, Susan. First thing in the morning he was scrubbed with a rough towel soaked in cold water, “which after the few first days, made and makes me very like a lobster”. Then a 20-minute walk. “At the same time I put on a compress, which is a broad wet folded linen covered by mackintosh and which is ‘refreshed', ie, dipt in cold water every 2 hours and I wear it all day, except for about 2 hours after midday dinner.”

The outcome Darwin declared himself “absolutely cured” after four months' treatment but his symptoms soon recurred.

The Correspondence of Charles Darwin (Cambridge University Press)

Fanny Burney (1752-1840), novelist.

The ailment While living in Paris in 1810, Burney complained of pain in her right breast. French surgeons diagnosed cancer.

The treatment On September 30, 1811, Burney had the breast removed in an operation lasting 20 minutes, without anaesthetic. She described the ordeal in harrowing detail to her sister Esther. Having been dosed with a “wine cordial”, she had a handkerchief placed over her eyes. “I refused to be held; but when, bright through the cambric, I saw the glitter of polished steel, I closed my eyes...when the dreadful steel was plunged into the breast, cutting through veins, arteries, flesh, nerves, I needed no injunctions not to restrain my cries. I began a scream that lasted intermittingly during the whole time of the incision.”

After the initial cuts, she said, “the air that suddenly rushed into those delicate parts felt like a mass of minute but sharp and forked poniards [daggers]”. Then, as the surgery progressed, “I felt the knife against the breastbone, scraping it! However I never moved, nor stopt them, nor resisted, nor remonstrated.”

The outcome Burney recovered completely with no recurrence of the cancer, if, indeed, it was cancer.

The Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney (Clarendon Press)

Horace Walpole (1717-97), MP, writer and wit.

The ailment Walpole suffered from gout, a common Georgian ailment, from the age of 38.

The treatment Walpole avoided orthodox doctors believing, rightly, that they had no cure. Instead, he tried numerous remedies gleaned from fellow sufferers, including wrapping himself in wet flannels, applying ice, eating cherries, pears and venison pasties, cutting his nails in hot water, and wearing long stockings he called “bootikins”. He wrote to one correspondent: “I was seized on Monday morning, suffered dismally all night, am now wrapped in flannels like a picture of a Morocco ambassador.” To another he enthused: “Madame de Bouzols, Marshal Berwick's daughter, assured me there was nothing so good for the gout as to preserve the parings of my nails in a bottle close-stopped.”

The outcome Walpole's gout plagued him all his long life, but he counted himself lucky, believing that suffering one ailment preserved him from a worse one. Aged 74, he declared: “I would not be cured of my gout, if I could.”

Horace Walpole's Correspondence (Yale University Press)

D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930), writer.

The ailment Chest problems: pneumonia and influenza in early youth; and then tuberculosis.

The treatment Frequently ill but never admitting that he had TB, Lawrence travelled widely to find a climate that suited his health. Living in the South of France in early 1930 he entered a sanatorium on the advice of an English physician, Andrew Morland (who would accept no fee for helping Lawrence, and received a first edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover instead). Still in denial, Lawrence wrote to Maria Huxley, the wife of the novelist Aldous Huxley, on February 12, 1930: “Here I am at last, as I was getting so feeble and so thin. It isn't a sanatorium, really - an hotel where the nurse takes your temperature and two doctors look at you once a week - for the rest, just a hotel. They examined me with X-rays and all that. It is as I was; the lung has moved very little since Mexico, in five years. But the broncs are awful. What I want is to be thoroughly cheered up somehow, not this rest-cure business.”

The outcome Lawrence left the sanatorium on March 1, and died the following day.

The Collected Letters of D. H. Lawrence (Heinemann)

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689- 1762), the writer and champion of smallpox inoculation, which she introduced to Britain in 1721 (75 years before Edward Jenner developed a safer means of vaccination) after witnessing the folk practice in Turkey.

The ailment After surviving smallpox at 26, Lady Mary travelled throughout Europe. She suffered a serious gum infection when she was living in northern Italy in 1750.

The treatment A village doctor diagnosed gangrene and said recovery was impossible. A neighbour sent horses to fetch a celebrated surgeon from Cremona, 25 miles away. “He immediately apply'd red hot irons to my gumms,” Lady Mary wrote, “but said he could not have hopes of my cure till 24 hours were past, my tongue being infected and so swell'd that I could not utter one word.” The next day the surgeon was surprised to find her without any fever and applied “caustics” - chemicals to burn away the flesh - for several days.

The outcome Lady Mary made a full recovery. She later died of breast cancer.

The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (Clarendon Press)

Wendy Moore is the author of The Knife Man: Blood, Body-Snatching and the Birth of Modern Surgery (Bantam, £7.99)

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