Home > William Charles Wells

Wells was born Charlestown, where? and was sent to school in Dumfries and later attended the University of Edinburgh.

Wells returned to Charleston in 1771 become a medical apprentice under Dr. Alexander Garden, a naturalist, physician, who himself was a pupil of Charles Alston, Director of the Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh. Between 1775 and 1780, Wells took a medical degree at the University of Edinburgh.

In 1813 a paper was read beofre the Royal Society ad published in 1818. Two essays, On Upon Single Vision with Two Eyes; The Other on Dew and An Account of a Female of the White Race... Part of Whose Skin Resembles That of a Negro...By the Late W.C. Wells…with a Memoir of His Life, Written by Himself.

In this paper, Wells had assumed that there had been evolution of humans. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace were unaware of this work when they published their theory in 1858. Later Darwin in the fourth edition of The Origin of Species acknowledged:

In this paper he [Wells] distinctly recognizes the principle of natural selection, and this is the first recognition which has been indicated..

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