becoming a country clergyman, and before studying at the University of Cambridge, "as I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible, I soon persuaded myself that our Creed must be fully accepted." The clergyman naturalist professors there who became his lifelong friends fully accepted an ancient earth but opposed evolutionism which they felt would undermine the social order. He did well at theology and, in his finals, came 10th out of a pass list of 178. At both universities, he saw how evolution was associated with radicals and democrats seeking to overthrow society and how publicly supporting such ideas could lead to destruction of reputation, loss of position and even imprisonment for blasphemy. At Cambridge, he was convinced by William Paley's writings of design by a Creator, but, on the Beagle expedition, his findings contradicted Paley's beneficent view. On his return, his deepening speculations led to the inception of Darwin's theory, and he increasingly disbelieved in the Bible, gradually becoming what was later termed an agnostic. Darwin was clearly worried by the implications of his ideas and desperate to avoid distress to his naturalist friends and to his wife. When first telling his friends, he wrote "it is like confessing a murder", and his writings at the time of the publication of Darwin's theory suggest emotional turmoil. What is unclear is whether this was anxiety about disgrace and damage to his friends, or about his loss of faith in Christianity, or indeed a rational fear of the harsh treatment he had seen meted out to radicals and proponents of evolutionism. The Chagas hypothesis Advanced for the first in time in 1959 by eminent Israeli specialist in tropical medicine Dr. Saul Adler from Hebrew University, the hypothesis of Chagas disease was based partly on the fact that during the Beagle expedition, Darwin was bitten by the insect vector of this disease near Mendoza to the east of the Argentinian Andes while on one of his land exploration trips. He noted in his journal for 26 March 1835: At night I experienced an attack, & it deserves no less a name, of the Benchuca, the great black bug of the Pampas. It is most disgusting to feel soft wingless insects, about an inch long, crawling over ones body; before sucking they are quite thin, but afterwards round & bloated with blood,