 It has been hypothesized that Charles Darwin might have suffered from Chagas disease as a result of a bite of the so @-@ called great black bug of the Pampas ( <unk> ) ( see Charles Darwin 's illness ) . The episode was reported by Darwin in his diaries of the Voyage of the <unk> as occurring in March 1835 to the east of the Andes near Mendoza . Darwin was young and generally in good health , though six months previously he had been ill for a month near <unk> , but in 1837 , almost a year after he returned to England , he began to suffer intermittently from a strange group of symptoms , becoming incapacitated for much of the rest of his life . Attempts to test Darwin 's remains at Westminster Abbey by using modern <unk> techniques were met with a refusal by the Abbey 's curator . 
