C. difficile diarrhea is largely a nosocomial disease and is the most frequent cause of diarrhea in hospitalized patients. Its occurrence in the outpatient setting, other than in patients confined to nursing homes, is much less common.
Darwin had arrived at a complete theory of evolution by 1839, but it was to be another 20 years before he published his ideas of evolution through natural selection in his epochal book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.
The evolutionary history of life on Earth traces the processes by which living and fossil organisms have evolved since life appeared on the planet, until the present day. Earth formed about 4.5 Ga (billion years) ago and there is evidence that life appeared as early as 4.1 Ga. The similarities between all present-day organisms indicate the presence of a common ancestor from which all known species have diverged through the process of evolution.