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CICERO.

Masters of Medicine

Title.

John Hunter
William Harvey
Edward Jenner
Sir James Simpson
Hermann von Helmholtz
William Stokes
Claude Bernard
Sir Benjamin Brodie
Thomas Sydenham

VeS ALIUS

Author.

Stephen Paget
D*Arcy Power
Ernest Hart
H, Laing Gordon
John G. McKendrick
Sir William Stokes
Michael Foster
Timothy Holmes
y. F. Payne
C, Louis Taylor

1.1 Le

WILLIAM HARVEY

MASTERS OF
MEDICINE

I ,

WILLIAM HARVEV

William Harvey

D'Arcy Power, F.S.A.,
F.R.b.S. Eng.

SURGEON TO THE VICTORIA HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN,

CHELSEA

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T. FISHER UNWIN

PATERNOSTER SQUARE

MDCCCXCVII

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and Longmans Green y Co. for the

United States of America

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To
DR. PHILIP HENRY PYE-SMITH, F.R.S.

IN RECOGNITION OF HIS PROFOUND KNOWLEDGE OF

THE PRINCIPLES ADVOCATED BY HARVEY, AND

IN GRATITUDE FOR MANY KINDNESSES

CONFERRED BY HIM UPON

THE AUTHOR

^3 1*^^

PREFACE

T T is not possible, nor have I attempted in this
-■■ account of Harvey, to add much that is new.
My endeavour has been to give a picture of the man
and to explain in his own words, for they are always
simple, racy, and untechnical, the discovery which
has placed him in the forefront of the Masters of
Medicine.

The kindness of Professor George Darwin, F.R.S.,
and of Professor Villari has introduced me to Professor
Carlo Ferraris, the Rector Magnificus, and to Dr.
Girardi, the Librarian of the University of Padua.
These gentlemen, at my request, have examined
afresh the records of the University, and have given
me much information about Harvey's stay there. The
Cambridge Archaeological Society has laid me under

PREFACE

an obligation by allowing me to reproduce the Stemma
which still commemorates Harvey's official connection
with the great Italian University. Dr. Norman Moore
has read the proof sheets ; his kindly criticism and
accurate knowledge have added greatly to the value
of the work, and he has lent me the block which
illustrates the vileness of Harvey's handwriting.

I have collected in an Appendix a short list of
authorities to each chapter that my statements may
be verified, for Harvey himself would have been the
first to cry out against such a gossiping life as that
which Aubrey wrote of him.

D'ARCY POWER.

May 20, 1897.

CONTENTS

I. Harvey's lineage .

PACK

II. EARLY LIFE II

III. THE LUMLEIAN LECTURES . . '39

IV. THE ZENITH 70

V. THE CIVIL WAR II7

VI. harvey's later years . . . 141

VII. harvey's death, burial, and eulogy , 166
VIII. harvey's anatomical works . , 188

IX. THE TREATISE ON DEVELOPMENT . . 238

APPENDIX 265

INDEX 271

WILLIAM HARVEY

Harvey's Lineage

^nr^HE history of the Harvey family begins with
-*• Thomas Harvey, father of William, the dis-
coverer of the circulation of the blood. The careful
search of interested and competent genealogists has
ended in the barren statement that the family is
apparently descended from, or is a branch of the same
stock as. Sir Walter Hervey, " pepperer," or member
of the ancient guild which afterwards became the
important Company of Grocers. Sir Walter was
Mayor of London in the year reckoned from the
death of Henry IIL in November, 1272. It was
the noise of the citizens assembled in Westminster
Hall clamouring for Hervey's election as Mayor
that disturbed the King's deathbed.

I B

WILLIAM HARVEY

The lineage would be a noble one if it could be
established, for Hervey was no undistinguished Mayor.
He was the worthy pupil and successor of Thomas
Fitzthomas, one of the great champions in that
struggle for liberty which ended in the death of Simon
de Montfort, between Evesham and Alcester, but left
the kingdom with a Parliament. Hervey's counsels
reconstituted in London the system of civic govern-
ment, and established it upon its present base ; for he
assumed as chief of the executive the right to grant
charters of incorporation to the craftsmen of the
guilds. For a time his efforts were successful, and
they wrought him much harm. But his idea survived,
and in due season prevailed, for the companies have
entirely replaced the guilds not only in London but
throughout England.

It would be truly interesting if the first great dis-
coverer in physiology could be shown to be a descendant
of this original thinker on municipal government. The
statement depends for the present on the fact that both
bore for arms "argent, two bars nebulee sable, on a
chief of the last three crosses pattee fitchee ; with the
crest, a dexter hand appaumee proper, over it a crescent
inverted argent," but arms were as often assumed in
the reign of Elizabeth as they are in the Victorian era.

HARVEY'S LINEAGE

Thomas Harvey, the fiither of William, was born in
1549, ^^^ ^^ ^^^ o^ ^ family of two brothers and
three sisters, all of whom left children. Thomas
married about 1575 Juliana, the eldest daughter of
William Jenkin. His wife died in the following year,
probably in childbed, for she left him a daughter,
Julian or Gillian, who married Thomas Cullen, of
Dover, and died about 1639.

Thomas Harvey married again on the 21st of January,
1576-77, his second wife being Joane, the daughter of
Thomas Halke, or Hawke, who was perhaps a relative
of his first wife on her mother's side. She lived at
Hastingleigh, a village about six miles from Ashford
in Kent, and to this couple William was born on the
I St of April, 1578, his father being then twenty-nine
and his mother twenty-three.

William proved to be the eldest of "a week of
sons," as Fuller quaintly expresses it, "whereof this
William was bred to learning, his other brethren
being bound apprentices in London, and all at last
ended in effect in merchants," This statement is
not strictly true, as only five of the sons became
Turkey merchants and there were besides two
daughters.

Thomas Harvey was a jurat, or alderman, of Folke-

WILLIAM HARVEY

stone, where he served the office of mayor in 1600.
He lived in a fair stone house, which afterwards
became the posthouse. Its site, however, is no longer
known, though it is the opinion of those best qualified
to judge that it stood at the junction of Church Street
with Rendezvous Street.

Thomas Harvey seems to have been a man of more
than ordinary intelligence and judgment, for " his sons,
who revered, consulted, and implicitly trusted him,
made their father the treasurer of their wealth when
they got great estates, who, being as skilful to purchase
land," says Fuller, ^^as they to gain money kept,
employed and improved their gainings to their great
advantage, so that he survived to see the meanest of
them of far greater estate than himself." To this end
he came to London after the death of his wife in 1605,
and lived for some time at Hackney, where he died
and was buried in June, 1623. His portrait is still to
be seen in the central panel in one end wall of the
dining-room at Rolls Park, Chigwell, in Essex, which
was one of the first estates acquired by his son Eliab.
" It is certainly," says Dr. Willis, " of the time when
he lived, and it bears a certain resemblance to some of
the likenesses we have of his most distinguished son."

All that is known of Joan Harvey is on a brass

HARVEY'S LINEAGE

tablet, which still exists to her memory in the parish
church at Folkestone. It bears the following record
of her virtues, written either by her husband or by
William Harvey, her son : —

^ A.D. 1605 Nov. 8th died in the 50th. yeare of her age
Joan Wife of Tho. Harvey. Mother of 7 sooes Sc 2 Daughters.

A Godly harmles Woman : A chaste loveinge Wife :

A Charitable qviet Neighbour : A cdfortable frendly Matron :

A provident diligent Hvswyfe : A carefvU teder-harted Mother.

Deere to her Hvsband : Reverensed of her Children :

Beloved of her Neighbovrs : Elected of God.

Whose Soule rest in Heaven, her body in this Grave :

To her a Happy Advantage : to Hers an Unhappy Loss.**

The children of Thomas and Joan Harvey were —
(i) William, born at Folkestone on the ist ot
April, 1578 ; died at Roehampton, in Surrey, on the
3rd of June, 1657 ; buried in the "outer vault" of
the Harvey Chapel at Hempstead, in Essex.

(2) Sarah, born at Folkestone on the 5th of May,
1580, and died there on the i8th of June, 1591.

(3) John, born at Folkestone on the 12th or
November, 1582 ; servant-in-ordinary, or footman, to
James I. — " a post," says Sir James Paget, " which
does not certainly imply that he was in a much lower
rank than his brothers. It may have been such a place
at Court as is now called by a synonym of more
seeming dignity ; or, if not, yet he may have received

WILLIAM HARVEY

a good salary for the office whilst he discharged its
duties by deputy." Thus Burke in his famous speech
on Economical Reform mentions that the king's turn-
spit was a member of Parliament.

He received a pension of fifty pounds a year when
he resigned his place to Toby Johnson on the 6th of
July, 1620. He was a member of Gray's Inn,
and filled several offices of importance, for he was
" Castleman " at Sandgate, in Kent, and King's
Receiver for Lincolnshire jointly with his brother
Daniel. He sat in Parliament as a member for
Hythe, and died unmarried on the 20th of July, 1645.

(4) Thomas was born at Folkestone on the 17th
of January, 1584-5. He married first Elizabeth
Exton, about 161 3; and, secondly, Elizabeth Park-
hurst, on the lOth of May, 1621, and he had children
by both marriages. His only surviving son sat as
M.P. for Hythe in 1621 ; he also acted as King's
Receiver for Lincolnshire. Thomas Harvey was a
Turkey merchant in St. Laurence Pountney, at the
foot of London Bridge. He was perhaps a member
of the Grocers' Company. He died on the 2nd of
February, 1622-3, ^^^ ^^ buried in St. Peter-le-Poor,

(5) Daniel, also of Laurence Pountney Hill, a
Turkey merchant and member of the Grocers' Com-

HARVEY'S LINEAGE

pany, was born at Folkestone on the 31st of May,
1587. He was King's Receiver for Lincolnshire
jointly with his brother John. He married Elizabeth
Kynnersley about 16 19, paid a fine rather than s^rve
the office of Sheriff of London at some time before
1640, and died on the loth of September, 1649. He
was a churchwarden of St. Laurence Pountney in
1624-5, and was buried there ; but his later days were
spent on his estate at Combe, near Croydon, in Surrey,
His fourth son became Sir Daniel Harvey, and was
ambassador at Constantinople, where he died in 1672.
His daughter Elizabeth married Heneage Finch, the
first Earl of Nottingham, and from this marriage are
descended the Earls of Winchelsea and Aylesford.

(6) Eliab, also of Laurence Pountney Hill, a
Turkey merchant and member of the Grocers' Com-
pany, was born at Folkestone on the 26th of February,
1589-90. He was the most successful of the mer-
chant brothers, and to his watchful care William owed
much of his material wealth ; for Aubrey says that
" William Harvey took no manner of care about his
worldly concerns, but his brother Eliab, who was a
very wise and prudent manager, ordered all not only
faithfully but better than he could have done for
himself." Eliab had estates at Roehampton, in Surrey,

WILLIAM HARVEY

and at Chigwell, in Essex. He built the "Harvey
Mortuary Chapel with the outer vault below it " in
Hempstead Church, near Saffron Walden. Here he
buried his brother William in 1657, and here he was
himself buried in 1661. He married Mary West on
the 15th of February, 1624-5, and by her had several
children, of whom the eldest at the Restoration became
Sir Eliab Harvey.

Walpole writes to Mann about one of his descen-
dants. "Feb. 6, 1780. Within this week there has
been a cast at hazard at the Cocoa Tree, the difference
of which amounted to an hundred and fourscore thou-
sand pounds. Mr. O'Birne, an Irish gamester, had
won ^100,000 of a young Mr. Harvey of Chigwell,
just started for a midshipman into an estate by his
elder brother's death. O'Birne said, * You can never
pay me.' * I can,' said the youth ; * my estate will
sell for the debt.' * No,' said O'B., * I will win ten
thousand — you shall throw for the odd ninety.* They
did, and Harvey won." This midshipman afterwards
became Sir Eliab Harvey, G.C.B., in command of
the Temeraire at the battle of Trafalgar, and Admiral
of the Blue. He sat in the House of Commons for
the town of Maldon from 1780 to 1784, and for the
county of Essex from 1802 until his death in 1830.

HARVEY'S LINEAGE

With him the male line of the hmily of Harvey
became extinct.

(7) Michael, the twin brother of Matthew, was
born at Folkestone on the 25th of September, 1593.
He lived in St. Laurence Pountney, and St. Helen's,
Bishopsgate. Like his other brothers he was a Turkey
merchant, and perhaps a member of the Grocers*
Company. He married Mary Baker on the 29th of
April, 1630, and after her death Mary Millish, about
1635. He had three children by his second wife, and
one of his sons died at Bridport in 1685 ^^^ wounds
received in the service of King James H. Michael
Harvey died on the 22nd of January, 1642-3, and
is buried in the church of Great St. Helen's, Bishops-
gate.

(8) Matthew, the twin brother of Michael, and
like him a Turkey merchant and perhaps a member of
the Grocers' Company, was born at Folkestone on
the 25th of September, 1593. ^^ married Mary
Hatley on the 15th of December, 1628, and dying on
the 2 1 St of December, 1642, was buried at Croydon.
His only child died in her infancy.

(9) Amye, the youngest daughter and last child
of Thomas and Joan Harvey, was born at Folkestone
on the 26th of December, 1596. She married George

WILLIAM HARVEY

Fowke in 1615, and died^ leaving issue, at some time
after 1645.

Mr. W. Fleming, the assistant librarian, tells me that
nine autotype reproductions of the portraits of the
Harvey femily at Rolls Park (page 4) are now sus-
pended on the left-hand side wall of the hall of the
Royal College of Physicians in Pall Mall. They
represent (i) Thomas Harvey and his seven sons. (2)
William Harvey, probably an enlarged portrait of that
in the preceding group. (3) ^ family group in the
dress of the Queen Anne period. (4) Portrait of a
lady in the dress of the reign of Queen Elizabeth ; in
the corner of the picture appears "obiit 25 Maii 1622."
(5), (6) and (7) Portraits of ladies in the dress of the
eighteenth century. (8) Portrait of a gentleman in
the dress of Charles II.'s time. (9) Portrait of a
gentleman in the dress of Queen Anne's reign.

Early Life

T TERY little is known of the early life of William
^ Harvey. His preliminary education was pro-
bably carried on in Folkestone, where he learnt the
rudiments of knowledge, gaining his first acquaintance
with Latin. One of his earliest distinct recollections
must have been in the memorable days in July, 1588,
when all was bustle and commotion in his native
town. The duty of resisting the Spanish Armada
in Kent and Sussex fell upon the " Broderield," or
confederation of the Cinque Ports, a body which
consisted of the Mayor, two elected Jurats, and two
elected Commoners from Hastings, Sandwich, Dover,
Romney, Hythe, Winchelsea, and Rye. And as
Folkestone for all purposes of defence was intimately
allied with Dover, it is not at all unlikely that Thomas
Harvey, one of its Jurats, was of its number, or that

WILLIAM HARVEY

he was a member of the " Guestling," which, affiliated
with the Broderield, had to fix the number, species,
and tonnage of the shipping to be found by each port,
a somewhat difficult task, as each port's share was a
movable quantity requiring constant rearrangement.
But even with the machinery of the Broderield and
the Guestling, it must have needed much activity to
raise the ;f 43,000 which the Cinque Ports contributed
to set out the handy little squadron of thirteen sail
which did its duty under the orders of Lord Henry
Seymour in dispersing the remains of the great Spanish
fleet. Harvey must have had some remembrance of
the turmoil of the period, though it may have been
partially eflFaced by his new experiences at the King's
School, Canterbury, where he was entered for the first
time in the same year.

He remained at the King's School for five years, no
doubt coming home for the holidays, some of which
must have been spent in watching the constant trans-
port of troops to Spain and Portugal which was so
noticeable a feature in the history of the Cinque Ports
during the later years of the life of Elizabeth.

His schooling ended, Harvey entered at once as
a pensioner, or ordinary student, at Caius College,
Cambridge, his surety being George Estey. The

EARLY LIFE

record of his entry still exists in the books of the
College. It runs : " Gul. Harvey, Filius Thomae
Harvey, Yeoman Cantianus, ex oppido Folkeston,
educatus in Ludo Literario Cantuar. natus annos i6,
admissus pensionarius minor in commeatum scholarium,
ultimo die Mai 1593." (William Harvey, the son
of Thomas Harvey, a yeoman of Kent, of the town of
Folkestone, educated at the Canterbury Grammar
School, aged 16 years, was admitted a lesser pensioner
at the scholars' table on the last day of May, 1593.)

The choice of the college seems to show that
Harvey was already destined by his father to follow
the medical profession. His habits of minute observa-
tion, his fondness for dissection and his love of com-
parative anatomy had probably shown the bias of his
mind from his earliest years. Thirty-six years before
Harvey's entry, Gonville Hall had been refounded as
Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, by Dr. Caius,
who was long its master. Caius, in addition to his
knowledge of Greek, may be said to have introduced the
study of practical anatomy into England. His influence
obtained for the college the grant of a charter in the
sixth year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a charter
by which the Master and Fellows were allowed to take
annually the bodies of two criminals condemned to

WILLIAM HARVEY

death and executed in Cambridge or its Castle free of all
charges, to be used for the purposes of dissection, with
a view to the increase of the knowledge of medicine
and to benefit the health of her Majesty's lieges,
without interference on the part of any of her officials.
Unfortunately no record has been kept as to the use
which the college made of this privilege, nor are there
any means of ascertaining whether Harvey did more
than follow the ordinary course pursued by students
until. he graduated as a Bachelor of Arts in 1597. ^^^
education, in all probability, l^d been wholly general
thus far, consisting of a sound knowledge of Greek,
a very thorough acquaintance with Latin, and some
learning in dialectics and physics. He was now to
begin his more strictly professional studies, and the
year after he had taken his Arts degree at Cambridge
found him travelling through France and Germany
towards Italy, where he was to study the sciences
more nearly akin to medicine, as well as medicine
itself.

The great North Italian Universities of Bologna,
Padua, Pisa, and Pavia, were then at the height of
their renown as centres of mathematics, law, and
medicine. Harvey chose to attach himself to Padua,
and many reasons probably influenced him in his

EARLY LIFE

choice. The University was specially renowned for
its anatomical school, rendered famous by the labours
of Vesalius, the first and greatest of modern anatomists, ^
and by the work of his successor, Fabricius, born at
Aquapendente in 1537. Caius had lectured on Greek
in Padua, and some connection between his college
at Cambridge and his old University may still
have been maintained, though it was now nearly a
quarter of a century since his death. The feme of
Fabricius and his school was no doubt the chief
reason which led Harvey to Padua, but there was an
additional reason which led his friends to concur cheer-
fully in his resolve. Padua was the University town
of Venice, and the tolerance which it enjoyed under
the protection of the great commercial republic ren-
dered it a much safer place of residence for a Protes-
tant than any of the German Universities, or even
than its fellows in Italy. The matriculation registers
which have recently been published show how large a
number of its medical and law students were drawn
from England and the other Protestant countries of
Europe, and the English and Scotch " nation " existed
in Padua as late as 1738, when the days of mediaeval
cosmopolitanism were elsewhere rapidly passing away.
The Universities of Europe have always been of two

WILLIAM HARVEY

types, the one Magistral, like that of Paris, with which
we are best acquainted, for Oxford and Cambridge are
modelled on Paris, and the Masters of Arts form the
ruling body ; the other, the Student Universities, under
the control of the undergraduates, of which Bologna
was the mother. Hitherto Harvey had been a member
of a Magistral University, now he became attached to
a University of Students, for Padua was an ofifshoot of
Bologna. Hitherto he had received a general educa-
tion mainly directed by the Church, now he was to
follow a special course of instruction mainly directed
by the students themselves, for they had the power of
electing their own teachers, and in these points lies the
great difference between a University of Masters and
a University of Students.

In 1592 there were at Padua two Universities, that
of the jurists, and that of the humanists — the Uni-
versitas juristarum and the Universitas artistarum.
The jurists' University was the most important, both
in numbers and in the rank of its students ; the artis-
tarum Universitas consisted of the faculties of divinity,
medicine, and philosophy. It was the poorer, and in
some points it was actually under the control of the
jurists. In each university the students were enrolled
according to their nationality into a series of ^^ nations."

EARLY LIFE

Each nation had the power of electing one, and in
some cases two, representatives — conciliarii — who
formed with the Rectors the executive of the University.
The conciliarii, with the consent of one Rector, had
the power of convening the congregation or supreme
governing body ot the University, which consisted or
all the students except those poor men who lived " at
other's expense."

Harvey went to Padua in 1598, but it appears to be
impossible to recover any documentary evidence of his
matriculation, though it would be interesting to do so,
as up to the end of the sixteenth century eaclv entry in
the register is accompanied by a note of some physical
peculiarity as a means of identifying the student.
Thus : —

" D. Henricus Screopeus, Anglus, cum naevo in
manu sinistra, die nona Junii, 1593." [Mr. Henry
Scrope, an Englishman, with a birthmark on his left
hand (matriculated), 9 June, 1593.]

^^ Johannes Cookaeus, anglus, cum cicatrice in arti-
cullo medii digiti die dicta." [John Cook, an English-
man, with a scar over the joint of his middle finger
(matriculated) on the same day (9 June, 1593.]
And at another time, ^^ Josephus Listirus, anglus, cum
parva cicatrice in palpebra dextera." [Joseph Lister, an

17 c

WILLIAM HARVEY

Englishman, with a little scar on his right eyebrow
(matriculated on the 2ist of November, 1598).]

Notwithstanding Harvey entered at Padua in 1598
no record of him has been found before the year 1600,
although Professor Carlo Ferraris, the present Rector
Magnificus and Dr. Girardi, the Librarian of the
University, have, at my request, made a very thorough
examination of the archives.

Dr. Andrich published in 1892 a very interesting
account of the English and Scotch " nationi" at Padua
with a list of the various persons belonging to it.
This register contains the entry, "" D. Gulielmus
Ameius, Anglus," the first in the list of the English
students in the Jurist University of Padua for the new
century as it heads the year 1 600-1, and a similar
entry occurs in 160 1-2. There are also entries about
this person which show that at the usual time of election,
that is to say, on the ist of August in the years 1600,
1 60 1, and 1602, he was elected a member of the council
(conciliarius) of the English nation in the Jurist
University of Padua. His predecessors, colleagues, and
successors in the council usually held oiEce for two
years. He was therefore either elected earlier into the
council, or he was resident in the university for a some-
what longer time than the majority of the students.

EARLY LIFE

Prof. Ferraris and Dr. Girardi have carefully
examined this entry for me, and they assure me
that there is no doubt that in the original the
word is Arveius and not Ameius and that it refers
to William Harvey. They are confirmed in this
idea by the discovery of his "Stemma" as a
councillor of the English nation for the year 1600.
Stemmata are certain tablets erected in the university
cloisters and in the hall or "Aula Magna" (which
is on the first floor) to commemorate the residence in
Padua of many doctors, professors, and students.
They are sometimes armorial and sometimes sym-
bolical. In 1892 Professor George Darwin carried an
address from the University of Cambridge to that of
Padua on the occasion of the tercentenary celebration of
the appointment of Galileo to a Professorship in Padua.
Professor Darwin then made a carefUl examination
of these monuments so far as they related to Cam-
bridge men, but he was unable to find any memorial
of Harvey. Professor Ferraris continued the search,
and on the 20th of March, 1893, ^^ wrote to Pro-
fessor Darvirin : " We have succeeded in our search
for the arms of Harvey. We have discovered two
in the courtyard in the lower cloister. The first
is a good deal decayed and the inscription has disap-

WILLIAM HARVEY

peared ; but the second is very well preserved and we
have also discovered the inscription under a thin
coating of whitewash which it was easy to remove."
The monuments, which are symbolical, though
Harvey was a gentleman of coat armour, are situated
over the capitals of the columns in the concavity of the
roof, one being in the left cloister, the other in the cloister
opposite to the great gate of the court of the palace.

The kindness of Professor George Darwin has
enabled me to reproduce this "stemma" from a
photograph made for the Cambridge Antiquarian
Society's publications. The memorial consists of an
oval shield with a florid indented border having a
head carved at each end of the oval. The shield
shows a right arm which issues from the sinister side
of the oval and holds a lighted candle round which
two serpents are twined. Traces of the original
colouring (a red ground, a white sleeved arm, and
green serpents) remained on one of the monuments,
and both have now been accurately restored by
the Master and Fellows of Gonville and Caius
College, Cambridge. A coloured drawing of the
tablet has also been made at the expense of the
Royal College of Physicians of London, and is now
in their possession. A replica of this drawing was

EARLY LIFE

presented by the University Senate of Padua to
Gonville and Caius College on the occasion of the
dinner given in their hall in June, 1893, ^^ com-
memorate the admission of Harvey to the college
on the 31st of May, 1593.

It appears, therefore, that Harvey was a member
of the more aristocratic Universitas Juristarum at
Padua, which admitted a few medical and divinity
students into its ranks, and that he early attained to
the position of conciliarius of his nation. As a con-
ciliarius Harvey must have taken part more than once
in one of the most magnificent ceremonials which the
university could show — the installation of a new
Rector. The office of Rector was biennial, the
electors being the past rectors, the councillors, and a
great body of special delegates. The voting was by
ballot, a Dominican priest acting as the returning
officer. The ceremony took place in the Cathedral
in the presence of the whole university. Here the
Rector elect was solemnly invested with the rectorial
hood by one of the doctors, and he was then escorted
home in triumph by the whole body of students, who
expected to be regaled with a banquet, or at the least
with wine and spices. Originally a tilt or tournament
was held, at which the new rector was required to

WILLIAM HARVEY

provide two hundred spears and two hundred pairs
of gloves ; but this practice had been discontinued for
some time before Harvey came into residence. A
remarkable custom, however, remained, which allowed
the students to tear the clothes from the back of the
newly elected rector, who was then called upon to
redeem the pieces at an exorbitant rate. So much
license attended the ceremony that a statute was
passed in 1552 to restrain "the too horrid and petulant
mirth of these occasions," but it did not venture to
abolish the time-honoured custom of the "vestium
laceratio."

To make up for the magnificence of these scenes
the Paduan student underwent great hardships. Food
was scanty and bad, forms were rough, the windows
were mere sheets of linen, which the landlord was
bound to renew as occasion required ; but to this
Harvey was accustomed, for as late as 1598 the rooms
of some of the junior fellows at King's College,
Cambridge, were still unprovided with glass. Artificial
ight was ruinously expensive, and there was an entire
absence of any kind of amusement.

The medical session began on St. Luke's Day in
each year, when there was an oration in praise
of medicine followed by High Mass and the Litany

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of the Holy Ghost. The session lasted until the
Feast of the Assumption, on August iSth, and in this
time the whole human body was twice dissected in
public by the professor of Anatomy. The greater
part of the work in the university was done between
six and eight o'clock in the morning, and some of
the lectures were given at daybreak, though Fabricius
lectured at the more reasonable hour (hora tres de mane)
which corresponded with nine o'clock before noon.

Hieronymus Fabricius was at once a surgeon, an
anatomist, and the historian of medicine ; and as he
was one of the most learned so he was one of the most
honoured teachers of his day. Amongst the privileges
which the Venetian Senate conferred upon the rector
of the University of Padua was the right to wear a
robe of purple and gold, whilst upon the resignation
of his office he was granted the title for life of
Doctor, and was presented with the golden collar
of the Order of St. Mark. Fabricius, like the Rector,
was honoured with these tokens of regard. He was
granted precedence of all the other professors, and
in his old age the State awarded him an annual
pension of a thousand crowns as a reward for his
services. The theatre in which he lectured still
exists. It is now an ancient building with circular

WILLIAM HARVEY

seats rising almost perpendicularly one above another.
The seats are nearly black with age, and they give
a most venerable appearance to the small apartment,
which is wainscoted with curiously carved oak. The
lectures must have been given by candlelight, for the
building is so constructed that no daylight can be
admitted. But when Harvey was at Padua the
theatre was new, and the Government had placed
an inscription over the entrance to commemorate the
liberality as well as the genius of Fabricius, who had
built the former theatre at his own expense. Here
Harvey sat assiduously during his stay in Padua,
learning charity, perhaps, as well as anatomy from his
master ; for Fabricius had at home a cabinet set apart
for the presents which he had received instead of fees,
and over it he had placed the inscription, " Lucri
neglecti lucrum."

Fabricius was more than a teacher to Harvey, for
a fast friendship seems to have sprung up between
master and pupil. Fabricius — then a man of sixty-one
he lived to be eighty-two— was engaged during Har-
vey's residence in Padua in perfecting his knowledge
of the valves of the veins. The valves had been
known and described by Sylvius of Louvilly (1478-
1555), that old miser, but prince of lecturers, who

EARLY LIFE

wanned himself in the depth of a Parisian winter
by playing ball against the wall of his room rather
than be at the expense of a fire, and who threatened
to close the doors of his class-room until two defaulting
students either paid their fees or were expelled by their
fellows. But the work of Sylvius had fallen into
oblivion and Fabricius rediscovered the valves in 1574.
His observations were not published until 1603, when
they appeared as a small treatise "de venarum ostiolis."
There is no doubt that he demonstrated their existence
to his class, and Harvey knew of the treatise, though
it was published a year after he had returned to
England. Indeed, when we look at Harvey's work,
much of it appears to be a continuation and an
amplification of that done by Fabricius. Both were
intensely interested in the phenomena of development ;
both wrote upon the structure and functions of the
skin; both studied the anatomy of the heart, lungs,
and blood vessels ; both wrote a treatise " de motu
locali." Harvey's youth, his comparative freedom
from the trammels of authority, and his more logical
mind, enabled him to outstrip his master and to avoid
the errors into which he had fallen. This advance
is particularly well seen in connection with the valves
of the veins. Fabricius taught that their purpose

WILLIAM HARVEY

^was to prevent over-distension of the vessels when
the blood passed from the larger into the smaller
veins (a double error) whilst they were not needed in
the arteries because the blood was always in a state
of ebb and flow. It was left for Harvey to point out
their true use and to indicate their importance as an
anatomical proof of the circulation of the blood.

Harvey graduated as Doctor of Medicine at Padua
in 1602 in the presence, it is said, of Fortescue,
Willoughby, Lister, Mounsell, Fpx [disguised in the
Records as Vulperinus], and Darcy, some of whom
remained his friends throughout life. The eulogistic
terms in which his diploma is couched leave no
doubt that his abilities had made a deep impression
upon the mind of his teachers. By some means
it came into the hands of Dr. Osmond Beauvoir,
head master of the King's School, Canterbury, by
whom it was presented to the College of Physicians
of London on September 30, 1766. The diploma
is dated April 25, 1602, and it confers on Harvey
the degree of Doctor of Physic, with leave to practise
and to teach arts and medicine in every land and
seat of learning. It further recites that "he had
conducted himself so wonderfully well in the exami-
nation, and had shown such skill, memory, and

EARLY LIFE

learning that he had far surpassed even the great hopes
which his examiners had formed of him. They
decided therefore that he was skilful, expert, and most
efficiently qualified both in arts and medicine, and to
this they put their hands, unanimously, willingly, with
complete agreement, and unhesitatingly."

Armed with so splendid a testimonial Harvey must
have returned at once to England, for he obtained the
degree of Doctor of Medicine from the University of
Cambridge in the same year. The University records
of Padua seemed to show that he maintained a some-
what close relationship with his Italian friends for
some years afterwards as the following entries
appear : —

" 1608-9 xzi. julii d. Gulielmus Herui, anglus.

iX'Xxx d. Gulielmus Heruy.

30 D. Gulielmus Heruy anglus die xx aug. cons, anglicae electus.

»t

The entries' are given as they stand in Dr.
Andrich's book, " De natione Anglica." They need
further elucidation, for they either refer to some other
person of the name of Harvey, or they point to visits
made by Harvey in some of his numerous continental
journeys. It is somewhat remarkable that all the
records are found in the annals of the jurist university

WILLIAM HARVEY

when Harvey should have belonged to the humanists.
Perhaps the prestige of the dominant University more
than compensated for the separation from his col-
leagues who were studying medicine. Indeed the
separation may have been* only nominal, for the
students of the humanist and jurist universities might
have sat side by side in the lecture theatre and in the
dissecting room, just as members of the different
colleges still do in Oxford. But party distinctions ran
high at the time, and there was probably no more
social intercourse between the m^embers of the two
universities than there is now between the individuals
of different corps in a German university.

Soon after his return to England Harvey seems to have
taken a house in London, in the parish of St. Martin's,
extra Ludgate, and he lost no time in attaching
himself to the College of Physicians. This body had
the sole right of licensing physicians to practise in
London and within seven miles of the City. Admis-
sion to the College was practically confined to
graduates in medicine of the English Universities,
but those who held a diploma from a foreign
university were allowed to enrol themselves if they
produced letters testimonial of admission ad eundem at
Oxford or Cambridge, and perhaps it was for this

EARLY LIFE

reason that Harvey proceeded to qualify himself by
taking his M.D. degree at Cambridge. He was
admitted a Candidate of the College of Physicians on
October 5, 1604, in the stone house, once Linacre's,
in Knightrider Street, the candidates being the
members or commonalty of the College from whom
its Fellows were chosen.

Harvey married a few weeks after his admission
to the College of Phjrsicians. The Registers of St.
Sepulchre's Church are wanting at this time, but the
allegation for his marriage licence is still extant.
It was issued by the Bishop of London and runs : —

1604 Nov. 24. William Harvey, Dr. of Physic, Bachelor, 26, of St.
Martin's, Ludgate, and Elizabeth Browne, Maiden, 24, of St.
Sepulchre's, daughter of Lancelot Browne of same. Dr. of Physic
who consents ; consent also of Thomas Harvey, one of the
Jurats of the town of Folston in Kent, father of the said
William ; at St. Sepulchre's Newgate."

Dr. Browne was physician to Queen Elizabeth
and to James L He died the year following the
marriage of his daughter.

Harvey's union was childless, and we know nothing
of Mrs. Harvey except that she died before her
husband, though she was alive in 1645, when John
Harvey died and left her a hundred pounds. She is

WILLIAM HARVEY

incidentally mentioned by her husband in the follow-
ing account of an accomplished parrot, who was Mrs.
Harvey's pet. Through a long life the parrot main-
tained the masculine character until in one unguarded
moment she lost both life and reputation.

^^ A parrot, a handsome bird and a famous talker,
had long been a pet of my wife's. It was so tame
that it wandered freely through the house, called for
its mistress when she was abroad, greeted her cheer-
fully when it found her, answered her call, flew to her,
and aiding himself with beak and claws, climbed up
her dress to her shoulder, whence it walked down her
arm and often settled upon her hand. When ordered
to sing or talk, it did as it was bidden even at night
and in the dark. Playful and impudent, it would
often seat itself in my wife's lap to have its head
scratched and its back stroked, whibt a gentle move-
ment of its wings and a soft murmur witnessed to the
pleasure of its soul. I believed all this to proceed
from its usual familiarity and love of being noticed,
for I always looked upon the creature as a male on
account of its skill in talking and singing (for amongst
birds the females rarely sing or challenge one another
by their notes, and the males alone solace their mates
by their tuneful warblings) . . . until . . . not long

EARLY LIFE

after the caressings mentioned, the parrot, which had
lived for so many years in health, fell sick, and by and
by being seized with repeated attacks of convulsions,
died, to our great sorrow, in its mistress's lap, where it
had so often loved to lie. On making a post-mortem
examination to discover the cause of death I found an
almost complete egg in its oviduct, but it was
addled;'

There are no means of knowing how Harvey spent
the first few years of his married life in London,
though it is certain that he was not idle. He was
probably occupied in making those observations on
the heart and blood vessels which have since rendered
his name famous. Indeed his lectures show an
intimate acquaintance with the anatomy of more ,
than sixty kinds of animals, as well as a very thorough
knowledge of the structure of the human body, and
such knowledge must have cost him years of patient
study. At the same time he practised his profession,
and won for himself the good opinion of his
seniors.

He was elected a Fellow of the College of
Phjrsicians, June 5, 1607, and thereupon he sought
almost immediately to attach himself to St. Bartholo-
mew's Hospital.

WILLIAM HARVEY

The offices in the hospital at that time were
usually granted in reversion — that is to say, a successor
was appointed whilst the occupant was still in pos-
session. Following this custom the hospital minutes
record that —

" At a Court [of Governors] held on Sunday, the 25th

day of February, Anno Domini 1608-9,
" In presence of Sir John Spencer, Knight, President

(anAothers).

" Mr.i Dr. Harvey

" This day Mr. William Harvey Doctor of Physic
made suit for the reversion of the office of the
Physician of this house when t\\e same shall be next
void and brought the King's Majesty his letters
directed to the Governors of this house in his behalf,
and showed forth a testimony of his sufficiency for the
same place under the hand of Mr. Doctor Adkynson
president of the College of the physicians and diverse
other doctors of the auncientest of the said College.
It is granted at the contemplation of his Majesty's
letters that the said Mr. Harvey shall have the said
office next after the decease or other departure of

' The usual contraction for Magister, indicating his university degree
of Artium Magister or M.A.

EARLY LIFE

Mr. Doctor Wilkenson who now holdeth the same
with the yearly fee and duties thereunto belonging,
so that then he be not found to be otherwise employed,
that may let or hinder the charge of the same office,
which belongeth thereunto.*'

This grant practically gave Harvey the position
which is now occupied by an assistant physician, as
one who was appointed to succeed to an office in this
manner was usually called upon to discharge its duties
during the absence or illness of the actual holder.
Harvey seems to have carried out his duties with tact
and zeal, for Dr. Wilkinson, himself a Fellow of
Trinity College, Cambridge, gave him the benefit of
his professional experience and remained his friend.

It seems possible that John Harvey's position at
Court enabled him to obtain from the King the letters
reconmiendatory which rendered his brother's applica-
tion so successful at St. Bartholomew's Hospital.
However this may be, Harvey did not long occupy
the subordinate position, for Dr. Wilkinson died late
in the summer of 1609, ^^^ ^^ August 28 in the
same year Harvey offisred himself to the House
Committee " to execute the office of physician of this
house until Michaelmas next, without any recompense

33 ^

WILLIAM HARVEY

for his pains herein, which office Mr. Doctor Wilkin-
son, late deceased, held. And Mr. Doctor Harvey
being asked whether he is not otherwise employed
in any other place which may let or hinder the
execution of the office of the physician toward the
poor of this hospital hath answered that he is not,
wherefore it is thought fit by the said governors that
he supply the same office until the next Court (of
governors). And then Mr. Doctor Harvey to be a
suitor for his admittance to the said place according to
a grant thereof to him heretofore made." The form
of his election therefore was identical with that which
is still followed at the Hospital in cases of an appoint-
ment to an uncontested vacancy. The House Com-
mittee or smaller body of Governors recommend to
the whole body or Court of Governors with whom
the actual appointment lies.

Harvey performed his duties as physician's substitute
at the hospital until —

" At a Court [of Governors] held on Sunday the 14th

day of October 1609.

" In presence of Sir John Spencer, Knight, President

(and others).
" Dr. Harvey.

" This day Mr. William Harvey Doctor of Physic

EARLY LIFE

is admitted to the office of Ph)rsician of this Hospital,
which Mr. Dr. Wilkenson, deceased, late held,
according to a former grant made to him and the
charge of the said office hath been read unto him."

The charge runs in the following words ; it is
dated the day of Harvey's election : —

" October 14, 1609.

" The Charge of the Physician of St. Bartholomew's

Hospital.

" Physician.

"You are here elected and admitted to be the

phjrsician for the Poor of this Hospital, to perform

the charge following, That is to say, one day in

the week at the least through the year or oftener

as need shall require you shall come to this hospital

and cause the Hospitaller, Matron, or Porter to call

before you in the hall of this hospital such and so

many of the poor harboured in this hospital as shall

need the counsell and advice of the physician. And

you are here required and desired by us, in Grod his most

holy name, that you endeavour yourself to do the best

of your knowledge in the profession of physic to the

poor then present, or any other of the poor at any time

of the week which shall be sent home unto you by the

WILLIAM HARVEY

Hospitaller or Matron for your counsel, writing in
a book appointed for that purpose such medicines with
their compounds and necessaries as appertaineth to
the apothecary or this house to be provided and made
ready for to be ministered unto the poor, every one in
particular according to his disease. You shall not,
for favour, lucre, or gain, appoint or write anything
for the poor but such good and wholesome things as
you shall think with your best advice will do the poor
good, without any affection or respect to be had to the
apothecary. And you shall take no gift or reward ot
any of the poor of this house for your counsel. This
you will promise to do as you shall answer before
God, and as it becometh a faithful physician, whom
you chiefly ought to serve in this vocation, is by God
called unto and for your negligence herein, if you fail,
you shall render account. And so we require you
faithfully to promise in God his most holy name to
perform this your charge in the hearing of us, with
your best endeavour as God shall enable you so long
as you shall be physician to the poor of this hospital."

Dr. Norman Moore says that, as physician, Harvey
sat once a week at a table in the hall of the hospital,
and that the patients who were brought to him sat by

EARLY LIFE

his side on a settle — the apothecary, the steward, and
the matron standing by whikt he wrote his prescrip-
tions in a book which was always kept locked. The
hall was pulled down about the year 1728, but its
spacious fireplace is still remembered because, to main-
tain the fire in it, Henry III. granted a supply of
wood from the Royal Forest at Windsor. The sur-
geons to the hospital discharged their duties in the
wards, but the physician only went into them to visit
such patients as were unable to walk.

The office of physician carried with it an official
residence rented from the governors of the hospital
at such a yearly rent and on such conditions as was
agreed upon from time to time. Harvey never availed
himself of this official residence, for at the time of
his election he was living in Ludgate, where he was
within easy reach of the hospital. For some reason,
however, it was resolved at a Court of Governors, held
under the presidency of Sir Thomas Lowe on July
28, 1 6 14, that Harvey should have this residence,
consisting of two houses and a garden in West
Smithfield adjoining the hospital. The premises were
let on lease at the time of the grant, but the tenure
of Harvey or of his successor was to begin at its
expiration. The lease did not fall in until 1626,

^;^I^IB^^M

WILLIAM HARVEY

when Harvey, after some consideration, decided not
to accept it. It was therefore agreed, on July 7,
1626, that his annual stipend should be increased from
^25 to £2Z ^* ^^* ^^ these negotiations, as well
as in some monetary transactions which he had with
the steward of the hospital at the time of his election
as physician to the hospital, we seem to see the
hand of Eliab, for throughout his life William was
notoriously open-handed, indifferent to wealth, and
constitutionally incapable of driving a bargain.

Ill

The Lumleian Lectures

UNTIL the year 1745 the teaching of Anatomy
in England was vested in a few corporate
bodies, and private teaching was discouraged in every
possible way, even by fine and imprisonment. The
College of Physicians and the Barber Surgeons*
Company had a monopoly of the anatomical teaching
in London. In the provinces the fragmentary records
of the various guilds of Barber Surgeons show that
many of them recognised the value of a knowledge
of Anatomy as the foundation of medicine. In the
universities there were special facilities for its teaching.
But subjects were difficult to procure, and dissection
came to be looked upon as part of a legal process
so inseparably connected with the death penalty for
crime that it was impossible to obtain even the body
of a ** stranger " for anatomical purposes.

WILLIAM HARVEY

The Act of Parliament which, in 1540, united the
Guild of Surgeons with the Company of Barber
Surgeons in London especially empowered the masters
of the united company to take yearly the bodies of
four malefactors who had been condemned and put
to death for felony for their " further and better know-
ledge, instruction, insight, learning, and experience
in the science and faculty of surgery." Queen
Elizabeth, following this precedent, granted a similar
permission to the College of Physicians in 1565.
The Charter allowed the President of the College
of Physicians to take one, two, three, or four bodies
a year for dissection. The radius from which the
supply might be obtained was enlarged, so that persons
executed in London, Middlesex, or any county within
sixteen miles might be taken by the college servants.

The proviso would appear to he unnecessary, con-
sidering the great number of executions which then
took place and the small number of bodies which
were required, but it probably enabled the subjects to
be obtained with greater ease. The executions in
London were witnessed by great crowds, who often
sided with the friends of the felons, and rendered it
impossible for the body to be taken away for dissection.
The Charter of James I. enlarged these powers by

THE LUMLEIAN LECTURES

allowing the College of Physicians to take annually
the bodies of six felons executed in London, Middle-
sex, or Surrey.

Little is known in detail of the manner in which
Anatomy was taught by the College of Physicians, but
the labours of Mr. Young and Mr. South have given
us an accurate picture of the way in which it was
carried out by the Barber Surgeons in London.
We may be sure that in so conservative an age
the methods did not diflFer greatly at the two in-
stitutions, especially as the Barber Surgeons usually
enlisted the services of the better trained physicians
to teach their members both Anatomy and Surgery.

Anatomy was taught practically in a series of
demonstrations upon the body ; but as there was no
means of preserving the subject, it had to be taught
by a general survey rather than in minute detail.
The method adopted was the one still followed
by the veterinary student. A single body was dissected
to show the muscles (this was the muscular lecture) ;
another to show the bones (the osteological lecture) ;
another to show the parts within the head, chest,
and abdomen (the visceral lecture). The osteological
lecturer was not always identical with the visceral
lecturer, nor he with the lecturer upon the muscles,

WILLIAM HARVEY

though some great teachers, like Reid and Harvey,
gave a course upon each subject.

The Demonstrations usually took place four times
a year, and were called Public Anatomies, because
the subject was generally a public body — that is to
say, it was a felon executed for his misdeeds. There
was also an indefinite number of Private Anatomies.
The attendance of surgeons at the Public Anatomies
was compulsory. The attendance at the Private
Anatomies was by invitation. It was illegal for
any surgeon to dissect a human body in the City
of London, or within a radius of seven miles, without
permission of the Barber Surgeons' Company ; and in
1573 the Company's Records for May 2ist contain
the minute : " Here was John Deane and appointed
to bring in his fine of ten pounds (for having an
Anatomy in his house contrary to an order in
that behalf) between this and Midsummer next " —
an enormously heavy punishment when we remember
the relative value of money in those days. Whenever
a surgeon wished to dissect a particularly interesting
subject, it was termed a Private Anatomy, and it was
generally performed at the Hall of the Company after
due permission had been asked for and obtained, the
surgeon inviting his own friends and pupils, the Com-
pany inviting whom it chose.

THE LUMLEIAN LECTURES

Eveiy efibrt was made to insure the punctual attend-
ance at the public or compulsory anatomies, for it
was enacted in 1572 that every man of the Company
using the mystery or faculty of surgery, be he free-
man, foreigner, or alien stranger, shall come imto
the Anatomy lecture, being by the beadle warned
thereto. And for not keeping their hour, both in the
forenoon and also in the afternoon, and being a
freeman, shall forfeit and pay at every time fourpence.
The foreigner (or one who was not free of the
Company) in like manner, and the stranger sixpence.
The said fines and forfeits to be employed by the
anatomists for their expenses. Excuses were some-
times admitted, for a few years earlier Robert
Mudsley " hath licence to be absent from all lecture
days without payment of any fine because he hath
given over exercising of the art of Surgery and doth
occupy only a silk shop and shave." In later years,
the higher the position of the defaulter in the Com-
pany, the heavier was his fine for non-attendance ;
so that the assistants of the Company, who corre-
sponded to the Council of the present Royal College
of Surgeons, were fined 3s. 4d. for each lecture they
missed.

Every effort was made to render the lectures

WILLIAM HARVEY

successful. The best teachers were obtained ; they
were paid liberally, and each lecturer or reader was
himself assisted by two demonstrators. Each course
lasted three days — a lecture in the morning, a lecture
in the afternoon, and a feast between the two lectures.
As the anatomies were a public show, we may feel
sure that Pepys attended one, and, as usual, he gives
a perfectly straightforward account of the proceedings.
He records under the date February 27, 1662-3 *
" Up and to my office. . . . About eleven o'clock
Commissioner Pett and I walked to Chyrurgeon's Hall
(we being all invited thither, and promised to dine
there), where we -were led into the Theatre : and
by and by comes the reader Dr. Tearne, with the
Master and Company in a very handsome manner :
and all being settled, he begun his lecture, this being
the second upon the kidneys, ureters, &c., which was
very fine ; and his discourse being ended, we walked
into the Hall, and there being great store of company,
we had a fine dinner and good learned company, many
Doctors of Phisique, and we used with extraordinary
great respect. . . . After dinner Dr. Scarborough
took some of his friends, and I went along with them,
to see the body alone, which we did, which was a
lusty fellow, a seaman that was hanged for a robbery.

THE LUMLEIAN LECTURES

I did touch the dead body with my bare hand : it
felt cold, but methought it was a very unpleasant
sight. . . . Thence we went into a private room,
where I perceive they prepare the bodies, and there
were the kidneys, ureters, &c., upon which he read
to-day, and Dr. Scarborough, upon my desire and
the company's, did show very clearly the manner
of the disease of the stone and the cutting, and all
other questions that I could think of. . . . Thence
with great satisfaction to me back to the Company,
where I heard good discourse, and so to the afternoon
lecture upon the heart and lungs, &c., and that being
done we broke up, took leave and back to the office,
we two. Sir W. Batten, who dined here also, being
gone before." Pepys' interest in this particular lecture
lay in the fact that he had himself been cut for
stone, a disease which seems to have been hereditary
in his mother's family. Dr. Scarborough, who had
been the Company's lecturer for nineteen years, was
the friend and pupil of Hai*vey, whose interest had
obtained the post for him. He seems to have been
succeeded by Dr. Christopher Terne, assistant phy-
sician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, whose lecture
Pepys heard.

The cost of the lectures and demonstrations was

WILLIAM HARVEY

defrayed at first by the Corporations, but in course
of time, benefactors came forward and bequeathed
funds for the purpose. In the year 1579 there
was a motion before the Court of the Barber
Surgeons' Company concerning a lecture in surgery
^^ to be had and made in our Hall and of an
annuity of ten pounds to be given for the per-
formance thereof yearly by Master Doctor Caldwall,
Doctor in phisick ; but it was not concluded upon
neither was any further speech at that time." No
reference to the proposal occurs subsequently in
the minute books, so that the idea was probably
abandoned, no doubt upon the ground that it would
lead to additional expense which the Company was
unprepared to meet. The annuity was only ten
pounds a year, and in 1646 the cost of the lectures,
including the dinners, amounted to ^22 14s. 6d., or
without the feasts to ^12 14s. 6d. It is now obvious
that the Company did a very stupid thing, for in 1 581,
two years later. Lord Lumley in conjunction with Dr.
Caldwell, and at his instance, foimded the Lumleian
lectureship at the College of Physicians. The
surgeons thus lost a noble benefaction which should
of right have belonged to them and with which
Harvey might still have been associated, for whikt he

THE LUMLEIAN LECTURES

was lecturing at the College of Physicians, Alexander
Reid, his junior in years as well as in standing, was
lecturing at the Barber Surgeons' Hall in Monkwell
Street.

The Lumleian lecture was a surgery lecture es-
tablished at a cost of forty pounds a year, laid as a
rent charge upon the lands of Lord Lumley in Essex,
and of Dr. Caldwell in Derbyshire.

Its founders were two notable men. Lord Lumley,
says Camden, was a person of entire virtue, integrity,
and innocence, and in his old age, was a complete
pattern of true nobility. His father, the sixth baron,
suffered death for high treason, but the son was made a
Knight of the Bath two days before the coronation of
Queen Mary. He was one of the lords appointed to
attend Queen Elizabeth at her accession, in the
journey from Hatfield to London, and at the
accession of James L he was made one of the
Commissioners for settling the claims at his coro-
nation. He died April ii, 1609, without surviving
.issue. Dr. Caldwell had enjoyed unique honour at
the College of Physicians. He was examined,
approved, and admitted a Fellow upon 22nd
December, 1559, and upon the same day he was
appointed a Censor. He became President in

WILLIAM HARVEY

1570, and was present at the institution of the
lecture in 1582. He was then so aged, his white
head adding double reverence to his years, that when
he attempted to make a Latin oration to the auditors
he was compelled to leave it unfinished by reason of
his manifold debilities. And in a very short time
afterwards the good old doctor fell sick, and as a
candle goeth out of itself or a ripe apple falleth
from a tree, so departed he out of this world at the
Doctors' Commons, where his usual lodgings were, and
was buried on the 6th of June immediately following,
in the year 1584, at S. Ben'et's Church by Paul's
Wharf, at the upper end of the chancel.

The design of the benefaction was a noble one. It
was the institution of a lecture on Surgery to be
continued perpetually for the common benefit of
London and consequently of all England, the like
whereof had not been established in any University
of Christendom (Bologna and Padua excepted). An
attempt had been made to establish such a lectureship
at Paris, but the project failed when Francis I. died,
on the last day of March, 1547.

The reader of the Lumleian lecture was to be a
Doctor of Physic of good practice and knowledge
who was to be paid an honest stipend, no less in

THE LUMLEIAN LECTURES

amount than that received by the Regius Professors
of law, divinity, and ph3rsic, in the Universities of
Oxford and Cambridge. The lecturer was enjoined
to lecture twice a week throughout the year, to wit
on Wednesdays and Fridays, at ten of the clock till
eleven. He was to read for three-quarters of an hour
in Latin and the other quarter in English ^^ wherein
that shall be plainly declared for those that understand
not Latin."

The lecturer was appointed for life and his subjects
were so arranged that they recurred in cycles. The
first year he was to read the tables of Horatius Morus,
an epitome or brief handling of all the whole art of
surgery, that is, of swellings, wounds, ulcers, bone-
setting, and the healing of broken bones commonly
called fractures. He was also to lecture upon certain
prescribed works of Galen and Oribasius, and at the
end of the year in winter he was directed ^ to dissect
openly in the reading place all the body of man,
especially the inward parts for five days together, as
well before as after dinner j if the bodies may last so
long without annoy."

The second year he was to read somewhat more
advanced works upon surgery and in the winter ^^ to
dissect the trunk only of the body, namely, from the

49 ^

WILLIAM HARVEY

head to the lowest part where the members are and to
handle the muscles especially. The third year to read
of wounds, and in winter to make public dissections of
the head only. The fourth year to read of ulcers
and to anatomise [or dissect] a leg and an arm for the
knowledge of muscles, sinews, arteries, veins, gristles,
ligaments, and tendons. The fifth year to read the
sixth book of Paulus Aegineta, and in winter to make
an anatomy of a skeleton and therewithall to show the
use of certain instruments for the setting of bones.
The sixth year to read Holerius of the matter of
surgery as well as of the medicines for surgeons to use.
And the seventh year to begin again and continue
still."

The College of Ph)rsicians made every efibrt to ful-
fil its trust adequately. Linacre, its founder and first
President in 151 8, allowed the Fellows to use the
front part of his house — the stone house in Knight-
rider Street, consisting of a parlour below and a
chamber above, as a coimcil room and library, and
the college continued to use these rooms for some
years after his death, the rest of the premises being the
property of Merton College, Oxford. At the Institu-
tion of the Surgery lecture the Fellows determined to
appropriate the sum of a hundred pounds out of their

THE LUMLEIAN LECTURES

common stock — ^and this proved to be nearly all the
money the College possessed — ^to enlarge the building
and to make it more ornamental and better suited for
their meetings and for the attendance at their lectures.
The result appears to have been satisfactory, for two
years later, it was ordered, on the 13th of March,
1583-4, that a capacious theatre should be added to
the College thus enlarged.

Dr. Richard Forster was appointed the first Lum-
leian lecturer, and when he died in 1602, William
Dunne took his place. Dunne, however, did not
live to complete a single cycle of lectures for
Thomas Davies was elected in May, 1607. The
College then again began to outgrow its accommo-
dation, and as the site did not allow of any further
additions to the buildings, a suitable house and premises
were, bought of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's in
Amen Corner, at the end of Paternoster Row. The
last meeting of the College in Linacre*s old house in
Knightrider Street, took place on the 25 th of June,
1 6 14, and its first meeting in Amen Corner was
held on the 23rd of August, 16 14. Dr. Davies
died in the following year, and on the 4th of
August, 161 5, William Harvey was appointed
to the office of I*umleian lecturer, though his

WILLIAM HARVEY

predecessor was not buried until August 20th. He
continued to occupy this post until his resignation
in 1656, when his place was taken by (Sir) Charles
Scarborough. The duties of the lecturer, no doubt,
had been modified with each fresh appointment, but
even in Harvey's time, there is some evidence to show
that the subjects were still considered in a definite
order.

Harvey, in all probability, began to lecture at once
upon surgery as the more theoretical portion of his
subject, but it was not until April, 16 16, that he gave
his first anatomical lecture. It was a visceral lecture
for the terms of the bequest required that it should be
upon the inward parts. At this time Harvey was
thirty-seven years of age. A man of the lowest
stature, round faced, with a complexion like the
wainscot ; his eyes small, round, very black and full
of spirit ; his hair as black as a raven and curling ;
rapid in his utterance, choleric, given to gesture, and
used when in discourse with any one, to play uncon-
sciously with the handle of the small dagger he wore
by his side.

The MS. notes of his first course of lectures are
now in the British Museum. They formed a part
of the library of Dr. (afterwards Sir Hans) Sloane,

THE LUMLEIAN LECTURES

which was acquired under the terms of his will by the
nation in 1754. For a time the book was well known
and extracts were made from it, then it disappeared and
for many years it was mourned as. irretrievably lost.
But in 1876 it was found again amongst some duplicate
printed books which had been set aside, and in the
following year it was restored to its place in the Manu-
script Department. The notes were reproduced by
an autotype process, at the instigation of Sir E. H.
Sieveking, and under the supervision of a Committee
of the Royal College of Physicians. This fecsimile
reproduction was published in 1886 with a transcript
by Mr. Scott, and an interesting introduction from
the pen of Dr. Norman Moore. The original notes
are written upon both sides of about a hundred pages of
foolscap, which had been reduced to a uniform size of
six inches by eight, though the creases on the paper
show that they have been further folded so as to
occupy a space of about eight inches by two. These
leaves have been carefully bound together in leather
which presents some pretensions to elegance, but it is
clear that the pages were left loose for some years after
they were written. There seems to be no doubt that
Harvey used the volume in its present form whilst he
was lecturing, for three small threads of twine have

WILLIAM HARVEY

been attached by sealing wax to the inner side of the
cover so that additional notes could be slipped in as
they were required. It must be assumed that Harvey
did this himself, for he wrote so badly and the notes are
so full of abbreviations, interlineations, and alterations,
as to render them useless to any one but the author.

The title-page, which is almost illegible, is written
in red ink. It runs, " Stat Jove principium,
Musae, Jovis omnia plena. Prelectiones Anatomiae
Universalis per me Gulielmum Harveium Medicum
Londinensem Anatomic et Chirurgie Professorem.
Anno Domini 1616. Anno aetatis 37 prelectae
Aprili 16, 17, 18. Aristoteles Historia Animalium,
lib. i. cap. 16. Hominum partes interiores incertae
et incognitae quam ob rem ad caeterorum Animalium
partes quarum similes humanae referentes eas contem-
plare." The motto prefixed to the title-page that
^ '< everything is full of Jove " is an incorrect quotation

from the third Eclogue of his favourite author Virgil,
of whom he was so enamoured that after reading him
for a time he would throw away the book with the
exclamation, " He hath a devil." This particular line
appears especially to have struck his fancy, for he quotes
it twice in his treatise on development, and he works
out the idea which it represents in his fifty-fourth essay.

THE LUMLEIAN LECTURES

He there shows that he understands it to mean that the
finger of God or nature, for with him they are synony-
mous terms, is manifest in every detail of our structure f
whether great or small. For he says : " And to none
can these attributes be referred save to the Almighty,
first cause of all things by whatever this name has
been designated — the Divine Mind by Aristotle ; the
Soul of the Universe by Plato ; the Natura Naturans ^
by others ; Saturn and Jove by the Gentiles ; by our-
selves, as is seemly in these days, the Creator and
Father of all that is in heaven and earth, on whom
all things depend for their being, and at whose will
and pleasure all things are and were engendered." He
thus opened his lectures in a broad spirit of religious .
charity quite foreign to his environment but befitting
the position he has been called upon to occupy in the
history of science.

These notes of Harvey's visceral lecture are or
especial value to us though they are a mere skeleton
of the course — a skeleton which he was accustomed
to clothe with facts drawn from his own vast stores
of observation, with the theories of all his great
predecessors and with the most apposite illustrations.
Fortunately they deal with the thorax and its con-
tents so that they show us the exact point which

WILLIAM HARVEY

he had reached in connection with his great discovery
of the circulation of the blood and the true function
of the heart. The notes therefore are interesting
reading quite apart from the peculiarities of their style.

Harvey was so good a Latin scholar^ and during
his stay in Italy had acquired such a perfect colloquial
knowledge of the language that it is clear he thought
with equal facility in Latin or in English, so that it is
immaterial into which language he put his ideas. He
uses therefore many abbreviations, and whole sentences
are written in a mixture of Latin and English, which
always sounds oddly to our unaccustomed ears, and
often seems comical. Thus, in speaking of the lungs
and their functions, he says, "Soe curst children by eager
crying grow black and suffocated non deficiente animali
facultate^^ and in speaking of the eyes and their uses,
he says, " Oculi eodem loco, viz., Nobilissimi supra et
ante ad processus eminentes instar capitis in a Lobster
. • • snayles cornubus tactu pro visu utuntur unde
occuli as a Centinell to the Army locis editis
anterioribus." Sometimes he embodies an important
experimental observation in this jargon as in the
example, ** Exempto corde, frogg scipp, eele crawle,
dogg Ambulat."

The more important and original ideas throughout

THE LUMLEIAN LECTURES

the notes are initialled WH., and this seems to have
been Harvey's constant practice, for it occurs even in
the books which he has read and annotated, whilst to
other parts of his notes he has appended the sign A.

The lectures were partly read and partly oral, and
we know from the minute directions laid down by the
Barber Surgeons Company the exact manner in which
they were given. The "Manual of Anatomy,"
published by Alexander Reid in 1634, has a frontis-
piece showing that the method of lecturing adopted
in England was the same as that in use through-
out Europe. The body lay upon a table, and as
the dissections were done in sight of the audience,
the dissecting instruments were close to it. The
lecturer, wearing the cap of his doctor's degree, sate
opposite the centre of the table holding in his hand a
little wand < to indicate the part he mentions, though
in many cases the demonstration was made by a
second doctor of medicine known as the demon-
strator, whilst the lecturer read his remarks. At
either end of the table was an assistant — the Masters
of the Anatomy — ^with scalpel in hand ready to
expose the different structures, and to clear up any

' The College of Physicians still possess a little whalebone rod
tipped with silver which Harvey is said to have used in demonstrating
his Lumleian lectures.

WILLIAM HARVEY

points of difficulty. The audience grouped them-
selves in the most advantageous positions for seeing
and hearing, though in some cases places were
assigned to them according to age and rank.

The lecturer upon Anatomy, apart from the fact that
he was a Doctor of Physic was a person of consider-
able importance in the sixteenth century. The
greatest care was taken of him, as may be understood
from the directions which the Barber Surgeons gave
to their Stewards in Anatomy or those members of
the Company who were appointed to supervise the
arrangements for the lectures. They were ordered
'* to see and provide that there be every year a mat
about the hearth in the Hall that Mr. Doctor be
made not to take cold upon his feet, nor other gentle-
men that do come and mark the Anatomy to learn
knowledge. And further that there be two fine
white rods appointed for the Doctor to touch the
body where it shall please him ; and a wax candle
to look into the body, and that there be always for the
doctor two aprons to be from the shoulder downwards
and two pair of sleeves for his whole arm with tapes,
for change for the said Doctor, and not to occupy one
Apron and one pair of sleeves every day which is
unseemly. And the Masters of the Anatomy that

THE LUMLEIAN LECTURES

be about the body to have like aprons and sleeves
every day both white and clean. That if the Masters
of the Anatomy that be about the Doctor do not sec
these things ordered and that their knives, probes, and
other instruments be fair and clean accordingly with
Aprons and sleeves, if they do lack any of the said
things afore rehearsed he shall forfeit for a fine to the
Hall forty shillings."

The whole business of a public anatomy was
conducted with much ceremony, and every detail was
regulated by precedent. The exact routine in the
Barber Surgeons' Company is laid down in another
series of directions. The clerk or secretary is
instructed in his duties in the following words : " So
soon as the body is brought in deliver out your tickets
which must be first filled up as followeth four sorts : —
The first form, to the Surgeons who have served the
office of Master you must say : Be pleased to attend
&c. with which summons you send another for the
Demonstrations : to those below the Chair [i,e,y who
have not filled the office of Master of the Company]
you say : Our Masters desire your Company in your
Gown and flat Cap &c. with the like notice for the
Demonstrations as you send to the ancient Master
Surgeons. To the Barbers, if ancient masters, you

mm»

WILLIAM HARVEY

say : Be pleased to attend in your Gk)wn only, and it
below the Chair, then : Our Masters desire &c. as to
the others above, but without the tickets for the
demonstrations.

"The body being by the Masters of Anatomy
prepared for the lecture (the Beadles having first given
the Doctor notice who is to read) and having taken
orders from the Master or Upper Warden [of the
Company] of the Surgeons' side concerning the same,
you meet the whole Court of Assistance [i.^., the
Council] in the Hall Parlour where every gentlemen
cloathes himself [z.^., puts on his livery or gown], and
then you proceed in form to the Theatre. The
Beadles going first, next the Clerk, then the Doctor,
and after him the several gentlemen of the Court ; and
having come therein, the Doctor and the rest of the
Company being seated, the Clerk walks up to the
Doctor and presents him with a wand and retires
without the body of the Court [/,tf., the theatre in
which the assemblage of the company technically
constituted a " court "] until the lecture is over when
he then goes up to the Doctor and takes the wand
from him with directions when to give notice for the
reading in the afternoon which is usually at five
precisely, and at one of the clock at noon, which he

THE LUMLEIAN LECTURES

pronounces with a distinct and audible voice by
saying, This Lecture, Gentlemen, will be continued
at five of the clock precisely. Having so said he
walks out before the Doctor, the rest of the Company
following down to the Hall parlour where they all
dine, the Doctor pulling off his own robes and
putting on the Clerk's Gown first, which it has
alwa)rs been usual for him to dine in. And after
being plentifully regaled they proceed as before until
the end of the third day, which being over (the
Clerk having first given notice in the forenoon that
the lecture will be continued at five of the clock
precisely (at which time the same will be ended) he
attends the Doctor in the clothing room where he
presents him folded up in a piece of paper the sum of
ten pounds, and where afterwards he waits upon the
Masters of Anatomy and presents each of them in like
manner with the sum of three pounds, which
concludes the duty of the Clerk on this account.

"N.B. — The Demonstrator, by order of the Court
of Assistants, is allowed to read to his pupils after the
public lecture is over for three days and till six of the
clock on each day and no longer, after which the
remains of the body is decently interred at the
expence of the Masters of Anatomy, which usually

WILLIAM HARVEY

amounts unto the sum of three pounds seven shillings
and fivepence."

The study of Anatomy seems to have been regarded
universally as an exhausting occupation^ for throughout
Europe it was the custom to present the auditors
with wine and spices after each lecture, unless some
more substantial refreshment was provided.

Harvey's lectures at the College of Physicians were
probably given with similar ceremony to those just
described. His first course was delivered on Tuesday,
Wednesday, and Thursday, April i6, 17, and 18,
1 61 6. On the following Tuesday, April 23rd,
Shakespeare died at Stratford-on-Avon, and on the
succeeding Thursday, April 25th, hf was buried in the
chancel of the parish church.

At the beginning of his lectures Harvey lays down
the following excellent canons for his guidance, of
which the sixth seems to indicate that he was
acquainted with the works of John of Arderne —

1. To show as much as may be at a glance, the
whole belly for instance, and afterwards to subdivide
the parts according to their position and relations.

2. To point out what is peculiar to the actual body
which is being dissected.

THE LUMLEIAN LECTURES

3. To supply only by speech what cannot be
shown on your own credit and by authority.

4. To cut up as much as may be in the sight of the
audience.

5. To enforce the right opinion by remarks drawn
from far and near, and to illustrate man by the
structure of animals according to the Socratic rule
[given by Aristotle and affixed as an extract to the
title-page of the lectures i]. To bring in points
beyond mere anatomy in relation to the causes of
diseases, and the general study of nature with the
object of correcting mistakes and of elucidating the
use and actions of parts for the use of anatomy to
the ph)rsician is to ^ explain what should be done in
disease.

6. Not to praise or dispraise other anatomists, for all
did well, and there was some excuse even for those
who are in error.

7. Not to dispute with others, or attempt to confute
them, except by the most obvious retort, for three days
is all too short a time [to complete the work in hand].

8. To state things briefly and plainly, yet not
letting anything pass unmentioned which can be
seen.

' P. 54.
63

WILLIAM HARVEY

9. Not to speak of anything which can be as well
explained without the body or can be read at home.

10. Not to enter into too much detail^ or into too
minute a dissection, for the time does not permit.

1 1. To serve in their three courses according to the
glass {i.e.y to allot a definite time to each part of the
body). In the first day's lectures the abdomen, nasty,
yet recompensed by its infinite variety. In the second
day's lecture the parlour [1.^,, the thorax ?]. In the
third day's lecture the divine banquet of the brain.

Harvey adheres pretty closely in his visceral lecture
to the programme which he had thus laid down for
his own guidance.

The first set of notes deal with the outside of the
body, and the abdomen and its contents. The second
portion contains an account of the chest and its con-
tents ; whilst the third portion is devoted to a consider-
ation of the head with the brain and its nerves. Only
nine pages of the ninety-eight which the book con-
tains are allotted to the heart. The scheme of the
lectures is first to give a general introduction in which
the subject is arranged under different headings, and
then to consider each part under a variety of sub-
headings. Harvey's playfulness is shown even in the

THE LUMLEIAN LECTURES

introduction. Each main division is indicated by a
roughly drawn hand, and each hand is made to point
with a different finger. The first hand points with its
little finger, and has the other fingers bent, though the
thumb is outstretched as if applied to the nose of the
lecturer. The next heading is indicated by an
extended ring finger, the next by the middle finger,
whilst the later ones are mere " bunches of fives,"
or single amputated digits. In his description of the
abdomen Harvey shows himself fully alive to the evils
of tight-lacing, for, in speaking of the causes of difficult
respiration he says, " young girls by lacing : unde cut
their laces." After a full discussion of the situation
and functions of the various parts of the abdominal
viscera, he passes on to the thorax and enunciates his
memorable discovery in these remarkable words,
which are initialled to show that he thought the idea
was peculiarly his own : —

" It is plain from the structure of the heart that the
blood is passed continuously through the lungs to the
aorta as by the two clacks of a water bellows to raise
water.

" It is shown by the application of a ligature that the
passage of the blood is from the arteries into the veins.

65 F

WILLIAM HARVEY

" Whence it follows that the movement of the blood
is constantly in a circle, and is brought about by the
beat of the heart. It is a question therefore whether
this is for the sake of nourishment or rather for the
preservation of the blood and the limbs by the com-
munication of heat,^ the blood cooled by warming the
limbs being in turn warmed by the heart."

Here the notes on the heart end abruptly, and
Harvey passes on to consider the lungs. These few
sentences show, however, that he had discovered the
circulation, and that although he delayed for twelve
years to make his results public he was unable to add
any important fact in the interval.

The College of Physicians still preserve some
interesting memorials of this portion of Harvey's
Lumleian lectures. They consist of a series of six
dissections of the blood vessels and nerves of the human
body, which are traditionally reported to have been
made by Harvey himself. The dissections are dis-
played upon six boards of the size of the human body,
and they exhibit the complete system of the blood
vessels separated from the other parts so as to form
diagrams of the circulatory apparatus. They have
been made with such care that one of the series still
shows the semilunar valves at the beginning of the

THE LUMLEIAN LECTURES

aorta. These " tabulae Harveianae " were kept for
many years at Burley-on-the-Hill, the seat of the
Earls of Winchelsea, one of whose ancestors —
Heneage Finch — the Lord Chancellor Nottingham,
married Elizabeth, a daughter of William Harvey*s
younger brother Daniel.

Harvey continued his Lumleian lectures year by
year, but we know nothing more of them until
1627, when he delivered a series of lectures upon the
anatomy and physiology of the human body, more
especially of the arm and leg, with a description of
the veins, arteries, and nerves of these parts. This
was clearly the Muscular lecture, and if he had
followed the course prescribed by the founders of the
lecture it should have been given in the years 161 9
and 1625, for the years 1621 and 1627 should not
have embraced an anatomical course. The notes of
the Muscular lecture are in the Sloane collection at
the British Museum, where they have been preserved
by as happy an accident as those of the much more
important Visceral lecture. The volume consists of
121 leaves with writing upon both sides of each page.
The notes are as rough and as concise as those of the
Visceral lecture, and the language is again a mixture of
Latin and homely English. They show, like the

WILLIAM HARVEY

treatise on development, that Harvey had by no
means emancipated himself from the trammels of
authority. He felt for Aristotle what many of us
still feel for John Hunter, for he said of his great
Master that he had hardly ever made any discovery in
connection with the structure of an animal but that
Aristotle either knew of it or explained it. He seems
to have given his fertile imagination full play in these
lectures, and amongst a wealth of similes we find : —

An cerebrum rex [Whether the Brain is to be looked

upon as King,]
Nervi Magistratus [The nerves as his ministers,]
Ramuli nervorum officiales [and the branches of the

nerves as their subordinates,]
Musculi Gives, populus [whilst the muscles are the

burgesses or the commonalty].

And in another place : —

An Cerebrum, Master : Spina his mate.
Nervi, Boteswayne.
Musculi, Saylors.

" There are similar comparisons,'* says Sir George

THE LUMLEIAN LECTURES

Paget, who analysed these lectures, and published
an account of the manuscript, ^of the brain with a
military commander, the leader of an orchestra, an
architect, and the prius motor, and of the nerves and
muscles with the respective subordinate officers."

His treatise on the movement of the blood must have
been passing through the press at the time he gave
these lectures, and the subject of the circulation must
therefore have been uppermost in his mind. He
compares the heart to the other organs thus : —

An WH. potius.

Cor, imperator. Rex. [Whether the heart should not

rather be considered as the Emperor or King,]
Cerebrum, Judex, Serjeant-Major, praepositi [whilst

the brain is the judge, serjeant-major, or monitor].

The Zenith

YEAR by year Harvey continued to deliver the
Lumleian lectures at the College of Physicians
and to attend his patients at St. Bartholomew's
Hospital. He soon obtained an important and fairly
lucrative practice. On the 3rd of February, 161 8,
he was appointed Physician Extraordinary to James
I. or in the language of the time, " The king, as a
mark of his singular favour, granted him leave to
consult with his ordinary physicians as to his
Majesty's health," and at the same time he promised
him the post of a Physician in Ordinary as soon as one
should become vacant. This promise he was unable
to fulfil, but it was redeemed by his son Charles I.,
who appointed Harvey a Physician in Ordinary in 1631
and remained his friend through life.

We can still obtain glimpses of Harvey's practice

THE ZENITH

during the ten years which preceded the issue in 1628
of his ''Anatomical Essay on the Movement of the
Heart and Blood." Aubrey tells us that "he rode
on horseback with a footcloth to visit his patients,
his man still following on foot, as the fashion then
was, which was very decent, now quite discontinued.
The judges rode also with their footclothes to West-
minster Hall, which ended at the death of Sir Robert
Hyde, Lord Chief Justice. Anthony, Earl of Shaftes-
bury, would have revived it, but several of the judges
being old and ill-horsemen would not agree to it."
The footcloth was originally a mark of dignity, and
it is still seen in its full splendour hanging over the
backs of the horses in a state pageant and in a debased
form on those drawing the hearse at a funeral.

Besides being physician to the household of the
king, Harvey seems to have held a similar position in
the households of the most distinguished nobles and
men of eminence. He treated amongst others the
Lord Chancellor Bacon, always a weak and ailing
man, and somewhat of a hypochondriac. Bacon, with
the curious lack of individuality which has so often
obscured the greatness of the highest form of specula-
tive genius, entirely failed to impress the more practical
mind of Harvey, who would not allow him to be a

WILLIAM HARVEY

great philosopher, though he esteemed him much for
his wit and style. Speaking of him in derision, he
told Aubrey, "He writes philosophy like a Lord
Chancellor." Nothing, perhaps, brings home to us
more clearly the real greatness of Aristotle and the
immeasurably superior position to which he attained
than this want of sympathy between Harvey and
Bacon. Both were master minds, both were working
on the lines laid down by Aristotle himself, yet their
results were so little in accord that whilst Bacon,
working upon the theoretical side, succeeded in under-
mining his authority, Harvey taking the experimental
side actually enhanced his lustre.

The following notice of Harvey's practice is pre-
served in the Domestic Series of the State Papers. It is
dated the i8th of November, 1624, and it is interesting,
because it shows that the country gentry had to obtain
special leave if they wanted to stay in London during
the winter : —

" Mr. Attorney.

" His Majesty is graciously pleased in regard of the
indisposition of health of Sir William Sandis and his
Lady and the great danger of their remove into the
Country, as appears by the enclosed certificate of Dr.

THE ZENITH

Harvey, to dispense with their stay in London this
winter season, notwithstanding the proclamation. And
accor3ingly requires you to take present order for their
indemnity that no charge or trouble come upon them
for their stay in London this winter for which they
have his Majesty's leave."

But the patient did not improve under Harvey's
care, though he kept him alive, for it is noted again
on the 1st of January, 1627-8 : —

" I do hereby certify of a truth that Sir William
Sands is in body infirm and subject to those diseases
(which) in the country he cannot receive remedy for,
nor undergo and perform that course of physic which
is fitting for his recovery.

"William Harvey."

The Domestic Series of State Papers also contains a
letter showing that Harvey was attending the Lord
Treasurer for a fit of the stone on the 23rd of
May, 1627.

The year 1628 may fairly be looked upon as the
crowning year of Harvey's scientific life. It was
that in which he published at Frankfort-on-the-Main

WILLIAM HARVEY

his matured account of the circulation of the blood.
After its publication he was sometimes heard to say
that "he fell mightily in his practice," for it was
believed by the vulgar that he was crack-brained, and
all the physicians were against him. Such ideas
probably occurred to him in his later years when he
was depressed by repeated attacks of gout. But party
feeling ran high, and was even greater than professional
jealousy at a time when Harvey was very closely
connected with the losing side. Some of his con-
temporaries took advantage of the double meaning
attaching to the word Circulator which Celsus applies
to a merry an drew. It was also said about him that
^^ though all of his profession would allow him to be an
excellent anatomist, I never heard of many that admired
his therapeutic way. I knew several practitioners in
this town that would not have given threepence for one
of his bills, as a man can hardly tell by his bills what
he did aim at." The apothecaries at this time were
accustomed to buy up the bills or prescriptions of the
leading physicians in much the same manner and for
the same purpose that a clinical clerk or a dresser in
a hospital now treasures up the prescriptions of his
physician or surgeon. We can afford to smile at these
pieces of contemporary criticism by empirics, for we

THE ZENITH

remember that as the apothecaries objected to the o
practice of Harvey, the attorneys led by Coke sneered
at the legal knowledge of Bacon, but in neither case
has the verdict of posterity ratified that of contem-
porary opinion.

Harvey early attained to high office in the College
of Physicians, then but a small body, though it con-
tained as it has always done, the picked men of the
medical profession. Here he was elected a Censor in
1613, an office to which he was reappointed in 1625
and again in 1629. T'he Censors were four fellows
of the College appointed annually, with power " to
supervise, watch, correct, and govern '* those who
practised physic in London or within the statutory
limit of seven miles, whether members of the College
or not. They had power to punish by fine and
summary imprisonment in the Wood Street Counter,
and the liame of Harvey occurs more than once about
this time in connection with proceedings taken by the
College against quacks or " Empirics " as they were
then called.

The Censors attended by the representatives of
the Society of Apothecaries were empowered to visit
the shops of the apothecaries in London to " search,
survey, and prove whether the medicines, wares, drugs,

WILLIAM HARVEY

or any thing or things, whatsoever in such shop or
shops contained and belonging to the art and mystery
of an apothecary be wholesome, meet and fit for the
cure, health, and ease of his Majesty's subjects."
These inquisitorial visits were made at irregular times
every summer and autumn. The procession, consisting
of the Censors with the Wardens and the Beadle of
the Society of Apothecaries, started at one o'clock, and
before six in the afternoon from twenty to thirty shops
had been visited. At each shop the visitors entered
and asked for a few drugs selected at random. They
then examined the stock from which the supply was
taken, as well as the individual sample offered, a few
rough tests were applied, and if the drugs were found
to be bad or adulterated they were at once destroyed
by the simple but effectual method of throwing them
out into the street. The records of each visitation
were kept in a book belonging to the College of
Physicians.

Dr. Robert Pitt, Censor in 1687 and again in 1702
has left us an interesting account of the results of
such a visitation, which in all probability did not differ
materially from those which it was Harvey's duty to
conduct. The Transcript of the Deposition in the
time of Dr. Pitt's censorship runs thus —

THE ZENITH

Mr. G 's Shop.

London Laudanum without either colour or smell.

Oxycroceum without sai&on.

PiL Ruff, no colour of saffron. [This was a pill
largely used as a preservative against the
plague. It contained myrrh, aloes, and
sai&on.]

Mr. R 's Shop.

Diascordium dark and thin, without a due proportion
of the gums. [It was a compound electuary
containing no less than 19 ingredients. It was
considered useful in the treatment of epilepsy,
megrim, want of appetite, wind, colic, and
malignant fevers.]

London Laudanum^ a dry, hard substance, without smell
or colour.

Mr. S \ Shop.

Diascordium too thin (let down with honey, I
suppose).

Venice treacle^ a thin body, much candied. [This, like
Diascordium and Mithridate, was one of the
complex electuary medicines of the Middle
Ages. Its proportions were almost word for

WILLIAM HARVEY

word those recommended by Galen in his
treatise, Ylepi 'AvrcSoroiv. It was also
known as the treacle of Andromachus.]
London Laudanum^ a dry, hard substance, without smell
or colour.

Mr. G 's Shop.

Diascordium thin bodied, much candied,

Venice treacle thin, candied, without its proportions.

London Laudanum^ a dry, hard substance.

Mr. G. 's Shop.

Paracelsus without its powders or gums.

Oxycroceum of a dark colour.

Diascordium of a thin substance.

Gascoin^s powder without bezoar. [This was the
compound powder of crabs' claws much used
in measles, smallpox, and all spotted fevers. It
contained in addition to bezoar and crabs' eyes,
red coral, white amber, hart's horn philoso-
phically prepared, and jelly of English vipers'
skins.]

London Laudanum hard, without smell or colour.

PiL ex duobus without the oil of cloves. [This was
reckoned one of the best and most general pills

THE ZENITH

in the Dispensatory, being strong but yet safe.
It was especially useful against scurvy, dropsy,
and gout. It consisted of colocynth, scam-
mony, and cloves.]

Mr. S 's Shop.

Diascordium of a thin body without the gums.

Alithridate no colour of saffron, [This was the
remedy par excellence until the middle of the
eighteenth century. It was said to owe its
name to Mithridates, King of Pontus and
Bithynia, who invented it. Like Diascordium
it was an electuary, though it was more com-
plex, for it contained over fifty ingredients.
Mithridate was reputed to cure the bites and
stings of any poisonous animal. It expelled
poison and cured nearly every disease. It was
not only a cure, but a preservative against the
plague and all pestilential and infectious fevers.]

London Laudanum neither smell nor colour.

Liquid Laudanum no smell, thin, no colour of
saffron.

Gascoin^s powder without bezoar.

A part of Harvey's time was employed in duties of

WILLIAM HARVEY

this nature, but on the 3rd of December, 1627, ^^
was appointed to the still more important office of
" Elect." The " Elects " were eight in number.
They were chosen from the most cunning and expert
men of the faculty in London. It was their duty
once in a year to select one of their number to fill the
office of President, whilst as a Board with a quorum
of three they formed the examiners of those who
desired to exercise or practise physic throughout
England, whose fitness they certified by letters testi-
monial. These examinations were conducted at the
house of the President, where, on the 9th of Decem-
ber, 1629, Harvey examined and approved that Dr.
James Primrose who soon became the most malignant
opponent of his teaching. Primrose was a pupil of
Riolanus, Professor of Anatomy in Paris, and was
well described as the quibbling advocate of exploded
teaching.

Harvey seems to have comported himself well even
in the high position of an elect, for in 1628 he was
made Treasurer of the College, an office to which he
was re-elected in 1629, so that he must have shown
some of the business capacity which was so marked a
feature in the other members of his &mily.

In this year Harvey received the commands of the

THE ZENITH

King to accompany the Duke of Lennox (born in
1612) who was sent to travel abroad. This was the
first interval in the monotony of his professional life
since Harvey's return to England from Padua. But
the times soon became so broken that he never after-
wards settled down again into anything like his old
habits. He was nearly fifty-two years of age when,
in September, 1629, ^^e Lord Secretary Dorchester
procured a licence for James Stuart, Duke of Lennox,
to travel for three years taking With him Dr.
Topham, Dean of Lincoln, John St. Almain, and
eight other servants. The Duke, who was advanced
to the Dukedom of Richmond by letters patent dated
the 8th of August, 1641, afterwards became Lord Great
Chamberlain, and held many honourable appointments
in the reign of Charles L Clarendon often mentions
him as a young nobleman of the highest principles,
and his staunch loyalty to the King is shown by his
being one of the four Lords who with Juxon attended
their master's funeral at Windsor. He subscribed no
less than ^40,000 towards the expenses of the war.

Harvey had to make many arrangements before he
could leave England. On the 3rd of December,
1629, he collected the seven " Elects" at his house, and,
after a sumptuous banquet, he asked their permission to

81 G

WILLIAM HARVEY

resign his office of Treasurer at the College of Phy-
sicians, a request which was immediately granted. On
the 2 1 St of January he applied for leave of absence
from his post of physician to St. Bartholomew's
Hospital, for the Minutes record —

" Curia tent. Sabti xxi die Januarii 1629-30.
" In presence of Sir Robt, Ducy Knight & Barronet,

President (and others).

" Dr. Harvey.

"This day Dr. Harvey Physician to this hospital
declares to this court that he is commanded by the
Kings most excellent majesty to attend the illustrious
Prince the now Duke of Lenox in his travels
beyond the seas and therefore desireth this court would
allow of [Edmund] Smith, Doctor in Physic for his
deputy in performance of the office of physician for
the poor of this hospital during his absence. It is
thought fit that the Governors of this Hospital shall
have further knowledge & satisfaction of the sufficiency
of the said Mr. Smith. Then they to make their
choice either of him or of some other whom they shall
think meet for the execution of the same place during
the absence of the said Dr. Harvey.'

>»

THE ZENITH

Leave of absence having been thus granted by the
College of Physicians and St. Bartholomew's Hospital,
Harvey had only to get a substitute for his Court
appointment. An undated letter written from abroad
by Harvey to Mr. Secretary Dorchester, says : "Before
I went I entreated and appointed Dr. Chambers and
Dr. Bethune [ph)^icians in ordinary to the King] and
one Dr. Smith of London, one of them at all occasions
to perform the duty for me ; and I acquainted the
household therewith [though] it is not usual [to do so]
for Serjeant [surgeon] Primrose was away above a year
(and he is surgeon of the household) and yet none
were put in his place to wait whilst he was in
Germany with my Lord Marquis. Sir Theodore
Mayerne [too] in Switzerland in King James his time
was away very long and none put in his place." The
letter was written upon an unfounded report which had
reached Harvey in his absence that Dr. Adam Moesler
" hath gotten to be appointed to wait in my place for
the household."

Dr. Aveling's care has traced the course of the
travellers on this journey. Sir Henry Mervy n writes to
Nicholas (clerk of the Council) under the date of the
28th of July, 1630, "of having put over my Lord Duke
[Lennox] for the coast of France." The journey was

WILLIAM HARVEY

therefore begun at this date, but the Duke and his
retinue seem to have stayed for a time in the towns
upon the French coast, for on the 2nd of August Sir
Henry Mervyn writes that he is going to attend the
Duke of Lennox, and purposes to be in the Downs,
&c. ; and again on the lOth of August he says he has
landed the Duke of Lennox at Dieppe. On the 23rd
of September of the same year Edward Dacres writes
to Secretary Dorchester that the Duke of Lennox is
now settled in Paris for the winter ; and again on the
22nd of November, saying that the Duke is willing to
stay in Paris, and that " in the spring he intends the
tour de France, and in the end of the summer to go
into Italy, unless the continuance of the wars or the
plague hinder him."

Dacres writes again, on the. 5th of April, 1631, that
the Duke is still in Paris but he thinks of going out
of town for a few days. Harvey, however, was in
London on the 8th of October and on the 22nd of
December, 1630, so that he probably joined the Duke
in Paris in the spring or early summer of 1631.
Nothing is known of the movements of the party after
April, until Dacres writes again to Dorchester in
August, 1 63 1, saying : " Blois proved a place not long
to be endured by my Lord because of the plague

THE ZENITH

which grew hot there, as Tours likewise, where we
made little stay, so that we came down to Saumurs
there to pass the dog days from whence we are now
parting they being at an end. My Lord hath con-
tinually been in good health and intends now to
follow your Lordship's directions this winter for Spain
whither we are now bending our course {via Bor-
deaux) where we shall be before the latter end of
September."

It is probably of this part of his journey that Harvey
writes to Viscount Dorchester, " the miseries of the
countries we have passed and the hopes of our good
success and such news your Honour hath from better
hands. I can only complain that by the way we
cpuld scarce see a dog, crow, kite, raven or any other J
bird, or any thing to anatomise, only some few miser-
able people, the relics of the war and the plague where
famine had made anatomies before I came. It is scarce
credible in so rich, populous, and plentiful countries as
these were that so much misery and desolation, poverty
and famine should in so short a time be, as we have
seen. I interprete it well that it will be a great motive
for all here to have and procure assurance of settled
peace. It is time to leave fighting when there is
nothing to eat, nothing to be kept, and nothing to be

WILLIAM HARVEY

gotten." The forecast was correct. The Mantuan
war was soon afterwards brought to a close by the
mediation of Pope Urban VIII. It was one of the
minor struggles in which Richelieu's attempts to con-
solidate the power of his master were counteracted by
the combined efforts of Spain and the Empire, for in
the end Charles of Nevers was left to enjoy his Duchy
of Mantua. The plague, too, was especially virulent
in Northern Italy about this time. It was reckoned
that above a million died of it in the territories which
Lennox and his retinue would have traversed to reach
Venice ; and 33,000 are said to have died in Verona
alone. It was partly for this reason and partly, per-
haps, from political motives, that the travellers turned
off into Spain instead of visiting Italy, as had been
intended. In February, 1632, Sir Thomas Edmonde,
writing to Sir Harry Vane, says : " the Duke of
Lenox has been made a Grand in Spain ; " and it was
about this time that the party returned homewards.

Harvey was certainly in England on the 26th of
March, 1632, for on that day he drew up a set of rules
for the Library of the College of Physicians, towards
a site for which he had subscribed ^100 on the 22nd
of December, 1630. The necessity for a new set
of rules to govern the use of the Library seems to

THE ZENITH

have been due to an important bequest of 680
volumes presented by Dr. Holsbosch, a graduate in
medicine, and a German who had practised surgery
and physic in England for fifty years, though he
had not attached himself to the College. The new
regulations laid down that the key of the room was
to remain in the keeping of the President, whilst
the key of the book-cases was kept by the Senior
Censor. The Library was to be open on all
College days to the Fellows, Candidates, and
Licentiates ; but no book was to be taken away
from the College without leave from the President
and Censor and the deposit of a "sufficient
caution" for its value. Harvey was also present at
a meeting of the College of Physicians on the last
day of May, 1632, when he signed a petition to the
King, praying him to limit the sale of certain poisons
unless the purchaser was willing to give his name.

There is no record of the exact date at which
Harvey was made Physician in Ordinary to the King
Charles I., though the time is fixed approximately
by the following extract from the minutes at St.
Bartholomew's Hospital : —

"Monday 25 April 1631 at a Court [of Governors]

WILLIAM HARVEY

held in the Mansion house in the presence of
Sir Robert Ducy Lord Mayor, President.

" Dr. Andrewes

" It is granted that Richard Andrewes Doctor
of Physic shall have the reversion, next avoidance
and place of physician to this hospital after the
death, resignation or other departure of Doctor
Harvey now physician to this hospital late sworn
Physician in Ordinary for his Majesty's Household,
with the yearly stipend thereunto now belonging."

The actual date of his appointment seems to
have been at some time during the quarter ending
Lady Day, 1630, for the Calendar of State Papers
(Domestic Series) contains the record, "3 July
^^35* T*o William Harvey, one of his Majesty's
physicians in ordinary, his annuity for a year ending
at Our Lady Day 1631 ;^300." And again on
the 17th of July, 1635, "Dr. William Harvey
;^25 ; " and a few months later, on the 5th of
February, 1635-6 — "Dr. William Harvey upon his
annuity of ;^300 per annum ;^I50." These entries
also make it appear that although his salary amounted
to the considerable sum of ;^300 a year, it was paid
very irregularly and by small instalments.

THE ZENITH

Harvey's appointment as personal physician to the
King seems to have brought him into close connection
with his master, and it was no doubt at this time
that Charles allowed him to obtain the intimate
knowledge of the habits and structure of the deer
which was afterwards turned to such good use in
the treatise on Development. Harvey, in feet,
became the personal friend of his king, he accom-
panied him everywhere, and consequently took a
share in the hunting excursions to which his
Majesty was so devoted.

This constant attendance at Court naturally in-
terfered with Harvey's professional duties, and his
colleagues at St. Bartholomew's Hospital soon began
to complain of his absence.

"At a Court held on Sunday 19 January 1632-3,
" In presence of Sir Robert Ducie Knight &

Baronet, President.
"Dr. Harvy

"It hath been thought convenient upon complaint
of some of the chirurgions of this hospital that whereas
Doctor Harvy physician for the poor of the said
hospital by reason of his attendance on the King's
Majesty cannot so constantly be present with the

WILLIAM HARVEY

poor as heretofore he hath been, but sometimes
doth appoint his deputy for the same. That there-
for Doctor Andrewes physician in reversion of the
same place to this hospital in the absence of Doctor
Harvey do supply the same place whereby the said
poor may be more respected and Doctor Andrewes
the better acquainted to perform the same office
when it shall fall [vacant], and in the mean time to
be recompensed by this court yearly as shall be
thought fit. This order not to prejudice Dr. Harvy
in his yearly fee or in any other respect than
aforesaid.'*

Early in 1633 Harvey received the commands of
Charles I. to attend him on his journey to Scot-
land, and the annexed Minute shows that he again
endeavoured to gain the permission of the Governors
of the hospital to allow Dr. Smith to act for him
in his absence.

"13 May Anno Domini 1633.

" This day came into this Compting house Doctor

Smith physician by the appointment of Dr. Harvey,

physician to this hospital who is to attend the

King's Majesty into Scotland and tendered his

THE ZENITH

service to Mr. Treasurer and other the Governors
for the poor in the behalf and absence of Doctor
Harvey, Answer was made by Mr. Treasurer that
Doctor Andrewes physician in reversion to this
house was by the Court ordered to attend the
occasions of this house in the absence of Doctor
Harvey and to have allowance from this house
accordingly. Nevertheless if Doctor Smith pleased
to accompany Doctor Andrewes in the business,
this house would be very well content, unto which
Doctor Smith replied that if Dr. Andrewes was
appointed and did perform accordingly, there is no
need of two."

It seems to be evident from these Minutes that
Dr. Smith was Harvey's nominee. He was his
life-long friend, and he only survived a fortnight
the opening of the Harveian Museum, of which
he was the most active promoter. Dr. Andrewes,
on the other hand, had powerful City influence to
back him. He was a distinguished graduate of St.
John's College, Oxford. He had been educated at
the Merchant Taylors* School, and stood high in
the favour of the Merchant Taylors' Company.
He died the 25 th of July, 1634.

WILLIAM HARVEY

Charles' tour in Scotland was fraught with the
most momentous consequences both to himself and
his kingdom. He was crowned with great pomp
in the Abbey Church at Holyrood, and the rochet
worn by the Bishop of Moray when he preached
before the assembled Court on this occasion was an
innovation which gave the greatest offence to the
people. Their discontent was still further increased
by an order from the King enjoining the ministers
to wear surplices and the Bishops vestments instead
of the Geneva gown to which they had been ac-
customed since the Reformation. The dissatisfaction
thus aroused culminated in the Liturgy tumults of
1637, when Jenny Deans launched her stool at the
head of the Bishop of St. Giles whilst he was
preaching in Edinburgh. The tumults in turn led
to the formation of "the Tables" and to the
taking of " the Covenant," which are so familiar
to every student of the history of the Civil War.

Harvey must have been in close attendance upon
the King during the whole of his stay in Scotland,
but he probably interested himself very little in the
proceedings of the Court or in the hot discussions
between the rival sects around him. We know,
indeed, that, he was thinking about the method by

THE ZENITH

which a chick is formed within the egg, and that
to solve the point he paid a visit to the Bass Rock,
of which he gives the following description in the
eleventh essay of his treatise on Development : —

" In the barren island of the East Coast of Scot-
land, such flights ot almost every kind of seabirds
congregate, that were I to state what I have heard
from those who were worthy of credit, I fear I
should be held guilty of telling greater stories than
they who have committed themselves about the
Scottish geese produced as they say from the
fruits of certain trees (which they had never
seen) that had fallen into the sea.^ What I have
seen myself, however, I will relate truthfully,

' The reference is to the passage in Gerarde*s ** Herbal,** giving an ac-
count of the miraculous origin of the Solan Goose. It runs : '* But what
our eyes have seen and hands have touched we shall declare. There is a
small island in Lancashire called the Pile of Foulders, wherein are found
the broken pieces of old and bruised ships, some whereof have been cast
thither by shipwreck, and also the trunks and bodies with the branches
of old and rotten trees cast up there likewise, whereon is found a certain
spume or froth that in time breedeth unto certain shells, in shape like
those of a mussel, but sharper pointed, and of a whitish colour wherein is
contained in form like a lace of silk finely woven as it were together, of
a whitish colour, one end whereof is fastened unto the inside of the shell,
even as the fish of oysters and mussels are ; the other end is made fast to
the belly of a rude mass or lump, which in time cometh to the shape and
form of a Bird ; when it is perfectly formed the shell gapeth open, and
the first thing that appeareth is the aforesaid lace or string ; next come
the legs of the bird hanging out, and as it groweth greater it openeth the
shell by degrees till at length it is all come forth and hangeth only by

WILLIAM HARVEY

" There is a small island, Scotsmen call it the Bass
(let it serve as a type of all the rest), lying near the
shore, but in deep water. It is so rugged and pre-
cipitous that it might rather be called a huge stone
or rock than an island, for it is not more than a mile
in circumference. The whole surface of the island in
the months of May and June is almost completely
carpeted with nests, birds, and fledglings. There are
so many that you can scarcely avoid stepping upon
them, and when they fly the crowd is so great that it
hides the sun and the sky like a cloud. The scream-
ing and the din too are so great that you can hardly
hear any one speaking close to you. If you look

the bill ; in short space after it cometh to full maturity and falleth into
the sea, where it gathereth feathers and groweth to a fowl bigger than a
mallard and lesser than a goose, having black legs and bill or beak, and
feathers black and white, spotted in such manner as is our Magpie . . .
which the people of Lancashire call by no other name than a tree goose ;
which place aforesaid and all those parts adjoining do so much abound
therewith, that one of the best is bought for threepence. For the truth
hereof if any doubt, may it please them to repair unto me, and I shall
satisfy them by the testimony of good witnesses " (Gerarde's " Herbal,"
A.D. 1636, p. 1588, chap. 171. "Of the Goose Tree, Barnacle Tree, or
the Tree-bearing Goose ").

A solan goose was looked upon for many years as a delicacy. Pennant
states that about the middle of the seventeenth century a young one was
sold for 2od. He also quotes the following newspaper cutting : —
" Solan Goosi. — ^There is to be sold by John Walton, Jun., at his stand
at the Poultry, Edinburgh, all lawful days in the week, wind and weather
serving, good and fresh solan geese. Any who have occasion for the
same, may have them at reasonable rates. — ^Aug. 5, 1768.'*

THE ZENITH

down upon the sea, as if from a tower or tall precipice,
whichever way you turn you will see an enormous
number of different kinds of birds skimming about
and gaping for their prey, so that the sea looks like a
pond which is swarming with frogs in springtime, or
like those sunny hills looked at from below when they
are covered with numerous flocks of sheep and goats.
If you sail round the island and look up you see on
every ledge, shelf, and recess innumerable flocks of
birds of every sort and size, more numerous than the
stars seen at night in the unclouded moonless sky, and
if you watch the flights that come and go incessantly,
you might imagine that it was a mighty swarm of
bees. I should hardly be believed if I said what a
large revenue was obtained annually from the feathers
and from the old nests (used for firing) and from the
eggs, which are boiled and then sold, though the
owner told me himself. There is one feature, too,
which seems to be especially worthy of note because it
bears closely upon my argument and is clear proof of
what I have just said about the crowd of birds. The
whole island shines brilliantly white to those who
approach it, and the clifis are as bright as if they were
made of the whitest chalk 5 yet the natural colour of
the rock is dusky and black. It is due to a brittle

WILLIAM HARVEY

crust of the whitest colour that is spread over all and
gives the island its whiteness and brilliancy, a crust of
the same consistence, colour, and nature as the shell of
an egg."

Harvey was in London again on the 5th of October,

1633, ^^^ ^^ ^^*^ ^^y> ^^ ^^* Bartholomew's Hospital,
" upon the motion of Dr. Harvey, physician to this
house, it is thought fit that Tuesday se'night in the
afternoon be the time that the Governors shall hear
himself and the Chirurgeons upon some particulars
concerning the good of the poor of this house and
reformation of some orders conceived to be in this
house. And the Chirurgeons and the Apothecary to be
warned to meet accordingly. And Mr. Alderman
Mowlson, Sir Maurice Abbott, Mr. Alderman Perry,
and others the Governors here present, are intreated to
meet at the Compting house to hear and determine
the same." Accordingly, on the 15th of October
some radical changes were made in the management of
the hospital, as is indicated in the next Minute, The
articles are introduced with the following preface,
which gives a clear account of the high estimation in
which Harvey's services were held at this time. " This
day Dr. Harvey, physician to this hospital, presented to
this court [of Governors] certain articles for the good

THE ZENITH

and benefit of the poor of this house, which the
Governors have taken into their considerations and
do allow and order them to be put in practice. And
all defaults in the not performance of any of the said
articles to be corrected and amended by the Governors
as they in their discretions shall think fit and con-
venient,

" Forasmuch as the poor of this house are increased
to a greater number than formerly have been, to the
great charge of this hospital, and to the greater labour
and more necessary attendance of a physician. And
being much more also than [it] is conceived one
physician may conveniently perform.

" And forasmuch as Dr. Harvey, the now physician
to this hospital, is also chosen to be physician to his
Majesty, and [is] thereby tied to daily service and
attendance on his Majesty,

" It hath been thought fit and so ordered, that there
shall be for this present occasion two physicians for
this hospital. And that Dr. Andrewes, physician in
reversion, be now admitted to be also an immediate
physician to this hospital. And to have the salary or
yearly fee of £^3 ^^' ^^' ^^^ ^^^ pains henceforth
during the pleasure of this court.

" And this court, for the long service of the said Dr.

97 H

WILLIAM HARVEY

Harvey to this hospital, and in consideration that he is
physician to his Majesty, do give and allow him leave
and liberty to dispose of himself and time, and to visit
the poor no oftener than he in his discretion shall think
fit.

" And it is ordered that Mr. Treasurer shall also pay
unto the said Dr. Andrewes the sum of ^^20 for his
pains taken in visiting and prescribing for the poor of
this house for this year last past by the direction and at
the request of the Governors of this house.

"Also at the suit of the apothecary (for the con-
siderations abovesaid), it is thought fi^t and so granted,
that ^10 be yearly added to his salary from Michaelmas
last past for and towards the maintenance of a journey-
man to be daily present in the apothecary's shop in this
hospital to help him in the dispatch of his business
during the pleasure of this court.

" Likewise at the motion of Dr. Harvey, it is granted
that Mr. Treasurer shall pay unto Dr. Smith, who was
the deputy of Dr. Harvey and by him appointed in his
absence to visit the poor of this hospital, the sum of
;^io in gratuity from this court, and he is thereupon
intreated in respect the hospital hath now two physi-
cians, that he do not henceforth trouble himself any
more to visit or prescribe to the poor of this hospital."

THE ZENITH

On the same day (October 15, 1633), ^Dr.
Harvey, physician to this hospital, presented to this
court certain orders or articles by him thought fit to
be observed and put in practice, viz. : —

" I. That none be taken into the Hospital but such
as be curable, or but a certain number of such as are
incurable.

" Allowed.
" 2. That those that shall be taken in for a certain
time be discharged at that time by the Hospitaller,
unless they obtain a longer time. And to be dis-
charged at the end of that time ako.
" In use.
" 3. That all such are certified by the doctor un-
curable, and scandalous or infectious shall be put out
of the said house or to be sent to an outhouse,^ and in
case of sudden inconvenience this to be done by the
Doctor or Apothecary.
" Allowed.
** 4. That none be taken into any outhouse on the
charge of this Hospital but such as are sent from hence.
'' Allowed.

* The outhouses, Sir James Paget tells us, were the Lock Hospitals
belonging to St. Bartholomew's Hospital. There were two outhouses,
one in Kent Street, Southwark, the other in Kingsland. They were

WILLIAM HARVEY

"5. That no Chirurgion, to save himself labour,
take in or present any for the doctor 5 otherwise the
charge of the Apothecary's shop will be so great, and
the success so little, as it will be scandalous to the
house.

" Allowed.

" 6. Thit none lurk here for relief only or for slight
causes.

"Allowed.

" 7. That if any refuse to take their physic, they
may be discharged by the Doctor or Apothecary or
punished by some order.
" Allowed.

" 8. That the Chirurgions, in all difficult cases or
where inward physic may be necessary, shall consult
with the Doctor, at the times he sitteth once in the
week and then the Master [i.e.y the Surgeon] himself
relate to the Doctor what he conceiveth of the cure
and what he hath done therein. And in a decent and

founded originally as Lazar-houset for the use of lepers. The ** Lock **
in the Borough was used for women \ the " Spital " in Kingsland for
men. Each contained about thirty beds and was under the charge of a
guider, guide or surgeon, who was appointed by the Governors of the
Hospital, and received from them in Harvey's time an annual stipend of
four pounds a year and fourpence a day for the diet of each patient under
their care.

100

THE ZENITH

orderly manner proceed by the Doctor's directions for
the good of the poor and credit of the house.'
"Agreed unto.

" 9. That no Chirurgion or his man do trepan the
head, pierce the body, dismember [amputate], or do
any great operation on the body of any but with the
approbation and by the direction of the Doctor (when
conveniently it may be had] and the Chirurgions shall
think it needful to require.
"Agreed unto.

" 10. That no Chirurgion or his man practice by
giving inward ph)rsic to the poor without the approba-
tion of the Doctor.
" Allowed.

"11. That no Chirurgion be suffered to perform
the cures in this house by his boy or servant without
his own oversight or care.
" Allowed.

" 12. That every Chirurgion shall shew and declare
unto the Doctor whensoever he shall in the presence

' This and the two following regulations illustrate in a very remark-
able manner the complete subjection in which the physicians held the
surgeons in Harvey's time and for many subsequent years. It was not
until Abernethy was surgeon to the hospital, at the beginning of the
century, that the surgeons were allowed to prescribe more than a black
draught or blue pill for their patients until the prescription had been
countersigned by one of the physicians.

101

WILLIAM HARVEY

of the patient require him, what he findeth and what
he useth to every external malady ; that so the Doctor
being informed may better with judgment order his
prescriptions.

"The Chirurgions protest against this.'
" 13. That every Chirurgion shall follow the direc-
tion of the Doctor in outward operations for inward
causes for the recovery of every patient under their
several cures, and to this end shall once in the week
attend the Doctor, at the set hour he sitteth to give
directions for the poor.

" Agreed by the Chirurgions.
" 14. That the Apothecary, Matron, and Sisters do
attend the Doctor when he sitteth to give directions
and prescriptions, that they may fully conceive his
directions and what is to be done.

'* Allowed.
" 15. That the Matron and Sisters shall signify and
complain to the Doctor, or Apothecary in the
Doctor's absence, if any poor lurk in the house and
come not before the Doctor when he sitteth or taketh
not his physic but cast it away and abuse it.

" Allowed.

' And no wonder, for it meant that their prescriptions were to be made
public, whilst those of the Physician were kept secret [sec. 16], and at this
time every practitioner had some secret remedy in which he put especial
trust.

102

THE ZENITH

" 1 6. That the Apothecary keep secret and do not
disclose what the Doctor prescribeth nor the pre-
scriptions he useth but to such as in the Doctor's
absence may supply his place and that with the
Doctor's approbation.
"AUowed."

The ordinances are peremptory, and for many
years they governed the action of the Hospital in
the control of the patients. Some of them, indeed
(as § 6), are still acted upon. They show that Harvey
was determined to maintain the superior status of the
physicians, and there is but little room to doubt that
this was one of the guiding principles of his life.
In February, 1620, he was appointed by the College
of Physicians to act with Dr. Mayerne and Dr.
William Clement in watching the proceedings of the
surgeons who were moving Parliament in their own
interest. For this purpose he attended a Conference
at Gray's Inn on the 17th of February, 1620, and
he afterwards went to Cambridge ; but he failed to
induce the University to co-operate with the College
of Physicians.

On the 4th of July, 1634, Harvey gave a tanned
human skin to the College of Physicians, and on the

103

WILLIAM HARVEY

same day by the order of the President he made a
speech to the Apothecaries persuading them to con-
form to the orders of the College.

On the 7th of August, 1634, John Clarke was
granted the reversion of Harvey's office of Physician
to St. Bartholomew's Hospital "in the room and
place of Dr. Andrewes late deceased. And this
Hospital do order that after Doctor Harvey his
death or departure, there be but one Physician
forthwards." Harvey, however, outlived Dr. Clarke,
who died in 1653 ^"^ ^^ buried in St. Martin's,
Ludgate, but as Harvey did not attend the Hospital
after 1643 Clarke probably acted as sole Physician
to the Hospital for ten years before he died. He
was President of the College of Physicians 1645-
1649.

The year 1634 was long memorable on account
of "the Lancashire witches," whose story is not yet
quite forgotten. Their accusation, as in that of the
great outbreak at Salem in New England in 1692,
began in the lying story of a child. Edward
Robinson, a boy of ten, and the son of a wood-
cutter living on the borders of Pendle Forest in
Lancashire, played truant and to excuse himself
accused Mother Dickenson of being a witch. The

104

THE ZENITH

boy, being examined by the magistrates, told his story
so openly and honestly that it was at once believed.
He said that as he was roaming in one of the glades
of the forest picking blackberries he saw two grey-
hounds which he thought belonged to one of the
gentlemen living in the neighbourhood. A hare
appearing at the same time he hied on the dogs, but
neither of them would stir. Angry at the beasts
he took up a switch and was about to punish them
when one of the dogs started up as a woman, the
other as a little boy. The woman was Mother
Dickenson, who offered him money to sell his soul
to the devil, but he refused. She then took a bridle
out of her pocket, and shaking it over the head of
the other little boy he instantly became a horse.
Mother Dickenson seized Robinson in her arms and
sprang upon the animal. They rode with incon-
ceivable swiftness over forests, fields, bogs, and rivers
until they came to a large barn. The witch alighted,
and taking him by the hand led him inside. There
he saw seven old women pulling at seven halters
which hung from the roof. As they pulled, large
pieces of meat, lumps of butter, loaves of bread,
basins of milk, hot puddings and black puddings
fell from the halters on to the floor. Thus a supper

105

WILLIAM HARVEY

was provided, and when it was ready other witches
came to share it. Many persons were arrested, for
the boy was led about from church to church to
identify those he had seen in the barn.

The story made a great sensation and Sir William
Pelham wrote to Lord Conway that "the greatest
news from the country is of a huge pack of witches
which are lately discovered in Lancashire, whereof
it is said nineteen are condemned and that there are
at least sixty already discovered. It is suspected that
they had a hand in raising the great storm wherein
his Majesty was in so great danger at sea in
Scotland." Popular report exaggerated the number
arrested, but seven of the accused were condemned
and Bishop Bridgman, of Chester, was requested to
examine them. He went to the gaol and found that
three had died and another, Janet Hargreaves, lay
" past hope of recovery." Of the three examined
by him two declared that they had no knowledge
of witchcraft, but the third, Margaret Johnson, a
widow of sixty, whom the Bishop describes as a
person of strong imagination and weak memory,
confessed to have been a witch for six years. She
told him, "There appeared to her a man in black
attire, who said, if she would give him her soul she

io6

THE ZENITH

should have power to hurt whom she would. He
called himself Mamilion, and appeared in the shape
of a brown-coloured dog, a white cat, and a hare,
and in these shapes sucked her blood."

The report of the Bishop to Secretary Coke
reached the ears of the King, who commanded
Henry Earl of Manchester, the Lord Privy Seal,
to write : —

"To Alexander Baker Esq. and Sarjeant Clowes

his Majesty's Chirurgions.

*' These shall be to will and require you forthwith
to make choice of such midwives as you shall think
fit to inspect and search the bodies of those women
that were lately brought by the sheriff of the County
of Lancaster indicted for witchcraft and to report
unto you whether they find about them any such
marks as are pretended : wherein the said midwivQS
are to receive instructions from Mr. Dr. Harvey his
Majesty's Physician and yourselves.

" Dated at Whitehall the 29 June 1634.

" H. Manchester."

The prisoners, who were then at the Ship Tavern
in Greenwich, were brought to London upon the

107

WILLIAM HARVEY

receipt of the King's order. They were examined
and the following certificate was issued : —

" Surgeons Hall in Monkwell Street, London.

*'2 July A.D. 1634.

"We in humble obedience to your Lordship's
command have this day called unto us the Chirur-
geons and midwives whose names are hereunder
written who have by the directions of Mr. Dr.
Harvey (in our presence and his) made diligent
search and inspection on those women which were
lately brought up from Lancaster and find as
foUoweth, viz. : —

'*On the bodies of Jennett Hargreaves, Ffrances
Dicconson and Mary Spencer nothing unnatural
nor anything like a teat or mark or any sign that
any such thing hath ever been.

'' On the body of Margaret Johnson we find two

things (which) may be called teats. The first in

shape like to the teat of a bitch but in our judgement

nothing but the skin as it will be drawn out after

the application of leeches. The second is like the

nipple or teat of a woman's breast, but of the same

colour with the rest 6f the skin without any hoUow-

ness or issue for any blood or juice to come from

thence."

108

THE ZENITH

The report is signed by ten midwives, by Alexander
Reid, M.D., the lecturer on Anatomy at the Barber
Surgeons' Hall, whom Harvey seems to have deputed
to take his place, and by six surgeons evidently chosen
from amongst the most eminent of those then prac-
tising in London.

The result of this report was that four of the seven
convicted witches were pardoned, an exercise of mercy
" which may have been due," says Mr. Aveling, " to
the enlightened views and prompt and energetic action
of Dr. Harvey."

There is no doubt that at this time and throughout
his life Harvey practised every branch of his profession.
That he was primarily a physician is evident ; that he
was a surgeon is shown by the fact that in his will he
bequeathed to Dr. Scarborough his "silver instruments
of surgery," whilst in his writings he says, " Looking
back upon the office of the arteries, I have occasion-
ally, and against all expectation, completely cured
enormous sarcoceles by the simple means of dividing
or tying the little artery that supplied them, and so
preventing all access of nourishment or spirit to the
part affected, by which it came to pass that the
tumour on the verge of mortification was afterwards
easily extirpated with the knife or searing iron."

109

WILLIAM HARVEY

No one, reading his treatise on Development, can
doubt for a moment that he was well versed in the
diseases of women and in such practical midwifery as
the prejudices and habits of the time allowed him to
become familiar. Specialism, indeed, as it is now
understood in England, did not exist at this time,
though there was a debased form in which men
attended only to outward injuries or to internal
complaints.

Harvey sometimes got into trouble with his cases,
as must always happen even to the most experienced.
The records of the Barber Surgeons' Company con-
tain the following notice under the date 17th of
November, 1635. It has the marginal note, " Dr.
Harvey's ill practise " : —

" This day Wm. Kellett being called here in
Court for not making presentation of one of Mr.
Kinnersley's maids that died in his charge, he said
here in Court that Mr. Doctor Harvey being called
to the patient did upon his view of the patient say,
that by means of a boulster [poultice?] the tumour
on the temporal muscle could be discussed and his
opinion was that there was no fracture but the
vomiting came by reason of the foulness of the
stomach and to that purpose prescribed physic by

110

THE ZENITH

Briscoe the Apothecary, so the patient died by ill
practice, the fracture being neglected and the Com-
pany not called to the view." When a person was
dangerously ill of a surgical disease in London it
was long the custom for the practitioner to call in
those surgeons who held an official position in the
Barber Surgeons' Company. This was called " view-
ing *' the patient. It divided the responsibility whilst
it ensured that everything possible was done for the
relief of the patient.

In this year too Harvey was ordered by the King
to examine the body of Thomas Parr, who is said to
have died at the extraordinary age of 152 years and
nine months, having survived through the reigns of
nine princes. He had lived frugally in Shropshire
until shortly before his death, when he was brought
to London by Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel,
who showed him to the King. Harvey examined
the body on the i6th of November, 1635, the
birthday — ^as he is careful to note — of Her Serene
Highness Henrietta Maria, Queen of Great Britain,
France, and Ireland. The notes of the autopsy
came into the possession of Harvey's nephew
Michael, who presented them to Dr. Bett, and
they were not printed until 1669, when they were

III

WILLIAM HARVEY

published in Dr. Bett's work "On the Source and
Quality of the Blood." The notes give a clear
account of the appearances seen upon opening the
body, and the very practical conclusion is drawn
that as all the internal parts seemed so healthy the
old man might have escaped paying the debt due
to nature for some little time longer if nothing had
happened to interfere with his usual habits. His
death is therefore attributed to the change from
the pure air of Shropshire to that of London, and
to the alteration in his diet which necessarily at-
tended his residence in the house of a great
nobleman.

The mutual interest taken by the Earl of Arundel
and Harvey in old Parr may have led to the friend-
ship which existed between the two men ; perhaps,
too, Lord Arundel — the prince of art collectors, to
whom we owe the Arundel marbles — had detected
in Harvey some similar love of art which rendered
him a kindred spirit. It is clear that some bond of
union existed, for in the following year — 1636 —
Lord Arundel was sent to Vienna as Ambassador
Extraordinary to the Emperor Ferdinand in con-
nection with the peace which the Protestant States
of Germany had concluded in 1635. The mission

112

THE ZENITH

left England in April, 1636 ; and the Clarendon
State Papers contain a letter dated from Cologne
in May in which Lord Arundel speaks of a visit
to the Jesuits* new college and church, where he
says "they received me with all civility," and then
adds jokingly, "I found in the College little Doctor
Harvey, who means to convert them.'* There arc
no means of knowing when or why Harvey left
England, but he seems to have attached himself to
the Embassy and to have visited with it the principal
cities on the way to Vienna.

He used the opportunity to make the acquaintance
of the leading scientific men in Germany, as he had
already introduced himself to those in France on a
former journey. On the 20th of May, 1636, he was
at Nuremberg, where he wrote to Caspar Hofmann
ofiering to demonstrate the circulation of the blood.
He has heard, he says, that Hofmann complained of
his theory, that *^he impeached and condemned
Nature of folly and error, and that he had imputed
to her the character of a most clumsy and inefficient
artificer in suffering the blood to become recrudescent,
and making it return again and again to the heart in
order to be reconcocted only to grow effete again in
the arterial system : thus uselessly spoiling the per-

113 I

WILLIAM HARVEY

tD IBM met y n^ tm np- fD

doL* TnCdoB sm dktt HaanFCf actmDjr ganrc this
JfM M iu i J tion ia pobBc^ and dktt it fvofcd sttis-
BKtDffT tD cfcr^ one ciic|H tD Hofinaim himsdf*
The aU man — Acq patt the grand clim a cte ric —
mnainrd t m cc n i i nced, and as he cnnfinucd to urge
obyectians Ham^ at length threw down his knife
and walked out of the dieatre.

We are indebted to Aubrejr fcr the following
anecdote^ which is probably more true than some
of his other statements about Harvqr, for it is in
exact accordance with what we know of his habits.
Aubrejr says that one of the Ambassador's gentle-
men, Mr. William Hollar — the celebrated painter —
told him that in this vojrage "Dr. Harvey would
still be making observations of strange trees and
plants^ earths, &C., and sometimes [he was] like to
be lost. So that my Lord Ambassador would be
really angry with him, for there was not only a
danger of thieves, but also of wild beasts." How
real the danger was may be gauged by remember-
ing that the party was passing through the country
devastated by the Thirty Years* War, which had
still to drag out its disastrous length until it was
brought to a close by the peace of Westphalia in

114

THE ZENITH

1648 — a time so productive of lawlessness that it
was only two years since Wallenstein, the great
Commander-in-chief of the Imperial forces, had been
murdered by those who were afterwards publicly
rewarded by his Imperial master.

Harvey parted company with the Embassy at
Ratisbon, for in a letter dated from there he is
spoken of as " Honest little Harvey whom the Earl
is sending to Italy about some pictures for his
Majesty." From Ratisbon he proceeded to Rome,
where the pilgrims' book at the English College
shows that he dined in the refectory on the 5th
of October, 1636. Dr. Ent dined there the same
night. The two travellers probably met by arrange-
ment, for Ent was born at Sandwich, closely allied
as a Cinque Port to Folkestone, Harvey's native
home. He was educated too in Cambridge — at
Sidney Sussex College — ^and after five years at Padua
he took his degree of Doctor of Physic on the 28th
of April, 1636. Harvey and Ent had therefore
much in common, and they remained firm friends
until Harvey died. Ent's love for Harvey led him
to defend the doctrine of the circulation against the
attacks of Parisanus ; Harvey's love for Ent caused
him to entrust to him the essay on Development;

115

WILLIAM HARVEY

to be printed or preserved unpublished as £nt should
think most fit.

flothing IS known of Harvey's return to England
except that he was in London attending to his duties
and seeing his patients at the end of the year 1636.

The following certificate appears to be the only
record left of his work during the next two years.
It is dated the 2nd of December, 1637 :

^^ Having had experience of the disposition and
weakness of the body of Sir Thomas Thynne,
Knight (who hath been and still is our patient),
we testify that we are of opinion that it will be
dangerous for the health of his body to travel this
winter into the country and place of his usual abode
until he bath better, recovered his health and strength.

"Will. Harvey."

116

CHAPTER V
The Civil War

THE life of Harvey, like that of all his con-
temporaries, falls naturally into two great
divisions. Hitherto it had been passed in peace and
learned ease, but for the future much of it was
to be spent in camps amongst the alarms of war.
War indeed he had seen both in the Mantuan
campaign and in the Thirty Years' War in Ger-
many, and the war clouds had been gathering rapidly
at home. Few, however, could have imagined that
the religious excitement in Scotland, coupled with
the results of Strafford's policy in Ireland and the
acts of Laud in England, would provoke in a few
years an internecine struggle which was not ended
even by the execution of him whom in 1640 all
looked upon as the Lord's Anointed.

Harvey, perhaps, saw what was coming less clearly

117

WILLIAM HARVEY

than any of those in a responsible position round the
King, and it affected him less. Dr. Bethune, the
senior Physician in Ordinary to the King, died in
July, 1639, and Harvey was appointed in his place.
The post was more valuable than the one he had
held, for the College of Physicians contains a
memorandum giving an account of the sums of
money due to Harvey out of the King's Exchequer.
It is docketed —

" Money due out of the
Exchequer for my pension
21 April 1642
and also since
for my pension

of ;^400 p. ann."

The appointment carried with it a lodging at White-
hall and certain perquisites which are mentioned in the
following order extracted by Mr. Peter Cunningham
from the Letter Book of the Lord Steward's office :

" Charles R.

*' Whereas we have been graciously pleased to
admit Doctor Harvey into the place of Physician
in Ordinary to our Royal Person, our will and

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THE CIVIL WAR

pleasure is that you give order for the settling a
diet of three dishes of meat a meal, with all inci-
dents thereunto belonging, upon him the said Doctor
Harvey, and the same to begin from the seventeenth
day of July last past and to continue during the
time that the said Doctor Harvey shall hold and
enjoy the said place of Physician in Ordinary to
our Royal Persen, for which this shall be your
warrant.

"Given at our Court of Whitehall the sixth of
December 1639.

"To our trusty and well beloved Councillors Sir
Henry Vane and Sir Thomas Jermyn, Knights,
Treasurer and Comptroller of our Household or
to either of them.'*

In Scotland the religious riots of 1637 had culmi-
nated in the destruction of episcopacy and the forma-
tion of the Covenant, acts of rebellion which were
assisted by Richelieu in revenge for Charles's opposi-
tion to his designs upon Flanders. Preparations were
at once made for war. Early in the summer of 1639
the King joined the army under the command of
Harvey's friend the Earl of Arundel, and summoned
the peers of England to attend him in his progress

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WILLIAM HARVEY

towards Scotland. His splendid Court, accompanied
by nearly 25,000 troops, marched to Berwick. The
Scotch forces, with Leslie as their leader, marched
South and encamped on Dunse Law, a hill com-
manding the North Road. The two armies faced
each other for a short time, but the King, finding
that his troops sided with the Scotch and that
defeat was inevitable, concluded a sudden treaty,
— signed on the i8th of June, 1639, and known as
the "Pacification of Berwick," — ^and returned to
London. The pacification was not of long dura-
tion, but it led to the summoning of that Parliament
whose actions soon showed the more sagacious politi-
cians that a civil war was imminent.

The Estates met in Edinburgh on the 2nd of
June, 1640, and ordered every one to sign the
Covenant under pain of civil penalties. In so doing
they acted in direct defiance of the King, and they
refused to adjourn at his order. They sent Com-
missioners to London, but Charles refused to see
them, and the Estates then appealed for help to
France. A Scotch army was again mustered. It
crossed the Tweed and entered England on the
20th of August, 1640. Newcastle, Durham, Tyne-
mouth, and Shields were occupied, whilst the fort-

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resses of Edinburgh and Dumbarton again fell into
the hands of the insurgents, who defeated the King's
troops at Newburn-on-Tyne.

The King travelled to York, where he held a
great Council of Peers on the 24th of September,
1640. By the advice of the Council negotiations
were opened with the Scots. Eight Commissioners
from their army came to Ripon, and a treaty —
called the Treaty of Ripon — ^was entered upon,
though it was not signed until nearly a year later.
All that the Scots asked was conceded, and they
were promised ^^ 300,000 to defray the expenses
they had incurred. The armies were then dis-
banded, and for a time peace seemed to be restored.
The King again visited Scotland, and a meeting of
the Estates was held, whilst in London the Long
Parliament met on the 3rd of November, 1640,
and chose Lenthall their Speaker.

Harvey must have witnessed all these events, for
he was in close personal attendance upon the King
during the whole time. He received a warrant by
Royal Sign Manual whilst the King was at York,
addressed to the Comptroller of the Household and
dated the 25th of September, 1640, by which the
King gives ^^200 to Dr. William Harvey for his diet."

121

WILLIAM HARVEY

This was in lieu of the three dishes of meat, which in
those troublous times were not easily to be obtained.

A month or two later Harvey was in London,
for on the 24th of November, 1640, he obtained
permission from the College of Physicians to sue
the heirs of Baron Lumley in the name of the
College to recover the salary of the Lumleian
lecturer on surgery and anatomy. Leave was given
him, but the political disturbances and Harvey's
attendance upon the King appear to have prevented
him from carrying out his object. Dr. Munk says
that no further mention of this suit occurs in the
Annals of the College until the 31st of May, 1647,
when "a letter was read from Dr. Harvey desiring
the College to grant him a letter of attorney to
one Thompson to sue for the anatomical stipend. It
was presently generally granted, and shortly afterwards
sent him under the general seal." From a manuscript
of Dr. Goodall's, in the possession of the College, it
appears that Harvey expended at least five hundred
pounds in various lawsuits on this subject, which
was not settled until some time after his death,
and then at the expense of Sir Charles Scarborough,
his successor in the chair of the Lumleian Lecturer.
The only notice of Harvey during the year 1641 is

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the following entry on page 38 of the Album of
Philip de Glarges, preserved amongst the manuscripts
at the British Museum :

" ' Dii laboribus omnia vendunt.*

"Nobilissimo juveni Medico Phillipo de Glarges
amicitiae ergo libenter scripsit

GuL Harveus.
Anglus Med. Reg. et Anatomie professor. Londin :
May 8 a.d. 1641."

[" 'For toil the Gods sell everything.*

" This was willingly written as a mark of friendship
for the noble young Doctor Philip de Glarges by
William Harvey, the Englishman, Physician to the
King and Professor of Anatomy.

" At London 8 May a.d. 1641."]

Nothing appears to be known of De Glarges except
that he was a wandering student of medicine,
theology, and philosophy, and an ardent collector of
autographs. He seems to have graduated at the
Hague in 1640 when he defended a thesis upon
palpitation of the heart. His collection of auto-
graphs show that he was provided with first-rate
introductions, and that he was apparently a pro-
mising student. It would be difficult, says Dr.

123

WILLIAM HARVEY

Aveling, to find a more suitable motto than the
one Harvey has chosen to impress upon the mind
of a young man. It is one which Harvey had
always acted upon and found to be true.

Matters were soon brought to a crisis in England ;
only four days after Harvey wrote this motto
Strafibrd was beheaded. On January 3, 1641-2,
the King's desperate attempt to seize the five
members precipitated his fate. It led Parliament
to make preparations for the war which had now
become inevitable, and Isaac Pennington, a vigorous
and determined Puritan, was chosen Lord Mayor of
London. Soldiers were enrolled to form an army. On
the 1 6th of August, 1642, the King left London, and
six days later his standard was raised at Nottingham.
Harvey accompanied him. The newly raised troops
belonging to the Parliament, as yet ignorant of the
trammels of discipline, broke into the houses of
suspected persons, rifled them of their contents and
often sold their booty for the merest trifle. Harvey
had been living in his official lodgings at Whitehall,
and though he attended the King, not only with the
consent, but at the desire of the Parliament, he was
very rightly suspected of being a vehement Royalist.
Perhaps, too, the mention of his name in Parliament

124

THE CIVIL WAR

had brought him prominently into notice, for
though the proceedings of the Parliament were
nominally private, every act was rigorously scrutinised
and actively canvassed by the agitators and local
politicans. The chief outbreak of lawlessness
occurred in August, 1642, immediately after it
was known that the King had unfurled his
standard, and it was probably on this occasion that
the mob of citizen-soldiers entered Harvey's lodgings,
stole his goods, and scattered his papers. The papers
consisted of the records of a large number of
dissections, or as they would now be called post-
mortem examinations, of diseased bodies, with his
observations oh the development of insects, and a
series of notes on comparative anatomy. Aubrey
says : ^ He had made dissections of frogs, toads, and
a number of animals, and had curious observations
upon them.** Harvey bitterly regretted the loss of
his papers which he thus laments : ^ Let gentle
minds forgive me, if recalling the irreparable injuries
I have sufiered, I here give vent to a sigh. This is
the cause of my sorrow : — Whikt in attendance
on His Majesty the King during our late troubles,
and more than civil wars, not only with the per-
mission but by the command of the Parliament,

125

WILLIAM HARVEY

certain rapacious hands not only stripped my house
of all its furniture, but, what is a subject of far
greater regret to me, my enemies abstracted from
my museum the fruits of many years of toil.
Whence it has come to pass that many observa-
tions, particularly on the generation of insects,
have perished with detriment, I venture to say, to
the republic of letters."

Charles left Nottingham on the 1 3th of September, so
that it was probably early in this month that Harvey
took the opportunity of riding over to Derby to see
Percival Willoughby, who had been admitted an
extra-licentiate at the College of Physicians on the 20th
of February, 1 640-1 . Willoughby says : " There came
to my house at Derby, my honoured good friend
Dr. Harvey. We were talking of several infirmities
incident to the womb. He added to my know-
ledge an infirmity which he had seen in women,
and he gave it the name of a honey-comb [epitheli-
oma] which he said would cause flooding in women."

A few weeks later Harvey was actually under fire
at Edgehill. The battle took place on the 23rd of
October, 1642. All the morning was spent in collect-
ing the King's troops from their scattered quarters, and
it was not until one o'clock that the royal army de-

126

THE CIVIL WAR

scended the steep hill leading to the wide plain in which
stand the village of Radway and the little town of
Kineton. Harvey took charge of the two Princes,
boys of 12 and lo years old, who afterwards became
Charles IL and James IL, and in the course of the
morning he probably walked along the brow of the
hill from the inn at Sunrising to the Royalist head-
quarters which were placed about a mile further
east. Weary with waiting he and the boys
betook themselves to the wide ditch at the very
edge of the hill, and to while away the time Harvey
took a book out of his pocket and read. ^^ But,"
says Aubrey, '* he had not read very long before
the bullet from a great gun grazed the ground near
him, which made him remove his station." As soon
as the battle had really begun, Harvey, we may be
sure, was alive and interested, his book was pocketed
and he devoted himself at once to assist the wounded.
The very nature of the wounds would give additional
zest to the work for, unless he was present at the
battle of Newburn-on-Tyne, this must have been
his first opportunity of treating gunshot wounds.
Anthony Wood in his account of Adrian Scrope
shows that Harvey was no impassive spectator of
the fight, for he says : ^^ This most valiant person,

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WILLIAM HARVEY

who was son of Sir Jervais Scrope, did most loyally
attend his Majesty at the fight of Edgehill, where
receiving several wounds he was stripped and left
among the dead, as a dead person there, but
brought off by his son and recovered by the im-
mortal Dr. Will. Harvey, who was there but
withdrawn under a hedge with the Prince and
Duke while the battle was at its height. 'Tis
reported that this Adrian Scrope received 19
wounds in one battle in defence of his Majesty's
cause, but whether in that fight at Edgehill I
cannot justly say. Sure I am that he was made
Knight of the Bath at the Coronation of King
Charles II., An. 1661.'*

The battle was undecided, and Harvey, like the
other personal attendants upon the King, must for
a while have felt the keenest anxiety for the safety
of his master. The King remained for a time at the
top of the hill, but when the battle began in earnest
he could not be restrained from mixing with the
troops, sharing their danger and adjuring them to
show mercy to such of the enemy as fell into their
hands. Perhaps too Harvey saw one of the most
picturesque acts of the battle. The Royal Standard,
carried by Sir Edmund Verney at the beginning of

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THE CIVIL WAR

the fight, had waved over the King's Red Regiment
— the Royal Foot Guards. Verney slain, and the
Guards broken, it passed to the Parliamentary army,
and was committed to the charge of the secretary of
the Earl of Essex, the Commander-in-chief. Captain
Smith, a Catholic officer in the King's Life Guards,
hearing of the loss, picked up from the field the orange
scarf which marked a Parliamentarian and threw it
over his shoulders. Accompanied by some of his
troop, similarly attired, he slipped through the
ranks of the enemy, found the secretary holding
the standard, and telling him that so great a prize
was not fitly bestowed in the hands of a penman,
snatched it from him. Then, protected by the
scarf, he made his way once more through the
hostile force and laid his trophy at the feet of the
King, who knighted him upon the spot.

The battle over, Charles pushed on towards
I^ndon. Banbury surrendered on the 27th of Octo-
ber, and on the 29th he entered Oxford in triumph.
Harvey attended the King to Oxford where he was
at once received as a persona grata. His position
in London, his attachment to the King, and his
&me as a scientific man, must have combined to
render his entrance to the most exclusive Common

129 K

WILLIAM HARVEY

Rooms a matter of ease. In Oxford he very soon
settled down to his accustomed pursuit^, unmindful
of the clatter of arms and of the constant marching
and countermarching around him, for the city
remained the base of operations until its surrender
in July, 1646. Aubrey says that he first saw Harvey
at Oxford " in 1642, after the Edgehill fight, but
[I] was then too young to be acquainted with so
great a doctor. I remember he came several times
to our College [Trinity] to George Bathurst, B.D.,
who had a hen to hatch eggs in his chamber, which
they opened daily to see the progress and way of
generation." Two years later Bathurst was killed in
defending Faringdon, but he was a distinguished
Fellow of his College, and it was doubtless, with
the aid and by the advice of such a friend, that
Harvey was incorporated Doctor of Physic at
Oxford on the 7th of December, 1642.

For the next year or two Harvey lived quietly at
Oxford, making dissections and carrying on his pro-
fessional work amongst the courtiers who thronged
the town. It appears too from the following report
that Dr. Edmund Smith was living with him in
Oxford. The memorial consists of a letter from
Richard Cave to Prince Rupert, concerning the health

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THE CIVIL WAR

of his brother, Prince Maurice. It is preserved among
the Rupert Correspondence in the British Museum,
and it runs —

"May it please your Highness.

"This last night arrived here at Milton, Dr.
Harvey and Doctor Smyth and this morning they
were with the other two Doctors having seen and
spoken with his Highness your brother intreateth
me to write as followeth.

" That his sickness is the ordinary raging disease of
the army, a slow fever with great dejection of strength
and since last Friday he hath talked idly and slept not
but very unquietly, yet the last night he began to
sleep of himself and took his rest so quietly that this
present morning when Doctor Harvey came to him he
knew him and welcomed Doctor Smith respectively
and upon Doctor Harvey's expression of his Majesty's
sorrow for and great care of him he showed an
humble, thankful sense thereof. Doctor Harvey
asking his highness how he did, he answered that he
was very weak, and he seemed to be very glad to
hear of and from your Highness as was delivered by
Doctor Harvey.

" Now the Doctors having conferred and computed

WILLIAM HARVEY

the time have good hopes of his recovery yet by
reason that the disease is very dangerous and fraudulent
they dare not yet give credit to this alteration. And
concluding the disease to be venomous they resolved to
give very little physic only a regular diet and cordial
antidotes. The Doctors present their most humble
service to your Highness and subscribe themselves

" Sir,
" Your Highness* most humble servants,

"Will. Harvey
"Robert Vilvain
"Edmund Smith
"Tho. King.
"Milton, Oct. 17th, 1643."

Dr. Aveling, from whose " Memorials of Harvey "
this letter is copied, says " the treatment by * very
little phisick ' and * only a regular diet ' seems to have
been successful, for Cave, writing soon afterwards to
Prince Rupert, says : "Maurice is not able yet to write
letters, but hath this day taken physic and so intends
to bid his physicians ferewell."

In this year, 1643, Harvey received his last payment
as physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital. The
Journals contain no record of his retirement from

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THE CIVIL WAR

ofEce in the hospital, but the ledgers, which have been
kept with great accuracy and minuteness ever since
the granting of the Charter in 1547, show the entry
standing in its usual place, but for the last time.
"Item to Doctor Harvey, Physician, xxxiii li. vi s.
viii d." Harvey was resident in Oxford at the time
of his retirement, and the absence of any allusion
to so important an event in the history of the hospital
must be ascribed in part to the confusion of the
times. The Journals of the House of Commons,
however, contain a significant note: "Feb. 12,
an. 1643-4. A motion this day made for Dr.
Micklethwayte to be recommended to the Wardens
and Masters of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, to be
physician in the place of Dr. Harvey, who hath
withdrawn himself from his charge and is retired
to the party in arms against the Parliament." (Sir)
John Micklethwaite was as a matter of hot appointed
Physician in reversion to St. Bartholomew's Hospital,
May 26, 1648, and he succeeded to the post of full
physician May 13, 1653. He was one of the physi-
cians in ordinary to Charles II., and died in 1682.

Harvey's presence in Oxford, and his method of
working by experiment and by logical deduction from
observation, must have been singularly agreeable to

WILLIAM HARVEY

that band of experimental philosophers who in a few
years were destined to found the Royal Society.
Harvey's leaven worked successfully in the brains of
such men as Scarborough, Highmore, Willis, and
Wren, and in due season the pupils brought forth
fruit worthy of their master.

Harvey's connection with the University of Oxford
was destined soon to become both intimate and hon-
ourable, though it was unfortunately only of short
duration. In 1645 he was elected Warden of Merton
College, in succession to Sir Nathaniel Brent. The
present Warden of Merton, the Hon. G. C. Brodrick,
says that on the 27 th of Jan., 1645, letters were
received from the King, then lodged at Christ Church,
reciting that Sir Nathaniel Brent had absented him-
self for nearly three years, had adhered to the rebels,
and had accepted the office of Judge Marshal in
their ranks, to which might have been added that he
had actually signed the Covenant, for he gradually
became more and more Presbyterian in his views
though he was originally a friend of Laud. We learn
from the articles afterwards exhibited against [Sir]
John Greaves, then a Fellow of the College, Sa-
vilian Professor of Astronomy, and the senior Linacre
lecturer upon anatomy, that he was the person who

THE CIVIL WAR

drew up the petition against the Warden, and "in-
veigled some unwary young men to subscribe to
it.*' The King's letters accordingly pronounce the
deposition of Brent, and direct the seven senior
Fellows to present three persons as eligible to
be his successor, out of whom the King would
choose one. The Royal mandate was obeyed, but
there were some irregularities in the consequent
election, against which Peter Turner protested and
resigned his Fellowship on his protest being overruled
by Lord Hertford, who had succeeded the Earl of
Pembroke as Chancellor of the University in October,
1645. However, five out of the seven seniors, in-
cluding the Sub- Warden, placed Harvey first on their
lists, and the King lost no time in nominating him.
He was solemnly admitted Warden according to
ancient custom, on the 9th of April, and two days later,
on April nth, he addressed the Fellows in a short
speech which is still preserved. The extract from the
College register runs : — "Dominus Custos, Convocatis
in Alta Aula Sociis, haec verba ad illos fecit. Forsitan
decessores Custodiam Collegii ambiisse, ut exinde sese
locupletarent, se vere longe alio animo nimirum ut
CoUegio lucro et emolumento potius foret : simulque
socios, ut concordiam amicitiamque inter se colerent

J 35

WILLIAM HARVEY

sedule solliciteque hortatus est.*' [The Warden spoke
thus to the Fellows assembled in the Great Hall. He
said that it was likely enough that some of his fore-
runners had sought the Wardenship to enrich them-
selves, but that for his own part he undertook its
duties with far other motives, wishing as he did to
increase the wealth and prosperity of the College. At
the same time he appealed earnestly and anxiously to
the Fellows to cherish amongst themselves an har-
monious friendship.] The speech was thought at the
time to be somewhat " Pharisaical,*' but there seems to
be no doubt that Harvey was really expressing his
feelings. There had always been a close bond between
Merton and the medical profession from the days when
John of Gaddesden, one of the earliest Englishmen to
write a complete treatise on medicine, was a Fellow,
and it was peculiarly fitting that Harvey should have
been elected head of the College. He was a rich man,
childless, without expensive habits, and so devoted to
the pursuit of science that there is but little doubt that
if he had retained his position he would have become
one of the greatest benefactors of the College. As it
was, the College during Harvey's year of office pre-
sented more the appearance of a Court than of a seat of
learning. From 1643 ^^ 1646, when the Queen was

136

THE CIVIL WAR

in Oxford, she lodged in Merton College, occupying
the Warden's House, and living in the room still
known as " the Queen's room," with the drawing-room
adjoining it. Anthony Wood says that during her
occupation " there were divers marriages, christenings,
and burials carefully registered in a private register by
Mr. John Gurgany, one of the chaplains of Merton
College ; but about the time of the surrender of
Oxford the said register, among other books, was
stolen by the soldiers out of his window in his chamber
joining to the church door." Many officers too were
quartered in Merton, and the College was so full .on the
1st of August, 1645, that the annual meeting had to be
held in the library, as neither the Hall nor the War-
den's lodgings were available for the purpose.

The year 1645-6, during which Harvey held the
office of Warden of Merton, was long a memo-
rable one in the annals of Oxford. The City was
invested by Fairfax for fifteen days from May 22nd,
whilst the King was atDroitwich. On June 14th the
Royal cause was ruined at Naseby, and on November
27th the College was called upon to lay in a supply of
provisions against another siege. On December 28th
the King ordered a special form of prayer to be used
in the chapel on Wednesdays and Fridays "during

137

WILLIAM HARVEY

these bad times.*' On March 24th the College gave
a bond for ^94 on account of provisions which it had
no money to buy. At three in the morning of April
27th the King, disguised as a servant, with his beard
and hair closely trimmed, passed over Magdalen bridge
in apparent attendance upon Ashburnham and Hudson,
and we cannot but believe that Harvey was one of
the little band who closed the gates of the city with
heavy hearts as his Majesty rode oflF to begin his
wearisome captivity. On May 11, 1646, Oxford was
summoned by Fairfax, and on June 24th it was surren-
dered on very honourable terms, the garrison marching
out over Shotover 3,000 strong. The Duke of York
fell into the hands of the Parliament; but Rupert,
Maurice, and the greater part of the noblemen and
gentlemen attendant upon the Court had left Oxford
the day before its surrender. Mr. Brodrick says that
" Harvey must now have retired from the Wardenship
and Brent must have resumed office, though no minute
of either event is preserved in the College Register.
We find, however, that in September, 1648, Brent
rendered accounts, as Warden, for the four years from
1642 to 1646.

Anthony Wood describes in language which
has often been quoted, the utter confusion in

138

THE CIVIL WAR

which the past three years had left the University
— the colleges impoverished, lectures almost aban-
doned, many of the students dispersed and others quite
demoralised — '' in a word, scarce the face of an Univer-
sity left, all things being out of order and disturbed."
This account is confirmed by a striking entry in the
College Register, under the date October 19, 1646,
where it is stated that by the Divine goodness the
Civil War had at last been stayed, and the Warden
[Brent] with most of the Fellows had returned, but
that as there were no Bachelors, hardly any scholars and
few Masters, it was decided to elect but one Bursar
and one Dean. It is also added that as the Hall still
lay " situ et ruinis squalida '* the College meeting was
held in the Warden's lodgings.

Of the few students whom we know that the
influence of Harvey's name attracted to Oxford that
of Charles Scarborough, the first English editor of
Euclid, is the most noted. Ejected from his fellowship
at Caius College, Cambridge, on account of his Royalist
tendencies, he immediately withdrew to Oxford, entered
himself at Merton College, obtained the friendship of
Harvey and rendered him considerable assistance in the
preparation of his work on the development of animak.
He was created a Doctor of Physic on June 23, 1646,

WILLIAM HARVEY

by virtue of letters from the Chancellor of the Uni-
versity, and in these letters he is described as a Master
of Arts of Cambridge of seven years* standing and
upwards, who was spoiled of his library in the beginning
of the Civil War, and afterwards for his conscience
deprived of his fellowship. His letters testimonial are
under the hand of Dr. William Harvey, who says that
he is well learned in Physic, Philosophy, and Mathe-
matics.

140

CHAPTER VI
Harvey's Later Years

THE surrender of Oxford in 1645 marks the
period of Harvey's severance from the Court
and of his practical retirement from public life. He
was now 68 ; a martyr to gout, childless, and suffering
under a series of heavy bereavements, he can have had
but little heart to re-enter upon an active professional
life in London. His twin brothers Matthew and
Michael died in 1643. John, his second brother,
died in 1645. His wife who was alive in this year,
must have died shortly afterwards, or she would
probably have accompanied him to Oxford. Such a
series of shocks would act prejudicially upon his
afiectionate nature, and would still further unfit him
to pursue the harassing cares of his profession. His
mind, always philosophical and reflective rather than
empirical, was now allowed to follow its bent to

141

WILLIAM HARVEY

the uttermost, and his time was employed in putting
into shape his treatise upon Development.

Harvey returned to London after the surrender of
Oxford, and one of his first thoughts was to send
to Charles Scarborough, who had continued with
the Royal army, the message — "Prithee leave oflF
thy gunning and stay here, I will bring thee into
practice." And well he kept his word, for on the
8th of October, 1649, ^^* Scarborough was elected
by the Company of Barber Surgeons of London
reader of the anatomical lectures. "He was the first,"
says Wood, "that introduced geometrical and me-
chanical speculations into Anatomy, and applied them
in all his learned conversation, as more particularly
in his &mous lectures upon the muscles of the human
body for sixteen or seventeen yeare together in the
public theatre at Surgeons* Hall, which were read
by him with infinite applause and admiration of all
sorts of learned men in the great City. Afterwards he
became a most learned and incomparable anatomist, a
Fellow of the College of Physicians in 1650, principal
physician to King Charles II. (from whom he received
the honour of knighthood, August 15, 1669), and
to His Royal Highness James, his brother, while
Duke of York and when King, Physician to the

142

HARVEY'S LATER YEARS

Tower of London, and afterwards to King William
III." His friendship with Harvey, commenced at
Oxford, continued unabated to the end of his patron's
life ; and when on July 28, 1656, Harvey presented
to the College of Physicians the title-deeds of his
paternal estate in Kent and resigned his Lumleian
lectureship, the ofHce was transferred to Charles Scar-
borough. In his will, too, Harvey makes afiectionate
mention of his friend, and bequeaths to him his surgical
instruments and his velvet gown, so that literally as
well as metaphorically Harvey's mantle fell upon Sir
Charles Scarborough, and he nobly sustained the
charge, great as it was.

The bond of friendship which had always marked
the members of the Harvey family now comes into strik-
ing relief. The eldest brother, whose goods had been
destroyed at Whitehall and scattered at Oxford, was
a welcome guest for the rest of his life in the houses
of his younger brothers. He appears to have lived
chiefly at Cockaine House, which was probably situated
in Broad Street, for it afterwards became the Excise
OfHce. It was the town house of his brother Eliab,
who also lived either at Roehampton or at Rolls
Park. But sometimes Harvey spent a part of his
time with Daniel in the suburban village of Lambeth,

WILLIAM HARVEY

or at Combe, near Croydon in Surrey. Some curious
details of his habits at this time have been handed down.
Aubrey says: "He was much and often troubled
with the gout, and his way of cure was thus : He
would sit with his legs bare, though it were frost, on
the leads of Cockaine House, put them into a pail
of water till he was almost dead with cold, then
betake himself to his stove, and so 'twas gone." '^ A
method of treatment,*' says Heberden, '^ which I
neither recommend nor propose to others for imitation,
although Harvey lived to his eightieth year, and died
not so much from disease as from old age." The first
coffee-house was opened in London about the year
1652 by Bowman (a coachman to Mr. Hodges, a
Turkey merchant, who put him upon it), but Harvey
was wont to drink coffee, which he and his brother
Eliab did before coffee-houses were in fashion in
London. In his will he makes a special reservation
of his "cofFy-pot;" his niece, Mary West, and her
daughter are to have all his plate except this precious
utensil, which, with the residue of his fortune, he
evidently desired should descend to his brother Eliab,
as a memorial doubtless of the pleasure he had often
enjoyed over its contents, for coffee was not yet a
common drink. Another coffee-house in London

144

HARVEY'S LATER YEARS

was opened just after the Restoration. It was kept
by an old sergeant of Monk*s army.

Among some papers at the College of Physicians
relating to Harvey, which were collected by Dr.
Macmichael, is one in the handwriting of Dr.
Heberden, which runs as follows : —

" 1 76 1, May 29th. — Mrs. Harvey (great-niece to
Dr. Harvey) told me that the Doctor lived at his
brother's at Roehampton the latter part of his life.
That he used to walk out in a morning, combing his
hair in the fields.

"That he was humoursome and would sit down
exactly at the time he had appointed for dinner whether
the company was come or not. That his salt-cellar was
always filled with sugar which he used to eat instead
of salt.

" That if the gout was very painful to him in the
night he would rise and put his feet into cold water.'*

This list of harmless little eccentricities is further
enlarged by Aubrey, who says : " He was always
very contemplative and was wont to frequent the
leads of Cockaine House, which his brother Eliab
had bought, having there his several stations in regard
to the sun and the wind for the indulgence of his

145 L

WILLIAM HARVEY

fimcy ; whilst at the house at Combe in Surrey, he had
caves made in the ground in which he delighted in
the summer-time to meditate." He also loved
darkness, telling Aubrey " that he could then best
contemplate.*' "His thoughts working would many
times keep him from sleeping, in which case his way
was to rise from his bed and walk about his chamber
in his shirt till he was pretty cool and then return to
his bed and sleep very comfortably." He was ready
at all times to communicate what he knew and to
instruct any that were modest and respectful to him,
and when Aubrey was starting for Italy " he dictated
to me what to see, what company to keep, what
books to read, and how to manage my studies — in
short, he bid me go to the fountain head and read
Aristotle, Cicero, and Avicenna, and did call the
Neoteriques " by a foul name.

Dr. Ent has left a striking picture of the old man
at Christmas, 1650, nearly a year after the execution
of the King. It shows at first a weariness of spirit
which we would fain hope was not quite natural
to him, like the sadness of age which is so marked
a feature in the life-like portrait left by Janssen. Dr.
Ent's account is the epistle dedicatory to Harvey's
work on the development of animals, and it so clearly

146

HARVErS LATER YEARS

shows the man in the fashion as he lived, and as his
beloved pupil saw him, that I have not ventured
to shorten it. The Epistle is addressed: —

" To the learned and illustrious, the President and
Fellows of the College of Physicians of London.

^^ Harassed with anxious, and in the end not much
availing cares, about Christmas last, I sought to rid my
spirit of the cloud that oppressed it, by a visit to that
great man, the chief honour and ornament of our
College, Dr. William Harvey, then dwelling not far
from the city. I found him, Democritus like, busy
with the study of natural things, his countenance
cheerful, his mind serene, embracing all within its
sphere. I forthwith saluted him and asked if all were
well with him ? ' How can it be,' said he, ' whilst
the Commonwealth is full of distractions, and I myself
am still in the open sea ? And truly,' he continued,
^ did I not find solace in my studies, and a balm for
my spirit in the memory of my observations of former
years, I should feel little desire for longer life. But so
it has been, that this life of obscurity, this vacation
from public business, which causes tedium and disgust
to so many, has proved a sovereign remedy to me.'
" I, answering, said, ^ I can readily account for this :

WILLIAM HARVEY

whilst most men are learned through others* wits, and
under cover of a different diction and a new arrange-
ment, vaunt themselves on things that belong to the
ancients, thou ever interrogatest Nature herself con-
cerning her mysteries. And this line of study as it is
less likely to lead into error, so is it also more fertile
in enjoyment, inasmuch as each particular point
examined often leads to others which had not before
been surmised. You yourself, I well remember, in-
formed me once that you had never dissected any
animal— and many and many a one you have examined
— but that you discovered something unexpected,
something of which you were formerly uninformed.'

" * It is true,* said he ; ' the examination of the
bodies of animals has always been my delight, and
I have thought that we might thence not only obtain
an insight into the lighter mysteries of Nature, but
there perceive a kind of image or reflex of the omni-
potent Creator himself. And though much has been
made out by the learned men of former times, I have
still thought that much more remained behind, hidden
by the dusky night of nature, uninterrogated : so that
I have oftentimes wondered and even laughed at those
who have fancied that everything had been so con-
summately and absolutely investigated by an Aristotle

148

HARVEY'S LATER YEARS

or a Calen or some other mighty name, that nothing
could by any possibility be added to their knowledge.
Nature, however, is the best and most faithful inter-
preter of her own secrets; and what she presents,
either more briefly or more obscurely in one
department, that she explains more fully and
clearly in another. No one indeed has ever
rightly ascertained the use or function of a part who
has not examined its structure, situation, connections
by means of vessels and other accidents in various
animals, and carefully weighed and considered all he
has seen. The ancients, our authorities in science,
even as their knowledge of geography was limited by
the boundaries of Greece, so neither did their know-
ledge of animals, vegetables, and other natural objects
extend beyond the confines of their country. But to
us the whole earth lies open and the zeal of our
travellers has made us familiar not only with other
countries and the manners and customs of their
inhabitants, but also with the animals, vegetables,
and minerals that are met with in each. And truly
there is no nation so barbarous which has not dis-
covered something for the general good, whether
led to it by accident or compelled by necessity, which
had been overlooked by more civilised communities.

149

WILLIAM HARVEY

But shall we imagine that nothing can accrue to
the wide domains of science from such advantages
or that all knowledge was exhausted by the first
ages of the world ? If we do, the blame very
certainly attaches to our indolence, nowise to nature.

'"To this there is another evil added. Many persons,
wholly without experience, from the presumed veri-
similitude of a previous opinion, are often led by
and by to speak of it boldly, as a matter that is
certainly known ; whence it comes, that not only
are they themselves deceived, but that they like*
wise lead other incautious persons into error.*

'^Discoursing in this manner and touching upon
many topics besides with wonderful fluency and facility,
as is his custom, I interposed by observing ' How free
you yourself are from the fault you indicate all know
who are acquainted with you ; and this is the reason
wherefore the learned world, who are aware of your
unwearied industry in the study of philosophy, are
eagerly looking for your farther experiments.*

" ' And would you be the man,* said Harvey smiling,
'who should recommend me to quit the peaceful
haven where I now pass my life and launch again upon
the faithless sea ? You know full well what a storm
my former lucubrations raised. Much better is it

ISO

HARVEY'S LATER YEARS

oftentimes to grow wise at home and in private, than
by publishing what you have amassed with infinite
labour, to stir up tempests that may rob you of peace
and quiet for the rest of your days.'

" ' True,* said I ; ' it is the usual reward of virtue
to have received ill for having merited well. But the
winds which raised those storms like the north-western
blast, which drowns itself in its own rain, have only
drawn mischief on themselves,'

"Upon this he showed me his 'Exercises on the
Generation of Animals,' a work composed with vast
labour and singular care, and having it in my hands I
exclaimed, * Now have I what I so much desired, and
unless you consent to make this work public, I must
say that you will be wanting both to your own fame
and to the public usefulness. Nor let any fear of
farther trouble in the matter induce you to withhold it
longer ; I gladly charge myself with the whole business
of correcting the press.'

"Making many difficulties at first, urging among
other things that his work must be held imperfect,
as not containing his investigations on the generation
of insects; I nevertheless prevailed at length, and he
said to me, * I intrust these papers to your care with
full authority either speedily to commit them to the

151

WILLIAM HARVEY

press, or to suppress them till some future time.'
Having returned him many thanks, I bade him adieu
and took my leave, feeling like another Jason laden
with the golden fleece. On returning home I forthwith
proceeded to examine my prize in all its parts, and
could not but wonder with myself that such a treasure
should have lain so long concealed ; and that whilst
others produce their trifles and emptiness with much
ado, their messes twice, aye, an hundred times, heated
up, our Harvey should set so little store by his admir-
able observations. And indeed so often as he has sent
forth any of his discoveries to the world, he has not
comported himself like those who, when they publish,
would have us believe that an oak had spoken, and
that they had merited the rarest honours — z, draught
of hen*s milk at the least. Our Harvey rather seems
as though discovery were natural, a matter of ordinary
business ; though he may nevertheless have expended
infinite labour and study on his works. And we have
evidence of his singular candour in this, that he never
hostilely attacks any previous writer, but ever courteously
sets down and comments upon the opinions of each ;
and indeed he is wont to say that it is argument of an
indifferent cause when it is contended for with violence
and distemper, and that truth scarce wants an advocate.

152

Oa^U^.

-ACS.MaE OP waUAM HARVEv's „/''°^''"^'^"5.-

"AKVEVs HANDWRITING.

HARVEY'S LATER YEARS

^^ It would have been easy for our illustrious colleague
to have woven the whole of this web from materials
of his own ; but to escape the charge of envy he has
rather chosen to take Aristotle and Fabricius of
Aquapendente as his guides, and to appear as con-
tributing but his portion to the general fabric. Of
him whose virtue, candour, and genius are so well
known to you all I shall say no more, lest I should
seem to praise to his face one whose singular worth
has exalted him beyond the reach of all praise. Of
myself I shall only say that I have done no more than
perform the midwife's office in this business, ushering
into the light this product of our colleague's genius as you
see it, consummate and complete, but long delayed and
fearing perchance some envious blast ; in other words,
I have overlooked the press ; and as our author writes
a hand which no one without practice can easily read i
(a thing that is common among our men of letters),
I have taken some pains to prevent the printer com-
mitting any very grave blunders through this — z point
which I observe not to have been sufficiently attended
to in the small work « of his which lately appeared.

' The kindness of Dr. Norman Moore enables me to reproduce a
facsimile of Harvey's handwriting taken from his " muscular lecture."
The block appeared originally in the Lancet^ vol. i., 1S95, p. 136.

' Perhaps the Essay on the Circulation of the Blood addressed to
Riolanus, published at Cambridge in 1649.

153

WILLIAM HARVEY

Here then, my learned friends, you have the cause
of my addressing you at this time, viz., that you may
know that our Harvey presents an offering to the
benefit of the republic of letters, to your honour,
to his own eternal fame.

"Farewell, and prosper

"George Ent."
This account brings home to us the charm of
Harvey's personality. Beloved by his family and
honoured by the College of Physicians, the old man
went to his grave amidst the genuine grief of all who
knew him. The publication of his essay on Develop-
ment in 1 65 1 was almost his last literary effort. He
wrote a few letters to different friends abroad which
show that his mind was still actively engaged upon
the problem of the circulation of the blood, but
nothing more of importance appeared from his pen.
His love for the College of Physicians remained
unabated, and he gave proof of it in a most practical
manner. At an extraordinary Comitia held July 4,
1 65 1, Dr. Prujean, the President, read a written paper
to the assembled Fellows which contained the following
proposition : " If I can procure one that will build
a library and a repository for simples and rarities,
such a one as shall be suitable and honourable to the

154

HARVEY'S LATER YEARS

College, will you assent to have it done or no, and
give me leave and such others as I shall desire to be
the designers and overlookers of the v^rork both for
conveniency and ornament ? " This ofier from an
anonymous donor was too handsome to meet with
other than immediate acceptance, and as the Annals
of the College express it, "super hac re prompte
grateque itum est ab omnibus in sufiragia " [the pro-
position was instantly and thankfully agreed to by the
votes of all present]. The building proceeded apace,
but there is no doubt that the name of the benefactor
became known, for on December 22, 1652, and before
it was completed, the College voted that a statue of
Harvey should be placed in their hall which then
occupied a site in Amen Corner. It was accordingly
erected there with an inscription upon the pedestal
which ran : —

GULIELMO HARVEIO

Viro monumentis suis immortali

Hoc insuper Collegium Medicorum Londinense

posuit.
Qui enim sanguini motum

ut et

Animalibus ortum dedit.

Meruit esse

Stator perpetuus.

155

WILLIAM HARVEY

It represented Harvey in the cap and gown of his
degree, and though it perished in the Great Fire of
London in 1666, it was not replaced when the College
was rebuilt on or near its old site nor in the more recent
building in Pall Mall.

Harvey's building was a noble example of Roman
architecture (of rustic work with Corinthian pilasters).
It stood close to the site now occupied by Stationers*
Hall, and consisted of two stories, a great parlour
with a kind of convocation house for the Fellows
to meet in below and a library above. This inscrip-
tion was engraved upon the frieze outside the building
in letters three inches long : " Suasu et cura Fran.
Prujeani, Praesidis et Edmundi Smith, elect : inchoata
et perfecta est haec febrica An, Mdcliii " (This building
was begun and finished in the year 1653, ^^ ^^^
suggestion and under the eye of Francis Prujean, the
President, and Edmund Smith, an Elect). Harvey
therefore with characteristic modesty refrained from
taking any share in the praise ; perhaps he was wise.
The building is destroyed and forgotten. Smith's
name has perished, Prujean's is only remembered as
that of a square in the Old Bailey, but Harvey's
memory remains and needs neither bricks and mortar,
nor pictures, nor a statue to perpetuate it.

156

HARVEY'S LATER YEARS

Harvey not only paid for the building but he
furnished its library with books, amongst which were
treatises on geometry, geography, astronomy, music,
optics, natural history, and travels, in addition to those
upon medical subjects. It was to be open on Fridays
from two till five o'clock in summer, but only till four
in winter; during all meetings of the College and
whenever the librarian, being at leisure, should choose
to be present ; but no books were allowed to be taken
out. The Museum contained numerous objects of
curiosity and a variety of surgical instruments. The
doors of the buildings were formally opened on
February 2, 1653, when Harvey received the President
and the Fellows at a sumptuous entertainment, and
afterwards addressed a speech to them in which he
made over to the College the title-deeds and his whole
interest in the structure and its contents.

The College gave a fresh proof of its gratitude by
choosing Harvey unanimously as its President when
Dr. Pnijean's term of office came to an end on
Michaelmas Day, 1654. As he was absent when the
election took place, the Comitia was prorogued until
the next day, and Dr. Alston and Dr. Hamey, two
of the Elects, were asked to wait upon him to tell
him of the honour his colleagues had done them-

157

WILLIAM HARVEY

selves and him, and to say that they awaited his
answer.

Every act of Harvey's public life that has come
down to us is marked, as Dr. Willis very properly
observes, not merely by propriety, but by grace.
He attended the Comitia or assembly of the College
next day, thanked his colleagues for the distinguished
honour of which they had thought him worthy — ^the
honour, as he said, of filling the foremost place
amongst the physicians of England ; but the concerns
of the College, he proceeded, were too weighty to be
entrusted to one who, like himself, was laden with
years and infirm in health ; and if he might be
acquitted of arrogance in presuming to offer advice
in such circumstances, he would say that the College
could not do better than reinstate in the authority
which he had just laid down their late President,
Dr. Prujean, under whose prudent management and
fostering care the aflairs of the College had greatly
prospered. This disinterested counsel had a fitting re-
sponse, and Harvey's advice being adopted by general
consent, Dr. Prujean was forthwith re-elected Presi-
dent. His first act was to nominate Harvey one of the
Consilarii — ^an honourable office which he did not refuse
to accept, and to which he was reappointed in 1655
and 1656. 158

HARVEVS LATER YEARS

That Harvey's complaint of age with its attendant
infirmities was no mere figure of speech may be
gathered from his letters written about this time.
Thus he tells Dr. Horst, the principal physician at
Hesse Darmstadt, on the ist of February, 1654-5 : "I
am much pleased to find that in spite of the long time
that has passed, and the distance that separates us, you
have not yet lost me from your memory, and I could
wish that it lay in my power to answer all your
inquiries. But indeed my age does not permit me to
have this pleasure, for I am not only far stricken in
years, but am afflicted with more and more indifferent
health." And writing again to Dr. Horst five months
later he says : ** Advanced age, which unfits us for the
investigation of novel subtleties, and the mind which
inclines to repose after the fetigues of lengthened
labours, prevent me from mixing myself up with the
investigation of these new and difficult questions ; so
far am I from courting the office of umpire in this
dispute [about the digestion and absorption of the
food] that I send you the substance of what I had
formerly written about it."

Harvey appears to have devoted much of his time in
his later years to a study of general literature, which
must always have had many attractions to his cultivated

159

WILLIAM HARVEY

mind — z study which is indeed absolutely necessary
as a relaxation to one whose mind is bent upon the
solution of obscure scientific problems if he desires to
make his results intelligible. Writing to Nardi on the
30th of November, 1653, to thank him for a commen-
tary on Lucretius* account of the plague, he goes on
to say, " Nor need you plead in excuse your advanced
life. I myself, though verging on my eightieth year
and sorely failed in bodily health, nevertheless feel my
mind still vigorous, so that I continue to give myself
up to studies of this kind, especially connected with
the sacred things of Apollo, for I do indeed rejoice to
see learned men everywhere illustrating the republic of
letters." It would seem too as if he had gained some
reputation as a judge of general literature, for Howell
in his familiar letters writes to him : —

" To Dr. Harvey, at St. Lawrence Pountney.
"Sir, — ^I remember well you pleased not only to pass a
favourable censure but gave a high character of the first
part of ' Dodona*s Grove,* which makes this second to
come and wait on you, which, I dare say, for variety and
fancy, is nothing inferior to the first. It continueth
an historical account of the occurrences of the times
in an allegorical way, under the shadow of trees;

160

HARVEY'S LATER YEARS

and I believe it omits npt any material passage which
happened as far as it goes. If you please to spend
some of the parings of your time and fetch a walk in
this Grove, you may haply find therein some recreation.
And if it be true what the Ancients write of some
trees, that they are fatidical, these come to foretell, at
least to wish you, as the season invites me, a good New
Year, according to the Italian compliment, Buon princi-
pio, miglior mezzo, ed ottimo fine. With these wishes
of happiness in all the three degrees of comparison,

" I rest, Your devoted Servant,

"J. H.
'« LoND. 2 Janr

As a rule it is almost impossible to fix the dates

of the " Epistolae Ho-Elianae," but the first part of

'*Dodona*s Grove" was issued in 1640, and the second

part in 1650, so that the letter was probably written

in 1 65 1. Even if the letters were never really sent

to those to whom they are addressed, Howell selected

his apparent correspondents with such care that he

would not have addressed Harvey in this manner

unless he had been credited with some skill as a critic

of general literature. This, too, is borne out in

another letter to Nardi on October 25, 1655, in

161 M

WILLIAM HARVEY

which he says that he is used to solace his declining
years and to refresh his understanding, jaded with the
trifles of everyday life, by reading the best works.
Shortly before he died he was engaged in reading
Oughtred's "Clavis Mathematica," and in working
out the problems. The book was no doubt brought
under his notice by Charles Scarborough, who with
Seth Ward was the first to read it with his pupils at
Cambridge, where it long remained a favourite text-
book. When Scarborough and Ward were young,
they once made a journey to see Oughtred, an old
Etonian, " who was then living at Albury, in Surrey, to
be informed of many things in his * Clavis Mathematica,'
which seemed at that time very obscure to them. Mr.
Oughtred treated them with great humanity, being
very much pleased to see such ingenious young men,"
says Anthony Wood, who tells the story, "apply
themselves to those studies, and in a short time he
sent them away well satisfied in their desires.*'

Harvey still retained his Lumleian lectureship, the
duties of which he conscientiously discharged to the
last. His life, says Dr. Munk, already prolonged
beyond the span allotted to man, and his waning
powers yet further broken by repeated and severe
attacks of illness, warned him of his approaching end.

162

HARVEY'S LATER YEARS

He had lived to see his grand discovery of the circu-
lation of the blood universally accepted and inculcated
as a canon in most of the medical schools of Europe ;
and he is said by Hobbes to have been " the only one
that conquered envy in his lifetime and saw his new
doctrine everywhere established." Harvey now pre-
pared for the great change awaiting him, and on
July 28, 1656, resigned his lectureship, took his
leave of the College, and in so doing manifested the
same zeal for its prosperity as had marked the whole
of his former life. On this occasion he put the
crowning act to his munificence by giving to the
College in perpetuity his patrimonial estate at Bur-
marsh in Kent, then valued at ^^56 a year. The
particular purposes of this donation were the institu-
tion of an annual feast, at which a Latin oration
should be spoken in commemoration of the bene-
factors of the College, a gratuity for the orator, and
a provision for the keeper of his library and museum.
All this attention to perpetuate a spirit of concord
and social friendship among his brethren, was in full
accordance with Harvey's benevolent and liberal
sentiments.

The last of his letters which has been preserved is
addressed to John Vlackveld, physician at Haarlem,

163

WILLIAM HARVEY

who had sent him an interesting specimen. The
letter is a characteristic one. It runs : —

"Learned Sir, — ^Your much esteemed letter reached
me safely, in which you not only exhibit your kind
consideration of me, but display a singular zeal in
the cultivation of our art.

" It is even so. Nature is nowhere accustomed
more openly to display her secret mysteries than in
cases where she shows traces of her workings apart
from the beaten path ; nor is there any better way
to advance the proper practice of medicine than to
give bur minds to the discovery of the usual law of
nature, by careful investigation of cases of rarer forms
of disease. For it has been found in almost all things,
that what they contain of useful or of applicable, is
hardly perceived unless we are deprived of them, or
they become deranged in some way. The case of
the plasterer to which you refer is indeed a curious
one and might supply a text for a lengthened com-
mentary by way of illustration. But it is in vain
that you apply the spur to urge me, at ifiy present
age, not mature merely but declining, to gird myself
for any new investigation ; for I now consider my-
self entitled to my discharge from duty. It will,

164

HARVEY'S LATER YEARS

however, always be a pleasant sight to see dis-
tinguished men like yourself engaged in this honour-
able arena. Farewell, most learned sir, and whatever
you do, still love

** Yours, most respectfully,

''William Harvey.
London, April 2j^ 1657."

165

CHAPTER VII
Harvey's Death, Burial, and Eulogy

HARVEY died at Roehampton in the house of
his brother EHab on the 3rd of June, 1657.
Aubrey says that on the morning of his death, about
ten o'clock, he went to speak and found that he had
the dead palsy in his tongue ; then he saw what
was to become of him. He knew there were then
no hopes of his recovery, so presently he sends for
his young nephews to come up to him, to whom he
gives one the minute watch with which he had made
his experiments, to another his signet ring, and to
another some other remembrance. He then made
signs (for being seized with the dead palsy in his
tongue he could not speak) to Sambroke, his apothe-
cary in Blackfriars, to let him blood in the tongue,
which did him little or no good, and so ended his
days, dying in the evening of the day on which

166

DEATH, BURIAL, AND EULOGY

he was stricken, the palsy giving him an easy pass-
port.

It would appear from this account that Harvey died
of a cerebral hemorrhage from vessels long injured by
gout and situated rather at the base or internal parts of
the brain than in the frontal lobes. Most probably the
left Sylvian artery gave way, leading at first to a slight
extravasation of blood, which rapidly increased in
quantity until it overwhelmed his brain. The copy of
the death mask in the church at Hempstead shows the
left eye more widely open than the right, whilst the
furrows on the right side of the face are much more
marked than those on the left side.

The body was brought to London, where it seems
to have been placed in Cockaine House, which also
belonged to Eliab Harvey, and in that room of the
house which became afterwards the office of Elias
Ashmole, the antiquary to whom Oxford owes the
Ashmolean Museum. Here it rested many days
because, though Harvey died on the 3rd of June,
it was not until the 25th of June that the Fellows
of the College of Physicians received a notice re-
questing them, clothed in their gowns, to attend
the funeral on the following day, Jn the meantime,
Eliab, as his brother's executor, had decided that

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WILLIAM HARVEY

Harvey should be buried at Hempstead in Essex, and
accordingly, on the 26th of June, 1657, ^^ funeral
procession started from London. It was followed
far beyond the City walls by a large number of the
Fellows of the College of Physicians, many of whom
must afterwards have hurried back to Westminster Hall,
where, on the same day, with the greatest ceremony
and with all the pomp of circumstance, Cromwell viras a
second time inaugurated after the humble petition and
advice had given him the power of nominating his
successors and of forming a second House of Parliament,
whilst it assigned to him a perpetual revenue.

There is no record of the time when the funeral
party reached Hempstead, nor where it stopped on
the way. The village is situated about fifty miles
from London and seven miles east of Saffron Walden,
so that one, if not two, nights must have been spent
upon the journey. Here, about 1655, Eliab Harvey
had built '^ the Harvey Chapel," a plain, rectangular
building of brick with a high-pitched tile roof, on
the north side of the church, adjoining and communi-
cating with the chancel and lighted by three large
windovsrs. He had also built the outer vault beneath
it as a place of sepulture for his family, and when
this became full in 1766, one of his descendants, also

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DEATH, BURIAL, AND EULOGY

an Eliab Harvey, but of Claybury, built the inner vault.
Twice before had Eliab made a similar journey. Once
in 1655, after the death of his daughter Sarah, a girl of
twelve, and again in 1656, at the funeral of Elizabeth,
another daughter aged nine. Harvey was laid in the
outer chapel, between the bodies of his two nieces,
and like them he was ^^ lapt in lead," coffinless, and
upon his breast was placed in great letters —

DOCTOR

WILLIAM + HARVEY +

DECEASED + THE + 3 +

OF + JUNE + 1657 +

AGED + 79 + YEARS.

"I was at the funeral," says Aubrey, "and helped
to carry him into the vault." The simple wrapping
of the body in lead seems to have been a custom
peculiar to the Harvey family. The leaden case
used for William Harvey was roughly shaped to the
form of the body, the head part having the rude
outline of a face with mouth, nose, and eyes ; the
neck wide and the shoulders expanded. The breast-
plate was broad and the inscription upon it was in
raised letters. The body of the case was long and

169

WILLIAM HARVEY

tapering towards the feet, where the lead was turned
up at a right angle. The measurements of the case
show that it afforded no data as to Harvey's size, for
though he was a man "of the lowest stature," its
extreme length from the crown of the head to the
toes was no less than six feet and a quarter.

When the late Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson first
entered the vault in 1847, the remains of Harvey
had not been visited within the memory of man,
though the villagers knew by tradition that " Dr.
Harvey was a very great man, who had made, they
were told, some great discovery, though they did not
know what it was." At that time the vault was
practically open to the public, for the window in it
at the eastern end was uncased and badly barred.
The leaden shell containing Harvey's remains lay
upon the floor just beneath the window and with
the feet directed towards it. It was therefore
exposed to the drift of rain when it beat into the
vault with an east wind, and the sarcophagus was
so unprotected that boys could throw stones upon it,
and did so. The lead in the upper third of its length
from the feet was almost torn through on its upper
surface, though the rent was only a small one. The
leaden case, too, was beginning to bend in over the

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DEATH, BURIAL, AND EULOGY

middle of the body like a large scoop or spoon, in
which water could accumulate.

Some repairs were made in the vault after it had
been visited and its condition had been reported upon
by Dr. Stewart and (Sir) Richard Quain in 1868,
but the leaden case still remained upon the floor and
the opening had become so large that a frog jumped
out of it on one occasion as soon as it was touched.
Ten years later Sir Benjamin Richardson made a
further examination of the case and reported that
the centre of the shell, extending from the middle
of the trunk to the feet had so far collapsed that the
upper surface all but touched the lower one, whilst
the crack in the lead was now so large that it
measured fully six inches in length. But owing to
the greater collapse of the lead the fissure was not
so wide as it was in 1868; indeed, the edges had
now closed, leaving only a space of half an inch at
the widest part.

" The question which interests us most," says
Richardson, "has yet to be considered. Are any
remains of Harvey left in the sarcophagus ? Expecting
to find the opening in the lead in the same condition
at my latest visit, as it was at the latest but one, I took
with me a small mirror, a magnesium light, and every

171

WILLIAM HARVEY

appliance for making what may be called a sarcophos-
copic investigation. To my dismay, I discovered that
the opening is now almost closed by the collapse of
the lead, so that the reflector could not be used, while
the shell is positively filled at the opening with thick,
dirty fluid, like mud — z fluid thick as melted pitch
and having a peculiar organic odour. This extends
into the case above and below the crack or fissure.
There can be little remaining of the body, not much
probably even of the skeleton.*'

Sir Benjamin concluded his report with the sugges-
tion that ** these honoured remains should be conveyed
to their one fit and final resting-place — Westminster
Abbey. There, laid two feet deep in the floor in
some quiet corner and covered merely with a thick
glass plate, the leaden sarcophagus, still visible to
those who take an interest in the history of science,
would be protected for ages, instead of being destined,
as it now certainly is, to fell into a mere crumbling,
unrecognisable mass, in the course, at furthest, of
another hundred years." The failing health and
subsequent death of Dr. Stanley, the Dean of West-
minster, prevented the execution of this project, which
would probably have been carried into effect had he
lived, for it is thought that he was willing to allow

172

DEATH, BURIAL, AND EULOGY

the remains of Harvey to be placed near those of
Hunter or Livingstone.

On the 28th of January, 1882, the whole tower of
Hempstead Church fell towards the south-west into
the churchyard. No injury was done to the Harvey
Chapel, but the accident led to a further examination
of Harvey's shell. It was found that the lead was
perishing rapidly, and that the shell itself was fiill of
water. A formal report was made to the College of
Physicians, who appointed a committee of its Fellows
to advise upon the best method of procedure. The
labours of the Committee resulted in a decision to
leave the remains at Hempstead, but to remove them
to the chapel above the vault. The necessary consent
having been obtained, and a marble sarcophagus to
receive the leaden case having been selected, an archi-
tect was invited to examine the vault and the floor of
the chapel. Under his directions pillars were built in
the vault to sustain the additional weight upon the
floor of the chapel, and on St. Luke's Day, 1883, the
leaden case containing Harvey's remains was carried
reverently from the vault by eight Fellows of the
College. It was immediately deposited in the sarco-
phagus in the presence of the President, the Office
Bearers, and many Fellows of the Royal College of

173

WILLIAM HARVEY

Physicians. A leaden case was also deposited within
the sarcophagus containing the quarto edition of
Harvey's works in Latin, edited in 1766 by Drs.
Akenside and Lawrence, with a memorial bottle
hermetically sealed and containing a scroll with the
following memorial :

" The body of William Harvey lapt in lead, simply
soldered, was laid without shell or enclosure of any
kind in the Harvey vault of this Church of Hempstead,
Essex, in June, 1657.

" In the course of time the lead enclosing the remains
was, from exposure and natural decay, so seriously
damaged as to endanger its preservation, rendering
some repair of it the duty of those interested in the
memory of the illustrious discoverer of the circulation
of the Blood.

" The Royal College of Physicians, of which corpo-
rate body Harvey was a munificent Benefactor, and
which by his favour is the possessor in perpetuity of
his patrimonial estate at Burmarsh, Kent, did in the
years 1882-83, ^7 permission of the Representatives
of the Harvey family, undertake that duty.

" In accordance with this determination the leaden
mortuary chest containing the remains of Harvey was

DEATH, BURIAL, AND EULOGY

repaired, and was, as far as possible, restored to its
original state, and on this i8th day of October, 1883,
in the presence of four representatives of the Harvey
family and of the President, all the office bearers and
many other Fellows of the College of Physicians
(whose names are hereunto appended), was reverently
translated from the Harvey vault to this Sarcophagus,
raised by the College for its reception and preservation.*'

High in the wall of the Church at Hempstead is
a marble monument containing a bust of William
Harvey. The ornamentation of the tablet is bold
and effective, and below the bust is a long Latin
inscription testifying to Harvey's good works. The
bust was carefully examined by Mr. Thomas Woolner,
R.A., who came to the conclusion that it was made
from a death mask. He says that ^^ the features pre-
sented by the bust are clearly those of a dead face.
The sculptor exhibits no knowledge of sculpture
except when he was copying what was directly be-
fore him. With the cast of the face for his copy
he has shown true artistic delineation, but all that he
has been obliged to add to make up the bust as it
stands is of the worst possible quality. The ears are
placed entirely out of position, the large, redundant

175

WILLIAM HARVEY

head of hair is altogether out of character, imaginary
and badly executed, and the drapoy of the shoulders
is simply despicable." We have nevertheless to thank
the rude sculptor for the care he has devoted to the
face, and we are enriched by the knowledge supplied
to us by a great contemporary authority in sculpture,
that the true lineaments of William Harvey, as they
were seen at the time of his death, are still in our
possession — lineaments which indicate a face at once
refined, reflective, and commanding.

Harvey's will is an interesting document. It is
without date, but it seems to have been made at some
time between July, 1651, and February, 1653. The
codicil is also undated. Perhaps it was added shortly
before Sunday, the 28th of December, 1656, the day
on which Harvey read over the whole document and
formally declared and published it as his last will and
testament in the presence of Heneage Finch, his
nephew by marriage, afterwards the Lord Chancellor,
and his faithful servant, John Raby. The will runs :

" The Last Will and Testament of William Harvey,
M.D.

" In the name of the Almighty and Eternal God,
Amen.

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DEATH, BURIAL, AND EULOGY

"I, William Harvey, of London, Doctor of
Ph}rsic, do by these presents make and ordain this my
last Will and testament in manner and form following,
revoking hereby all former and other wills and testa-
ments whatsoever.

"Imprimis, I do most humbly render my soul to Him
that gave it and to my blessed Lord and Saviour Christ
Jesus, and my body to the earth to be buried at the
discretion of my executor herein after named.

"The personal estate which at the time of my
decease I shall be in any way possessed of either in
law or equity, be it in goods, household stuff, ready
monies, debts, duties, arrearages of rents or any other
ways whatsoever and whereof I shall not by this
present will or by some Codicil to be hereunto an-
nexed make a particular gift and disposition I do after
my debts, funerals, and legacies paid and discharged,
give and bequeath the same unto my loving brother
Mr. Eliab Harvey, merchant of London, whom I
make executor of this my last will and testament."

He then settles the distribution of certain lands which
" I have lately purchased in Northamptonshire or
thereabouts, commonly known by the name of Oxon
grounds and formerly belonging unto the Earl of
Manchester ; and certain other grounds in Leicester-

WILLIAM HARVEY

shire, commonly called or known by the name of
Baron Parke and sometime heretofore belonging unto
Sir Henry Hastings, Knight, both which purchases
were made in the name of several persons nominated
and trusted by me." The will then proceeds : "And
first I appoint so much money to be raised and laid
out upon that building which I have already begun to
erect within the College of Physicians in London as
will serve to finish the same according to the design
already made.

" Item, I give and bequeath unto my loving sister-
in-law Mrs. Eliab Harvey one hundred pounds to buy
something to keep in remembrance of me.

"Item, I give to my niece Mary Pratt all that
linen, household stuff and furniture which I have at
Combe, near Croydon, for the use of Will. Foulkes
and to whom his keeping shall be assigned after her
death or before (by) me at any time.

" Item, I give unto my niece Mary West and her
daughter Amy West half the linen I shall leave at
London in my chests and chambers together with all
my plate excepting my cofFee-pot.

" Item, I give to my loving sister Eliab all the other
half of my linen which I shall leave behind me.

" Item, I give to my loving sister Daniell at Lam-

178

DEATH, BURIAL, AND EULOGY

beth and to every one of her children severally the
sum of fifty pounds.

"Item, I give to my loving cousin Mr. Heneage
Finch for his pains, counsel and advice about the con-
triving of this my will one hundred pounds.

" Item, I give to all my little Godchildren, Nieces
and Nephews severally to every one fifty pounds.

" Item, I give and bequeath to the town of Folke-
stone where I was born two hundred pounds to be
bestowed by the advice of the Mayor thereof and my
Executor for the best use of the poor.

" Item, I give to the poor of Christ Hospital [? St.
Bartholomew's Hospital] in Smithfield thirty pounds.

" Item, I give to Will. Harvey my godson, the son
of my brother Michael Harvey deceased, one hundred
pounds and to his brother Michael fifty pounds.

" Item, I give to my nephew Tho. CuUen and his
children one. hundred pounds and to his brother my
godson, Will. Cullen one hundred pounds.

" Item, I give to my nephew John Harvey the son
of my loving brother Tho. Harvey deceased two
hundred pounds.

" Item, I give to my servant John Raby, for his dili-
gence in my service and sickness twenty pounds. And
to Alice Garth, my servant, ten pounds over and

179

WILLIAM HARVEY

above what I am already owing unto her by my bill
which was her mistress's legacy.

"Item, I give among the poor children of Amy
Rigdon daughter of my loving uncle Mr. Tho. Halke
twenty pounds.

" Item, among other my poorest kindred one hun-
dred pounds to be distributed at the appointment of
my executor.

" Item, I give among the servants of my sister Dan at
my funeralls five pounds. And likewise among the ser-
vants of my nephew Dan. Harvey at Coombe as much.

"Item, I give to my cousin Mary Tomes fifty
pounds.

"Item, I give to my loving friend Mr. Prestwood
one hundred pounds.

"Item, I give to every one of my loving brother
Eliab his sons and daughters severally fifty pounds
apiece.

"All which legacies and gifts aforesaid are chiefly
to buy something to keep in remembrance of me.

" Item, I give among the servants of my brother
Eliab which shall be dwelling with him at the time
of my decease ten pounds.

" Furthermore, I give and bequeath unto my sister
Eliab's sister Mrs. Coventrey, a widow, during her

1 80

DEATH, BURIAL, AND EULOGY

natural life the yearly rent or sum of twenty
pounds.

" Item, I give to my niece Mary West during her
natural life the yearly rent or sum of forty pounds.

"Item, I give for the use and behoof and better
ordering of Will Foulkes for and during the term or
his life unto my niece Mary Pratt the yearly rent of
ten pounds, which sum if it happen my niece shall
die before him I desire may be paid to them to whom
his keeping shall be appointed.

" Item, I will that the twenty pounds which I yearly
allow him my brother Galen Browne may be con-
tinued as a legacy from his sister during his natural
life.

"Item, I will that the payments to Mr. Samuel
Fenton's children out of the profits of Buckholt lease
be orderly performed as my dear deceased loving wife
gave order so long as that lease shall stand good.

" Item, I give unto Alice Garth during her natural
life the yearly rent or sum of twenty pounds.

" Item, to John Raby during his natural life sixteen
pounds yearly rent.

" All which yearly rents or sums to he paid half
yearly at the two most usual feasts in the year, viz. : —
Michaelmas and our Lady day without any deduction

i8i

WILLIAM HARVEY

for or by reason of any manner of taxes to be anyway
hereafter imposed. The first payment of all the said
rents or Annuities respectively to begin at such of
those feasts which shall first happen next after my
decease.

" Thus I give the remainder of my lands unto my
loving brother Eliab and his heirs. All my legacies
and gifts &c. being performed and discharged.

^^ Touching my books and household stuii^ pictures
and apparell of which I have not already disposed I
give to the College of Physicians all my books and
papers and my best Persia long carpet and my blue
satin embroidered cushion, one pair of brass Andirons
with fire shovel and tongs of brass for the ornament of
the meeting room I have erected for that purpose.

" Item, I give my velvet gown to my loving friend
Mr. Doctor Scarborough desiring him and my loving
friend Mr. Doctor Ent to look over those scattered
remnant of my poor Library and what books, papers
or rare collections they shall think fit to present to the
College and the rest to be sold and with the money
buy better. And for their pains I give to Mr. Doctor
Ent all the presses and shelves he please to make use
of and five pounds to buy him a ring to keep or wear
in remembrance of me.

1 8a

DEATH, BURIAL, AND EULOGY

" And to Doctor Scarborough all my little silver
instruments of surgery.

"Item, I give all my chamber furniture, tables,
bed, bedding, hangings which I have at Lambeth, to
my sister Dan and her daughter Sarah. And all that
at London to my loving sister Eliab and her daughter
or my godson Eliab as she shall appoint.

" Lastly, I desire my executor to assign over the
custody of Will Fowkes after the death of my
niece Mary Pratt, if she happen to die before him,
unto the sister of the said William, my niece Mary
West.

"Thus I have finished my last Will in three pages,
two of them written with my own hand and my name
subscribed to every one with my hand and seal to the
last.

"WiL. Harvey.

" Signed, sealed and published as the last will and
testament of me William Harvey in the presence of
us Edward Dering. Henneage Finch. Richard Flud.
Francis Finche." A codicil is added to the will making
certain rearrangements of the bequests, rendered
necessary by the deaths and marriages of some of the
recipients. Amongst others, "All the furniture of
my chamber and all the hangings I give to my godson,

«83

■ --^

WILLIAM HARVEY

Mr. Eliab Harvey at his marriage, and all my red
damask furniture and plate to my cousin Mary Harvey."
" Item, I give my best velvet gown to Doctor Scar-
borough.

"Will. Harvey.*'

The entry of the issue of probate upon this will
runs thus in the books at Somerset House : —

"May 1659. The second day was proved the
will and Codicil annext of Dr. William Harvey, late
of the parish of St. Peter's Poore, in London, but at
Roehampton in the County of Surrey, deceased, by
the oath of Eliab Harvey, the brother and sole exe-
cutor, to whom administration was committed, he
being first sworn truly to administer.'* This entry
seems to set at rest the doubt that had been expressed
as to the exact place of Harvey's death, for Aubrey
with his customary inaccuracy in detail stated that he
died in London.

William Harvey may perhaps be compared more
fitly with John Hunter than with any single scientific
man who either preceded or followed him. Harvey
laid the foundation of modern medicine by his dis-
covery of the circulation of the blood. Hunter laid
the foundation of modern pathology, not by any

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DEATH, BURIAL, AND EULOGY

single and striking discovery, but by a long course of
careful observation. Harvey, like Hunter, was a
careful and competent observer ; both were skilled
anatomists, both were ardent pathologists, both were
comparative anatomists of a high order. By singular
ill fortune we have lost the records of many years of
careful work done by each of these great men. Har-
vey's work was destroyed or scattered by the violence
of the times in which he lived, and we can only be
grateful that so much is spared to us ; Hunter's work
was lost irrevocably by the crime of his trusted assistant
and brother-in-law. Harvey, like Hunter, was choleric,
but his nature was the more lovable, though each had
the power, innate in every great teacher, of attaching
to himself and enrolling in his work all sorts of unlikely
people. The collecting or acquisitive spirit was equally
developed both in Hunter and Harvey, but the desire
for knowledge was less insatiable in Harvey.

The influence of breeding and education is nowhere
more marked than in these two great men, otherwise
so nearly allied. Harvey's knowledge is always well
within the grasp of his intellect. He can formulate
it, often in exquisite language, and it is so familiar to
him that he can afford to use similes and images which
show him to be a man of wide general education. He

i8s

WILLIAM HARVEY

thinks clearly so that his unerring conclusions are
drawn in a startlingly easy manner. Yet he was often
hampered by the theories of the ancient philosophical
schools of medicine. Hunter's knowledge was gigantic,
but it was uncontrolled. His thoughts are obscure and so
ill expressed that it is often difficult to discover what he
would say. His conclusions too are sometimes incorrect
and are frequently laboured, yet the advance of know-
ledge in the hundred years and more which separated
him from Harvey afforded him many additional data.

Harvey's acquaintance with the literature of medi-
cine enabled him to cite apposite examples, and must
evidently have been of the greatest service to him in
elucidating his problems. Hunter too often traversed
paths which were already well trodden, for his defective
education prevented him from knowing the works of
his predecessors. The atmosphere of Courts and of
the refined and learned society in which Harvey spent
most of his life has given a polish to his writings and a
gentleness to his character which were wholly wanting
to John Hunter, upon whom the res angustae domi
— absent in Harvey's case — had impressed a certain
ruggedness of character, but in both there was a
native strength and robustness of constitution which
render them not dissimilar.

i86

DEATH, BURIAL, AND EULOGY

As mere practitioners or curers of the body neither
Harvey nor Hunter were highly esteemed by their
contemporaries, though both made considerable sums
of money by their art. The curiosity both of Harvey
and of Hunter was boundless, but their minds were of
the creative rather than of the imaginative type. Both ^
collected fects and were averse to theories.

Neither Hunter nor Harvey were religious men in
the ordinary and narrow sense of the term. Harvey,
living at an intensely religious period in the history of
England, appears to have held the broad views befitting
a student of nature. An eminently religious tone
runs throughout his work, " a devout and reverential
recognition of God," as Sir Russell Reynolds expressed
it, "not only as the great primal ever-acting force,
behind, outside and before all the works of Nature ;
but as the Being, * the Almighty and Eternal God,' to
whom he says in his last will and testament, ^I do
most humbly render my soul to Him who gave it ;
and to my blessed Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus.' "
Hunter living in a freer age had yet the remains of
his Scottish upbringing adherent to the last.

187

CHAPTER VIII
Harvey's Anatomical Works

HARVEY'S liber aureus is certainly his " Exer-
citatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis
in animalibus." [An Anatomical Treatise on the
Movement of the Heart and Blood in Animals, by
William Harvey, the Englishman, Physician to the
King and Professor of Anatomy in the London Col-
lege of Physicians.] The work was issued from the
press of William Fitzer, of Frankfort, in the year
1 62 1. Harvey chose Frankfort as the place of pub-
lication for his book because the annual book fair held
in the town enabled a knowledge of his work to be
more rapidly spread than if it had been issued in
England.

The book contains the matured account of the
circulation of the blood, of which somewhat more
than the germ had appeared in the notes of the Lum-

188

HARVEY'S ANATOMICAL WORKS

leian visceral lecture for 1616. It is a small quarto,
containing seventy-two pages and a page and half of
errata^ for Harvey wrote a villainous hand, and com-
munication between Germany and England was too
slow, expensive, and uncertain to allow an author to
correct his book sheet by sheet as it issued from the
press.

The Treatise opens with a dedication to Charles I.
couched in fitting emblematical language, and signed
"Your Most August Majesty's Most Devoted Servant,
William Harvey." The dedication is followed by a
preface addressed to "Dr. Argent* [then President of
the College of Physicians, and one of Harvey's inti-
mate friends] as well as to the other learned physicians,
his most esteemed colleagues." In this pre&ce he
excuses himself for the book, saying that he had already
and repeatedly presented to them his new views of the
movement and function of the heart in his anatomical
lectures. And that he had now for nine years and
more confirmed these views by multiplied demonstra-
tions in their presence. He had illustrated them by
arguments and he had freed them from objections of
the most learned and skilful Anatomists. He then
proceeds so modestly that it is difficult to realise how
great an innovation he was really making when he

189

WILLIAM HARVEY

sa}rs, '*I profess both to learn and to teach anatomy,
not from books but from dissections, not from the
positions of philosophers but from the fabric of nature."
Such a statement is now a mere truism, because
every one who starts upon a subject of original
research follows the method adopted by Harvey. He
learns thoroughly what is known already ; he frames
a working hypothesis and puts it to the test of
experiment. He then combines his a priori reasoning
with a logical deduction from the fects he observes.
A feeble mind is sometimes overmastered by its
working hypothesis, and may be led to consider
it proved when a better trained observer would
dismiss it for a more promising theory. Harvey's
hypothesis — tested by experiment, by observation, and
by reasoning — was no longer an hypothesis but a
proved fact fertile beyond measure, for it rendered
possible a coherent and experimental physiology and

•

a new medicine and surgery.

The anatomical treatise gives in seventeen short
chapters a perfectly clear and connected account of
the action of the heart and of the movement of the
blood round the body in a circle. A movement
which had been foreshadowed by some of the earlier
anatomists and had been clearly indicated by Harvey

190

HARVEY'S ANATOMICAL WORKS

himself as early as 1616. But it is here laid down
with a precision of detail, with a logical exactness,
and with a wealth of illustration which is marvellous
even to us who read of the circulation as an established
and fundamental principle upon which the whole body
of physic rests. Harvey's proof fell short of complete
demonstration, for he had no means of showing how
the smallest arteries are connected with the smallest
veins. He worked, indeed, with a simple lens, but
its magnifying power was too feeble to show him
the arterioles and the venules, whilst the idea of an
injection does not seem to have occurred to him. It
was not until after the invention of the compound
microscope that Leeuwenhoeck, in 1675, described the
blood corpuscles and the circulation in the capillary
blood vessels, though they had already been seen by
Malpighi.

The first chapter of the Treatise is introductory.
It is a review of the chief theories which had been
held as to the uses of the heart and lungs. I^ad
been ma intained that the heart was the great centre
for the production of heat. The blood was driven
alternately to and from the heart, being sucked into
it during_the_diastole and driven from it during the
systole. The use of the arteries was to fen and cool

191

WILLIAM HARVEY

the blood, as the lungs hnncd and cooled the heart,
for the pulse was due to an active dilatation and con-
traction of the arteries. During their dilatation the
arteries sucked in air, and during their contraction
they discharged murky vapours through pores in the
flesh and skin. In the heart, as well as in the arteries,
the dilatation was of greater importance than the
contraction. The whole of this tissue of falsehood
seems to have been founded upon ah incorrect appre-
hension of the nature of heat. It was looked upon
as a fundamental principle or entity, and until
chemistry and physics reached the stage of experi-
mental sciences it was impossible to give a correct
explanation of the phenomena it presents. Even
Harvey sometimes lost himself in mysticism when
he had to deal with the subject of animal heat,
though he was struggling hard to find a firm foothold
when he said, " We are too much in the habit of
worshipping names to the neglect of things. The
word Blood has nothing of grandiloquence about it,
for it signifies a substance which we have before our
eyes and can touch ; but before such titles as Spirit and
Calidum Innatum [or inherent heat] we stand agape."
Harvey begins his Treatise on the movement of the
Heart and Blood with the clear statement that the

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heart must be examined whilst it is alive ; but he says,
" I found the task so truly arduous and so full of diffi-
culties that I was almost tempted to think with Fracas-
tonus that the movement of the heart was only to be
comprehended by God. For I could neither rightly
perceive at first when the systole ' and when the
diastole took place, nor when and where dilatation
and contraction occurred, by reason of the rapidity
of the movement, which in many animals is accom-
plished in the twinkling of an eye, coming and going
like a flash of lightning.

" At length by using greater and daily diligence and
investigation, making frequent inspection of many
and various animals and collating numerous observa-
tions, I thought that I had attained to the truth . . .
and that I had discovered what I so much desired —
both the movement and the use of the heart and
arteries. From that time I have not hesitated to
expose my views upon these subjects, not only in
private to my friends, but also in public in my
anatomical lectures, after the manner of the Academy
of old.

" These views, as usual, pleased some more, others

' The systole of the heart means its contraction : the diastole of the
heart means its dilatation.

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WILLIAM HARVEY

less : some chid and calumniated me and laid it to me
as a crime that I had dared to depart from the
precepts and opinion of all anatomists : others desired
further explanations of the novelties, which they said
were both worthy of consideration, and might per-
chance be found of signal use."

The results of his experiments soon made it plain
to Harvey that the heart's movements could be
studied more readily in the colder animals, such as
toads, frogs, serpents, small fishes, crabs, shrimps,
snails, and shellfish, than in warm-blooded animals.
The movements of the heart became more distinct
even in warm-blooded animals, such as the dog and
hog, if the organ was attentively noted when it
began to flag. The movements then became slower,
the pauses longer, so that it was then much more easy
to perceive and unravel what the movements really
were and how often they were performed.

Careful observation and handling the heart made
it clear that the organ was muscular, and that its
systole was in every way comparable with the con-
traction which occurs in the muscles of the
forearm when the fingers are moved. "The con-
traction of the heart is therefore of greater importance
than its relaxation. During its contraction the heart

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becomes erect, hard, and diminished in size, so that
the ventricles become smaller and are so made more
apt to expel their charge of blood. Indeed, if the
ventricle be pierced the blood will be projected
forcibly outwards at each pulsation when the heart
is tense."

After thus disproving the erroneous views of the
heart's action, Harvey next proceeds to discuss the
movements in the arteries as they are seen in the
dissectionj^f living animals. He shows that the
pulsation of the arteries depends directly upon the
contraction of the left ventricle and is due to it,
whilst the contraction of the right ventricle propels
its charge of blood into the pulmonary artery which
is distended simultaneously with the other arteries
of the body. When an artery is divided or punc-
tured the blood is forcibly expelled from the wound
at the instant when the left ventricle contracts, and
when the pulmonary artery is wounded the blood
spurts forth with violence when the right ventricle
contracts, So also in fish, if the vessel leading from
the heart to the gills be divided the blood flows out
forcibly when the heart becomes tense and contracted.

These fects enabled Harvey to disprove the current
theory that the heart's isystole corresponded with the

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WILLIAM HARVEY

contraction of the arteries which then became filled
with blood by a process of active dilatation, as bellows
are filled with air. He illustrated this by a homely
method which he had .been accustomed to use in
' his lectures for years. (He says that " the pulses of
the arteries are due to the impulses of the blood
from the left ventricle may be illustrated by blowing
into a glove, )when the whole of the fingers will be
found to become distended at one and the same time
and in their tension to bear some resemblance to the
pulse.*'

The broad points in connection with the vascular
system being thus settled, Harvey turned his attention
more particularly to the mechanism of the heart's
action. He shows that the two auricles move syn-
chronously and that^ the two ventricles also contract
at the same time. Hitherto it had been supposed that
each cavity of the heart moved independently, so that
every cardiac cycle consisted of four distinct move-
ments. To prove that the movement of the heart
was double he examined the eel, several fish, and some
of the higher animals. He noticed that the ven-
tricles would pulsate without the auricles, and that
if the heart were cut into several pieces " the several
parts may still be seen contracting and relaxing.")

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The minute accuracy of Harvey's observation is
shown by his record of what is in reality a perfusion
experiment. He says : " Experimenting with a
pigeon upon one occasion after the heart had wholly
ceased to pulsate and the auricles too had become
motionless, I kept my finger wetted with saliva and
warm for a short time upon the heart and noticed that
under the influence of this fomentation it recovered
new strength and life, so that both ventricles and
auricles pulsated, contracting and relaxing alternately,
recalled as it were from death to life." We now
know that this was due to the warmth, to the
moisture, and to the alkalinity of Harvey's saliva,
so that he performed crudely, and no doubt by acci-
dent, one of the most modern experiments to show
that the heart, under suitable conditions, has the
power of recovering from fatigue.

This portion of the treatise affords an insight into
the enormous amount of labour which Harvey had
expended in its production, for he says r"I have also
observed that nearly all animals have truly a heart,
not the larger creatures only and those that have red
blood, but the smaller and pale-blooded ones also, such
as slugs, snails, scallops, shrimps, crabs, crayfish, and
many others; nay, even in wasps, hornets, and flies

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WILLIAM HARVEY

I have, with the aid of a magnifying glass and at the
upper part of what is called the tail, both seen the
heart pulsating and shown it to many others." That
this was the result of a careful study of the animals
mentioned and not a simple observation is shown
by the following sentences : "In winter and the
colder season, pale-blooded animals such as the snail
show no pulsations : they seem rather to live after the
manner of vegetables or of those other productions
which are therefore designated plant animals. . . . We
have a small shrimp in these countries, which is taken
in the Thames and in the sea, the whole of whose
body is transparent : this creature, placed in a little
water, has frequently afforded myself and particular
friends an opportunity of observing the movements
of the heart with the greatest distinctness, the external
parts of the body presenting no obstacle to our view,
but the heart being perceived as though it had been
seen through a window.

" I have also observed the first rudiments of the chick
in the course of the fourth or fifth day of the incuba-
tion, in the guise of a little cloud, the shell having
been removed and the egg immersed in clear, tepid
water. In the midst of the cloudlet in question there
was a bloody point so small that it disappeared during

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the contraction and escaped the sight, but in the
relaxation it reappeared again red and like the point
of a pin."

Harvey formulates in his fifth chapter the con-
clusions to which he had been led about the movement,
action, and use of the heart. His results appear to be
absolutely correct by the light of our present know-
ledge, and they show how much can be done by a
careful observer, even though he be unassisted by any
instrument of precision.

" First of all the auricle contracts, and in the course >
of its contraction forces the blood (which it contains
in ample quantity as the head of the veins, the store-
house and cistern of the blood) into the ventricle
which, being filled, the heart raises itself straightway,
makes all its fibres tense, contracts the ventricles and
performs a beat, by which beat it immediately sends
the blood supplied to it by the auricle into the arteries.
The right ventricle sends its charge into the lungs by ,
the vessel which is called the vena arteriosa [pulmonary ;
artery], but which in structure and function and all
other respects is an artery. The left ventricle sends
its charge into the aorta and through this by the
arteries to the body at large.

" These two movements, one of the ventricles, the

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WILLIAM HARVEY

other of the auricles, take place consecutively, but in
such a manner that there is a kind of harmony or
rhythm preserved between them, the two concurring
in such wise that but one movement is apparent,
especially in the warmer blooded animals in which the
movements in question are rapid. Nor is this for any
other reason than it is in a piece of machinery in which,
though one wheel gives movement to another, yet all
the wheels seem to move simultaneously ; or in that
mechanical contrivance which is adapted to firearms,
where the trigger being touched, down comes the
flint, strikes against the wheel, produces a spark,
which falling among the powder, ignites it, upon
which the flame extends, enters the barrel, causes the
explosion, propels the ball, and the mark is attained —
all of which incidents by reason of the celerity with
which they happen, seem to take place in the twinkling
of an eye. . . . Even so does it come to pass with
the movements and action of the heart. . . . ( Whether
or not the heart besides propelling the blood, giving it
movement locally and distributing it to the body,
adds anything else to it — heat, spirit, perfection — must
be inquired into by and by, and decided upon other
grounds. So much may suflice at this time, when
it is shown that by the action of the heart the blood

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is transfused through the ventricles from the veins to
the arteries and is distributed by them to all parts
of the body. /

" The above indeed is admitted by all, both from the
structure of the heart and the arrangement and action
of its valves. But still they are like persons, purblind
or groping in the dark, for they give utterance to
various contradictory and incoherent sentiments,
delivering many things upon conjecture. . . . The
great cause of doubt and error in this subject appears
to me to have been the intimate connection between
the heart and the lungs. When men saw both the
pulmonary artery and the pulmonary veins losing
themselves in the lungs, of course it became a puzzle
to them to know how or by what means the right
ventricle should distribute the blood to the body or

the left draw it from the venae cavae «

i^^ Since the intimate connection of the heart with
the lungs, which is apparent in the human subject, has
been the probable cause of the errors that have been
committed on this point, they plainly do amiss who,
pretending to speak of the parts of animals generally,
as Anatomists for the most part do, confine their
researches to the human body alone, and that when
it is dead. They obviously do not act otherwise than

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WILLIAM HARVEY

he who, having studied the forms of a single common-
wealth, should set about the composition of a general
sjrstem of polity : or who, having taken cognisance of
the nature of a single field, should imagine that he had
mastered the science of agriculture ; or who, upon the
ground of one particular proposition, should proceed to
draw general conclusions.

I " Had Anatomists only been as conversant with the
dissection of the lower animals as they are with that
of the human body, the matters that have hitherto
kept them in a perplexity of doubt would, in my
opinion, have met them freed from every kind of
difficulty." /

After this plea for the employment of comparative
anatomy to elucidate human anatomy, Harvey proceeds
to deal in almost logical manner with the various
difficulties in following the course taken by the blooit
in passing from the vena cava to the arteries, or from
the right to the left side of the heart. He begins
with fish, in which the heart consists of a single
ventricle, for there are no lungs. He then discusses
the relationship of the parts in the embryo, and
arrives at the conclusion that "in embryos, whilst
the lungs are in a state of inaction, performing no
function, subject to no movement any more than

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if they had not been present, Nature uses the two
ventricles of the heart as if they formed but one
for the transmission of the blood." He therefore
concludes that the condition of the embryos of those
animals which have lungs, whilst these organs are yet
in abeyance or not employed, is the same as that
of the animals which have no lungs. ; From this he
wishes it to be understood that the blood passes by
obvious and open passages from the vena cava into
the aorta through the cavities of the ventricles. A
statement which was in direct opposition to the
generally received tradition of the time that the blood
passed from the right into the left ventricle by con-
cealed pores in the septum which separates the two
cavities in the heart. '

/Thus far Harvey's teaching has been excellent,
but now, leaving the highway of fact, he plunges
into theory and is at once involved in error. He
proceeds, ^^And now the discussion is brought to
this point, that they who inquire into the ways by
which the blood reaches the left ventricle of the
heart and pulmonary veins from the vena cava will
pursue the wisest course if they seek by dissection
to discover why, in the larger and more perfect
animals of mature age, Nature has rather chosen to

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WILLIAM HARVEY

make the blood percolate the parenchyma of the
lungs, than as in other instances chosen a direct
and obvious course — for I assume no other path or
mode of transit can be entertained. It must be
because the larger and more perfect animals are
warmer, and when adult their heat greater, ignited
I might say, and requiring to be damped or mitigated,
that the blood is sent through the lungs, in order
that it may be tempered by the air that is inspired,
and prevented from boiling up and so becoming
extinguished or something else of the sort. But to
determine these matters and explain them satisfactorily
were to enter upon a speculation in regard to the
office of the lungs and the ends for which they exist.
Upon such a subject, as well as upon what pertains
to respiration, to the necessity and use of the air,
&c., as also to the variety and diversity of organs
that exist in the bodies of animals in connection with
these matters, although I have made a vast number of
observations, I shall not speak till I can more con-
veniently set them forth in a treatise apart.'* ,

The next chapter is devoted to the description
of the manner in which the blood passes through
the substance of the lungs from the right ventricle
of the heart into the pulmonary veins. It is followed

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by the glorious eighth chapter, in which Harvey's
style, always impressive and solid^ rises .jntQ JsaL.
eloquence, for a great occasion justifies the use of
repetitions, of antitheses and an abundance of
metaphors. He now quits the method of demons-
tration and experiment for that of indi rect but
irrefragable argum ent. He deals with the guantity
nf binoj passing through the heart from the veins
to the arteries, and again brings together all his
threads to a nodal point. ^^ Thus far I have spoken of
the passage of the blood from the veins into the arteries,
and of the manner in which it is transmitted and
distributed by the action of the heart ; 'points to which
some, moved either by the authority of Galen or
Columbus, or the reasonings of others, will give their
adhesion.! 'But what remains to be said upon the
quantity and source of the blood which thus passes
is of a character so novel and unheard of that I
not only fear injury to myself from the envy of a
few, but I tremble lest I have mankind at large for
my enemies, so much doth wont and custom become a
second nature. • Doctrine once sown strikes deeply its
root, and respect for antiquity influences all men.
Still the die is cast, and my trust is in my love of
truth and the candour of cultivated minds. And

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sooth to say when I surveyed my mass of evidence,
whether derived from vivisections and my various
reflections on them, or from the study of the ventricles
of the heart and the vessels that enter into and issue
from them, the symmetry and the size of these
conduits, for Nature doing nothing in vain, would
never have given them so large a relative size without
a purpose — or from observing the arrangement and
intimate structure of the valves in particular and of
the other parts of the heart in general, with many
things besides, I frequently and seriously bethought
me and long revolved in my mind, what might be the
quantity of blood which was transmitted, in how short
a time its passage might be effected and the like. But
not finding it possible that this could be supplied by
the juices of the ingested aliment without the veins
on the one hand becoming drained, and the arteries
on the other getting ruptured through the excessive
charge of blood, unless the blood should somehow find
its way from the arteries into the veins and so return
to the right side of the heart ; I began to think
whether there might not be a movement, as it were,
in a. circle. Now this I afterwards found to be true,
and, I finally saw that the blood, forced by the action
of the left ventricle into the arteries, was distributed

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to the body at large and in several parts in the same
manner as it is sent through the lungs impelled by
the right ventricle into the pulmonary artery, and that
it then passed through the veins and along the vena
cava and so round to the left ventricle in the manner
already indicated. This movement we may be allowed
to call circular/'^

Harvey's great discovery is here formulated in his
own words. The lesser or pulmonary circulation was
already tolerably well known, owing to the work of
Realdus Columbus, the successor of Vesalius in the
anatomical chair at Padua, though he had been antici-
pated by Servetus, who published it at Lyons in 1543
in the '* Christianismi Restitutio," a theological work,
containing doctrines for which Calvin caused him to
be burnt. But it is more than doubtful whether
Harvey knew of this work, as not more than three
or four copies of it have escaped the flames which
consumed the book and its writer.

Harvey continues his treatise by laying down three
propositions to confirm his main point that the blood
circulates.

First, that the blood is incessantly transmitted by
the action of the heart from the vena cava to the
arteries.

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WILLIAM HARVEY

Secondly, that the blood under the influence of the
arterial pulse enters and is impelled in a continuous,
equable, and incessant stream through every part and
member of the body, in much larger quantity than is
sufficient for nutrition or than the whole mass of
fluids could supply.

Thirdly, that the veins return this blood incessantly
to the heart. *' These points being proved, I conceive
it will be manifest that the blood circulates, revolves,
is propelled, and then returning from the heart to the
extremities, from the extremities to the heart, and
. thus that it performs a kind of circular movement."

These propositions Harvey proves to demonstration
and in a most masterly manner. He says of the first :
" Let us assume either arbitrarily or by experiment,
that the quantity of the blood which the left ventricle
of the heart will contain when distended to be, say
two ounces, three ounces, or one ounce and a half
— in the dead body I have found it to hold upwards
of two ounces. Let us assume further how much less
the heart will hold in the contracted than in the
dilated state, and how much blood it will project into
the aorta upon each contraction, and all the world
allows that with the systole something is always
projected ... and let us suppose as approaching the

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truth that the fourth, or fifth, or sixth, or even but the
eighth part of its charge is thrown into the artery at
each contraction, this would give either half an ounce,
or three drachms, or one drachm of blood as propelled
by the heart at each pulse into the aorta, which
quantity by reason of the valves at the root of the
vessel can by no means return into the ventricle. Now
in the course of half an hour the heart will have
made more than one thousand beats, in some as many
as two, three, or even four thousand. Multiplying
the number of drachms by the number of pulses we
shall have either one thousand half ounces, or one
thousand times three drachms, or a like proportional
quantity of blood, according to the amount we assume
as propelled with each stroke of the heart, sent from
this organ into the artery : a larger quantity in every
case than is contained in the whole body. In the
same way in the sheep or dog, say that but a single
scruple of blood passes with each stroke of the heart,
in one half hour we should ha^e one thousand scruples,
or about three pounds and a half of blood injected
into the aorta, but the body of neither animal
contains more than four pounds of blood, a fact which
I have myself ascertained in the case of the sheep."
This is one of the highest efforts of Harvey's genius.

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WILLIAM HARVEY

The facts are simple and they are easily ascertained.
But the reasoning was absolutely new and the con-
clusion must remain sound until the end of time, for
it is true. It shows too the minute care taken by
Harvey not to overstate his case, for he deliberately
takes a measurement of the capacity of the ven-
tricles which he knew to be well under the average.

This part of his argument is ended with an appeal
to practical experience. f'The truth, indeed, presents

'■s

itself obviously before us when we consider what
happens in the dissection of living animals : the great
artery need not be divided, but a very small branch only
(as Galen even proves in regard to man), to have the
whole of the blood in the body, as well that of the
veins as of the arteries, drained away in the course
of no long time — some half hour or less. Butchers
are well aware of the fact and can bear witness to
it ; for, cutting the throat of an ox and so dividing
the vessels of the neck, in less than a quarter of an
hour they have all the vessels bloodless — the whole
mass of blood has escaped. The same thing also
occasionally occurs with great rapidity in performing
amputations and removing tumours in the human
subject. . . . Moreover it appears . . . that the more
frequently or forcibly the arteries pulsate, the more

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speedily will the body be exhausted of its blood
during haemorrhage. Hence also it happens that in
fainting fits and in states of alarm when the heart
beats more languidly and less forcibly, haemorrhages
are diminished and arrested.

" Still further, it is from this, that after death, when
the heart has ceased to beat, it is impossible by
dividing either the jugular or the femoral veins and
arteries by any effort to force out more than one-
half of the whole mass of the blood. Neither could
the butcher ever bleed the carcass efifectually did he
neglect to cut the throat of the ox which he has
knocked on the head and stunned before the heart
had ceased beating."

( Harvey continues to push his argument to a logical
conclusion in the succeeding chapters of his Treatise
partly by argument and partly by adducing fresh
experimental evidence. .'^ But if any one shall here
object that a large quantity may pass through (the
heart) and yet no necessity be found for a circula-
tion, that all may come from the meat and drink
consumed, and quote as an illustration the abundant
supply of milk in the mammae — for a cow will give
three, four, and even seven gallons a day, and a
woman two or three pints whilst nursing a child or

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WILLIAM HARVEY

twins, which must manifestly be derived from the
food consumed ; it may be answered, that the heart
by computation does as much and more in the
course of an hour or two. )

" And if not yet convinced he shall still insist, that
when an artery is divided, a preternatural route is,
as it were, opened, and that so the blood escapes in
torrents, but that the same thing does not happen
in the healthy and uninjured body when no outlet
is made ... it may be answered, that ... in
serpents and several fish by tying the veins some
way below the heart, you will perceive a space
between the ligature and the heart speedily to
become empty, so that unless you would deny the
evidence of your senses, you must needs admit the
return of the blood to the heart. ... If, on the
contrary, the artery instead of the vein be com-
pressed or tied, you will observe the part between
the obstacle and the heart and the heart itself to
become inordinately distended, to assume a deep
purple or even livid colour, and at length to be so
much oppressed with blood that you will believe it
about to be choked j but the obstacle removed, all
things immediately return to their natural state in
colour, size, and impulse." y

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Harvey next proceeds to demonstrate his second
proposition. He shows that the blood enters a limb
by the arteries and leaves it by the veins j that the
arteries are the vessels carrying the blood from the
heart, and the veins the returning channels of the
blood to the heart ; that in the limbs and the
extreme parts of the body the blood passes either
immediately by anastomosis or mediately by the
pores of the flesh.

Harvey is here hampered by the conditions of the
age in which he lived, yet it is here that he shows
himself far superior to his contemporaries as well as
to the most enlightened of his predecessors. His
lens was not sufficiently powerful to show him the
capillary blood-vessels, and he had therefore no real
knowledge of the way by which the blood passed
from the arterioles into the venules. On the other
hand, he did not repeat the mistake made by
Aristotle, and reiterated by Cesalpino in 1571 that
the blood passed from the smallest arteries into
" capillamenta," the vevpa of Aristotle.

Later commentators have given to Cesalpino the
credit due to Harvey by translating " capillamenta "
into our term capillaries. But this process of '' reading
into " the writings of man what he never knew is

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WILLIAM HARVEY

one of the commonest pitfalls of defective scholar-
ship.

Harvey attempted to solve the problem of the
capillary circulation by an appeal to clinical evidence,
which soon led him into inaccuracies, as when he
says that the fainting often seen in cases of blood-
letting is due to the ^^cold blood rising upwards to
the heart, for fainting often supervenes in robust
subjects, and mostly at the moment of undoing the
fillet, as the vulgar say from the * turning of the
blood.'";

This Chapter XI. is an important one. Harvey
takes the operation of bleeding as one which is
^miliar to every class of his readers, and he uses
the various phenomena which attend the application
of a ligature to the arm to clinch his arguments as
to the existence of the circulation of the blood. He
introduces incidentally his surgical and pathological
knowledge, quoting, amongst other instances, the
fact that if the blood supply to a tumour or organ
be stopped, '' the tissues deprived of nutriment and
heat dwindle, die, and finally drop off." He also
introduces some pathological results from personal
experience, for he says : — " Thrown from a carriage
upon one occasion, I struck my forehead a blow upon

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the place where a twig of the artery advances from
the temple, and immediately, within the time when
twenty beats could have been made, I felt a tumour
the size of an egg developed, without either heat
or any great pain ; the near vicinity of the artery
had caused the blood to be effused into the bruised
part with unusual force and velocity,"

This passage shows one of the minor difficulties
that Harvey and all observers in his age had to
contend with in the fact that no method existed by
which small fractions of time could be measured.^
The ordinary watch had only a single hand marking
the hours, so that neither minutes nor seconds could
be registered by them.

The difficulty was one of old standing, and Dr.
Norman Moore alluded to it, when he says in
regard to Mirfeld's "Breviarium Bartholomei : "
"The mixture of prayers with pharmacy seems odd

' Cardinal Nicholas de Cusa [Cusanus] is said to have counted the
pulse by a clock about the middle of the sixteenth century, but Dr.
Norman Moore points out to me that in reality he counted the water-
clock, then in use, by the pulse. The number of pulse-beats was not
measured by means of a watch until after the publication, in 1707, of
Sir John Floycr's book, '*The Physician's Pulse-watch, or an Essay to
explain the old art of feeling the Pulse." In the time of Harvey and
long afterwards physicians contented themselves with estimating the
character of the pulse, rather than its precise rate.

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WILLIAM HARVEY

to us ; but let it be remembered that Mirfeld wrote
in a religious house, that clocks were scarce, and
that in that age and place time might not in-
appropriately be measured by the minutes required
for the repetition of so many verses of Scripture or
so many prayers. Thus Mirfeld recommends that
chronic rheumatism should be treated by rubbing
the part with olive oil. This was to be prepared
with ceremony. It was to be put into a clean
vessel while the preparer made the sign of the cross
and said the Lord's Prayer and an Ave Maria.
When the vessel was put to the fire the Psalm
* Why do the heathen rage ' was to be said as far
as the verse, 'Desire of Me, and I shall give thee
the heathen for thine inheritance.' The Gloria,
Pater Noster, and Ave Maria are to be said, and
the whole gone through seven times. Which done
let that oil be kept. The time occupied I have
tried, and found to be a quarter of an hour."

In the succeeding chapters Harvey continues his
observations on phlebotomy, and draws a conclusion
so striking in its simplicity that it appears hard to

understand why it had not already occurred to
others. He says : '^ And now, too, we understand
why in phlebotomy we apply one ligature above

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HARVEY'S ANATOMICAL WORKS

the part that is punctured, not below it : did the
flow come from above, the constriction in this case
would not only be of no service but would prove a
positive hindrance. It would have to be applied
below the orifice in order to have the flow more
free did the blood descend by the veins from the
superior to inferior parts."

■"•Harvey next returns to the question whether the
blood does or does not flow in a continuous stream
through the heart — z subject upon which his con-
temporaries had the wildest notions, for even Cesalpino
says: "That whilst we are awake there is a great
afflux of blood and spirit to the arteries whence the
passage is to the nerves and whilst we are asleep the
same heat returns to the heart by the veins, not by
the arteries, for the natural ingress to the heart is by
the vena cava^ not by the artery ... so that the
undulating flow of blood to the superior parts, and its
ebb to the inferior parts — like Euripus — is manifest in
sleeping and waking." Harvey combats this theory
in exactly the same manner as we should do if it were
propounded at the present day. He first brings
forth his mathematical proof of the circulation, and
then continues his surgical observations upon the
operation of bleeding. » "It is still further to be

217

WILLIAM HARVEY

observed that in practising phlebotomy the truths
contended for are sometimes confirmed in another
way, for having tied up the arm properly and made
the puncture duly, still, if from alarm or any
other causes, a state of faintness supervenes, in which
the heart always pulsates more languidly, the blood
does not flow freely, but distils by drops only. The
reason is that with the somewhat greater than usual
resistance oflFered to the transit of the blood by the
bandage, coupled with the weaker action of the heart
and its diminished impelling power, the stream cannot
make its way under the ligature ; and further, owing
to the weak and languishing state of the heart, the
blood is not transferred in such quantity from the
veins to the arteries through the sinuses of that organ^^
. . , And now a contrary state of things occurring,
the patient getting rid of his fear and recovering his
courage, the pulse strength is increased, the arteries
begin again to beat with greater force, and to drive the
blood even into the part that is bound, so that the
blood now springs from the puncture in the vein, and
flows in a continuous stream. . . ." Thus for, he
proceeds, "we have spoken of the quantity of blood
passing through the heart and the lungs in the centre
of the body, and in like manner from the arteries into

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the veins in the peripheral parts, and in the body at
large. We have yet to explain, however, in what
manner the blood finds its way back to the heart from
the extremities by the veins, and how and in what
way these are the only vessels that convey the blood
from the external to the central parts ; which done, I
conceive that the three fundamental propositions laid
down for the circulation of the blood will be so plain,
so well established, so obviously true, that they may
claim general credence. Now the remaining proposi-
tion will be made sufficiently clear from the valves
which are found in the cavities of the veins them-
selves, from the uses of these, and from experiments
cognisable by the senses."

Harvey returns again to his anatomical demionstra-
tions to prove his point. ' He explains the true uses of
the valves in the veins, whose existence, he says, were
known to his old teacher " Hieronymus Fabricius, of
Aquapendente, a most skilful anatomist and venerable
old man. . . . The discoverer of these valves did not
rightly understand their use, nor have succeeding ana-
tomists added anything to our knowledge ; for their
office is by no means explained when we are told that
it is to hinder the blood by its weight from all flowing
into the inferior part ; for the edges of the valves in

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WILLIAM HARVEY

the jugular veins hang downwards, and are so con-
trived that they prevent the blood from rising
upwards ; the valves, in a word, do not invariably look
upwards, but always towards the trunks of the veins,
invariably towards the seat of the heart. Let it be
added that there are no valves in the arteries, and that
dogs, oxen, &c., have invariably valves at the divisions
of their crural veins, in the veins that meet towards
the top of the os sacrum, and in those branches which
come from the haunches, in which no such effect of
grayity from the erect position was to be apprehended."
^^The valves are solely made and instituted lest the
blood should pass from the greater into the lesser veins,
and either rupture them or cause them to become
varicose. . . . The delicate valves, whilst they readily
open in the right direction, entirely prevent all con-
trary movement. . . . And this I have frequently
experienced in my dissections of the veins): if I at-
tempted to pass a probe from the trunk of the veins
into one of the smaller branches, whatever care I took,
I found it impossible to introduce it far any way, by
reason of the valves ; whilst, on the contrary, it was
most easy to push it along in the opposite direction
from without inwards, or n*om the branches towards
the trunks and roots." He concludes his argument

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by again pointing out that the uses of the valves can
be clearly shown in an arm which has been tied up
for phlebotomy, and that the valves are best seen in
labouring people.

The fourteenth chapter is devoted to the " Conclu-
sion of the Demonstration of the Circulation." It
runs thus : —

"And now I may be allowed to give in brief my
view of the circulation of the blood, and to propose
it^for general adoption.

" Since all things, both argument and ocular demon-
stration show that the blood passes through the lungs
and heart by the force of the ventricles, and is sent for
distribution to all parts of the body, where it makes its
way into the veins and pores of the flesh, and then
flows by the veins from the circumference on every
side to the centre from the lesser to the greater veins,
and is by them finally discharged into the vena
cava and right auricle of the heart, and this in such
quantity or in such afflux and reflux, thither by the
arteries, hither by the veins, as cannot possibly be sup-
plied by the ingesta, and is much greater than can be
required for mere purposes of nutrition 5 it is abso-
lutely necessary to conclude that the blood in the
animal body is impelled in a circle, and is in a state of

221

WILLIAM HARVEY

ceaseless movement ; that this is the act or function
which the heart performs by means of its pulse, and
that it is the sole and only end of the movement
and contraction of the heart."

Harvey concludes his treatise with a series of reasons
which he rightly considers to be of a less satisfactory
nature than those he has already adduced. The seven-
teenth chapter contains much comparative anatomy.
It opens with the statement that ^^I do not find the
heart as a distinct and separate part in all animals ;
some, indeed, such as the zoophytes, have no heart.
• . . Amongst the number I may instance grubs and
earth-worms, and those that are engendered of putre-
faction and do not preserve their. sp<;ciQ3. These have
no heart, as not requiring any impeller of nourishment
into the extreme parts. . . . Oysters, mussels,
sponges, and the whole genus of zoophytes or plant-
animals have no heart, for the whole body is used as
a heart, or the whole animal is heart. In a great
number of animals, almost the whole tribe of insects,
we cannot see distinctly by reason of the smallness of
the body ; still, in bees, flies, hornets, and the like we
can perceive something pulsating with the help of a
magnifying glass ; in pediculi also the same thing may
be seen, and as the body is transparent, the passage of

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HARVEY'S ANATOMICAL WORKS

the food through the intestines, like a black spot or
stain, may bfe perceived by the aid of the same magni-
fying glass.

^^ But in some of the pale-blooded and colder animals,
as in snails, whelks, shrimps, and shell-fish, there is a
part which pulsates — a kind of vesicule or auricle with-
out a heart — slowly, indeed, and not to be perceived
except in the warmer season of the year. ... In
fishes, serpents, lizards, tortoises, frogs, and others of
the same kind there is a heart present, furnished with
both an auricle and a ventricle. . . .And then in
regard to animals that are yet larger and warmer and
more perfect, . . . these require a larger, stronger, and
more fleshy heart. • . . Every animal that has
lungs has two ventricles to its heart, one right, the
other left, and whenever there is a right there is a left
ventricle, but the contrary does not hold good ; where
there is a left there is not always a right ventricle.
. . . It is to be observed, however, that all this is
otherwise in the embryo where there is not such a
diflFerence between the two ventricles. . . . Both
ventricles also have the same office to perform, whence
their equality of constitution. It is only when the
lungs come to be used . . . that the difference in
point of strength and other things between the two

223

WILLIAM HARVEY

ventricles becomes apparent. In the altered circum-
stances the right has only to drive the blood through
the lungs, whilst the left has to propel it through the
whole body." ,

(This concludes Harvey's Demonstration of the Cir-
cwation of the Blood in 1628, but he continued to
work at the subject throughout his life. ) In two
letters or anatomical disquisitions, addressed to the
younger Riolanus of Paris, and dated from Cambridge
in 1649, Harvey gives his latest reflections upon the
subject of the Circulation of the Blood. These dis-
quisitions differ very greatly from the original treatise.
They are less clear and concise, and dwell more upon
points of dispute which had arisen in connection wjth
the controversy, which raged for many years round
Harvey's discovery.

The first disquisition is devoted more especially to
the question of the anastomosis which takes place be-
tween the arteries and the veins,^ whilst the second
disquisition illustrates more fully a number of details
connected with the nature and quantity of the blood
and its mode of progression. Harvey says incorrectly
of the anastomosis, "Neither in the liver, spleen,
lungs, kidneys, nor any other viscus, is such a thing
as an anastomosis to be seen, and by boiling I have

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HARVEY'S ANATOMICAL WORKS

rendered the whole parenchyma of these organs so
friable that it could be shaken like dust from the fibres
or picked away with a needle, until I could trace the
fibres or every sub-division, and see every capillary
filament distinctly, I can, therefore, boldly affirm that
there is neither any anastomosis of the vena porfae
with the cava, of the arteries with the veins, or of
the capillary ramifications of the biliary ducts, which
can be traced through the entire liver, with the veins."
The second disquisition opens with Harvey's view
ot the contemporary criticism upon his treatise. " But
scarce a day, scarce an hour has passed since the birth-
day of the Circulation of the blood that I have not
heard something, for good or for evil, said of this, my
discovery. Some abuse it as a feeble in&nt, and yet
unworthy to have seen the light ; others again think
the bantling deserves to be cherished and cared for.
These oppose it with much ado, those patronise it with
abundant commendation. One party holds that I have
completely demonstrated the circulation of the blood
by experiment, observation, and ocular inspection
against all force and array of argument ; another
thinks it scarcely sufficiently illustrated — not yet
cleared of all objections. There are some, too, who
say that I have shown a vainglorious love of vivisec-

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WILLIAM HARVEY

tions, and who scoflF at and deride the introduction of
frogs and serpents, flies, and other of the lower animals
upon the scene, as a piece of puerile levity, not even
refraining from opprobrious epithets, v,

" To return evil speaking with evil speaking, how-
ever, I hold to be unworthy in a philosopher and
searcher after truth. I believe that I shall do better
and more advisedly if I meet so many indications
of ill breeding with the light of faithful and con-
clusive observation. It cannot be helped that dogs
bark and vomit their foul stomachs, or that cynics
should be numbered among philosophers ; but care
can be taken that they do not bite or inoculate their
mad humours, or with their dogs' teeth gnaw the
bones and foundations of truth,

" Detractors, mummers, and writers defiled with
abuse, as I resolved with myself never to read them,
satisfied that nothing solid or excellent, nothing but
foul terms was to be expected from them, so have I
held them still less worthy of an answer. Let them
consume on their own ill-nature. They will scarcely
find many well-disposed readers, I imagine, nor does
God give that which is most excellent,.and-. chiefly to
be desired — wisdoQi — to the wicked. Let them go on
railing, I say, until they are weary, if not ashamed."

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HARVEY'S ANATOMICAL WORKS

Amidst a mass of unprofitable speculation, the
second Disquisition contains one or two gems of patho-
logical observation, illustrating physiological con-
clusions. Desiring to set in a clear light "that the
pulsific power does not proceed from the heart by the
^ coats of the vessels, I beg here to refer to a portion of
the descending aorta, about a span long in length,
with its division into two crural trunks, which I
removed from the • body of a nobleman, and which
is converted into a bony tube ; by this hollow tube^
nevertheless, did the arterial blood reach the lower
extremities of this nobleman during his life, and cause
the arteries in these to beat .... Where it was
converted into bone it could neither dilate nor con-
tract like bellows, nor transmit the pulsific power
from the heart to the inferior vessels: it could not
convey a force which it was incapable of receiving
through the solid matter of the bone. In spite of
all, however, I well remember to have frequently
noticed the pulse in the legs and feet of this patient
whilst he lived, for I was myself his most attentive
physician, and he my very particular friend. The
arteries in the inferior extremities of this nobleman
must, therefore, and of necessity, have been dilated by
the impulse of the bloodlike flaccid sacs, and not

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WILLIAM HARVEY

have expanded in the manner of bellows through the
action of their tunics.

"I have several times opened the breast and peri-
cardium of a man within two hours after his execution
by hanging, and before the colour had totally left his
face, and in presence of many witnesses, have demon-
strated the right auricle of the heart and the lungs
distended with blood : the auricle in particular of the
size of a large man's fist, and so full of blood that it
looked as if it would burst. This great distension,
however, had disappeared next day, the body having
stiffened and become cold, and the blood having made
its escape through various channels.

"I add another observation. A noble knight, Sir
Robert Darcy, an ancestor of that celebrated physician
and most learned man, my very dear friend. Dr.
Argent, when he had reached to about the middle
period of life, made frequent complaint of a certain
distressing pain in the chest, especially in the night
season, so that dreading at one time syncope, at
another suffocation in his attacks, he led an unquiet and
anxious life. He tried many remedies in vain, having had
the advice of almost every medical man. The disease
going on from bad to worse, he by and by became
cachectic and dropsical, and finally grievously di&-

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tressed, he died in one of his paroxysms. In the body
of this gentleman, at the inspection of which there
were present Dr. Argent, the President of the College
of Physicians, and Dr. Gorge, a distinguished
theologian and preacher, who was pastor of the
parish, we found the wall of the left ventricle
of the heart ruptured, having a rent in it of size
sufficient to admit any of my fingers^ although the
wall itself appeared sufficiently thick and strong.
This laceration had apparently been caused by an
impediment to the passage of the blood from the left
ventricle into the arteries.

" I was acquainted with another strong man, who,
having received an injury and aflfront from one more
powerful than himself, and upon whom he could not
have his revenge, was so overcome with hatred and
spite and passion, which he yet communicated to no
one, that at last he fell into a strange distemper,
suffering from extreme oppression and pain of the
heart and breast, and the prescriptions of none of the
very best physicians proving of any avail, he fell
in the course of a few years into a scorbutic and
cachectic state, became tabid, and died. This patient
only received some little relief when the whole of his
chest was pummelled or kneaded by a strong man, as

229

WILLIAM HARVEY

a. baker kneads dough. (^His friends thought him
poisoned by some maleficent influence or possessed
with an evil spirit. His jugular arteries enlarged
to the size of a thumb, looked like the aorta itself,
or they were as large as the descending aorta : they
had pulsated violently and appeared like two long
aneurysms. These symptons had led to trying the
affects of arteriotomy in the temples, but with no
relief. [ In the dead body I found the heart and
aorta so much gorged and distended with blood that
the cavities of the ventricles equalled those of a
bullock's heart in size. Such is the force of the blood
pent up, and such are the effects of its impulse." )

His letters show that Harvey was employed almost
to the end of his life in devising fresh experiments in
proof of the circulation of the blood. Thus, in a
letter addressed to Paul Marquard Slegel, and dated
London, this 26th of March, 165 1, Harvey writes:
" It may be well here to relate an experiment which
I lately tried in the presence of several of my col-
leagues. . , . Having tied the pulmonary artery, the
pulmonary veins, and the aorta, in the body of a man
who had been hanged, and then opened the left
ventricle of the heart, we passed a tube through the
vena cava into the right ventricle of the heart, and

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HARVEY'S ANATOMICAL WORKS

having at the same time attached an ox's bladder to the
tube, in the same way as a clyster-bag is usually made, we
filled it nearly full of warm water and forcibly injected
the fluid into the heart, so that the greater part of a
pound of water was thrown into the right auricle and
ventricle. The result was that the right ventricle and
auricle were enormously distended, but not a drop of
water or of blood made its escape through the orifice in
the left ventricle. The ligatures having been undone,
the same tube was passed into the pulmonary artery and
a tight ligature having been put round it to prevent
any reflux into the right ventricle, the water in the
bladder was now pushed towards the lungs, upon
which a torrent of the fluid, mixed with a quantity of
blood, immediately gushed forth from the perforation
in the left ventricle: so that a quantity of water,
equal to that which was pressed from the bladder into
the lungs at each efibrt, instantly escaped by the
perforation mentioned. You may try this experiment
as often as you please : the result you will still find to
be as I have stated it."

The exact teaching of Harvey's contemporaries in
London is easily accessible. One of his distinguished
colleagues at the College of Physicians was Alexander
Reid, son of the first minister of Banchory, near

231

WILLIAM HARVEY

Aberdeen, brother of Thomas Reid, Secretary for
Latin and Greek to King James I. Reid was born
about 1586, learnt Surgery in France, was admitted a
Fellow of the College of Physicians in 1624, ^^^
was appointed Lecturer on Anatomy at the Barber
Surgeons' Hall December 28, 1628, in succession to
Dr. Andrewes, Harvey's assistant. Reid, eight years
younger than Harvey, lectured at an annual stipend
of ^20 on every Tuesday throughout the year
from 1628 to 1634, when he published a tiny
Manual of Anatomy containing the substance of his
lectures. I For some reason Harvey's doctrines did not
recommend themselves to Reid, and the Manual there-
fore contains the following traditional account of the
heart.

"As for the heart, the substance of it is compact
and firm, and full of fibres of all sorts. The upper
part is called Basis or Caput : the lower part ConuSy
Mucro or Apex Cordis. When the heart contracteth
itself it is longer, and so the point is drawn from the
head of it. But when it dilateth itself it become th
rounder, the conus being drawn to the basis. About
the basis the fat is. It is covered with a skin which
hardly can be separat[ed]. In moist and cowardly
creatures, it is biggest .... Of all parts of the

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body it is hottest, for it is the wellspring of life, and
by arteries communicateth it to the rest of the body.
The heart hath two motions, Diastole and Systole. In
Diastole, or dilatation of the heart, the conus is drawn
from the basis to draw blood by the cava to the right
ventricle, and air by the arteria venosa [pulmonary
vein] to the left ventricle. In Systole or contraction
the conus is drawn to the basis.

" First, that the vital spirit may be thrust from the
left ventricle of the heart into the aorta.

" Secondly, that the arterial blood may be thrust into
the lungs by arteria venalis [the left auricle].

" Thirdly, that the blood may be pressed to the
lungs, in the right ventricle by vena arterialis [right
auricle].

"The septum so called because it separateth the
right ventricle from the left, is that thick and fleshy
substance set between the two cavities.

" Riolan will have it the matter of the vital blood
to pass through the holes or porosities of it from the
' right to the left ventricle, but that hardly any instru-
ment can show them. First, because they go not
straight, but wreathed. Secondly, because they are
exceeding narrow in the end. He affirmeth that they
are more easily discerned in an ox-heart boiled."

233

WILLIAM HARVEY

It is difficult to realise how any reasonable man
could teach such a farrago of nonsense when he must
have heard Harvey's perfectly simple and clear de-
monstration of the structure and uses of the heart.
Harvey was lecturing on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and
Thursdays ; Reid only lectured on Tuesdays, and
Harvey had especially set himself to controvert the very
errors that Reid was promulgating. But Reid was
perfectly impenitent, for his Manual was reprinted in
1637, in 1638 ; and after his death it appeared again in
1642, 1650, 1653, ^^^ ^658, yet there is no alteration
in his text. He was not even sure of the broad
features of the anatomy of the heart, for he writes :
"The first vessel in the chest is the vena cava or
magna. The second vessel in the breast is vena
arterialis. It is a vein from its office, for it carrieth
natural blood to the lungs by the right side of the
windpipe. It is called an artery because the coat of it
is double, not single. It doth spring from the upper
part of the right ventricle of the heart, and is im-
planted into the substance of the lungs by the right
side of the windpipe."

It seems obvious that this is a perverted description
of the right auricle, and that Reid had no idea of the
pulmonary artery as a distinct structure.

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HARVEY'S ANATOMICAL WORKS

"The third vessel is arteria venalis. It is called
an artery because- it carrieth arterial blood, but a vein
because it hath a single coat as a vein. It ariseth
from the upper part of the left ventricle of the heart,
and is implanted into the substance of the lungs by
the left side of the windpipe."

This in like manner appears to be the left auricle
and the pulmonary veins.

"The vena arterialis hath three valves called sig-
moides from the figure of the great sigma, which
answereth the Latin S, the figure is this, C. They
look from within outwards, to let out the blood but
to hinder the return of the same.

" The arteria venalis hath two valves called mitrales,
because they are like a bishop's mitre. They look
from without inward to let in blood carried from the
vena arterialis. They are bigger than those of vena
cava and have longer filaments and to strengthen them
many fleshy snippets are joined together.

"It hath two valves only that the fuliginous
vapours might the more readily be discharged."

Reid, like all his contemporaries, had a glimmering
of the lesser circulation, for he says : " First the blood
is carried by vena arterialis and from hence to arteria
venalis by sundry anastomoses, and from hence to the

WILLIAM HARVEY

left ventricle of the heart. Where being made spirituous
it is sent by the aorta to impart life to the whole body.

" One thing is to be noted that no air in its proper
substance is carried to the heart ; for the blood con-
tained in these two vessels is sufficiently cooled by the
bronchia passing between them. . . . One thing is to
be noted, that in arteria venosa a little below the
valves there is found a little valve ever open. It being
removed, there appeareth a hole by the which the
blood passeth freely from the vena cava to it and
returneth by reason of this anastomosis that the blood
in the veins may be animate." This is a description
of the foramen ovale and its use.

Such a comparison with the work of a con-
temporary teacher in the same town shows how
immeasurable was the advance made by Harvey. It
only remains to show what has been done since his
death to perfect our knowledge of the heart and of the
circulation. The use of the microscope by Malpighi
in 1 66 1 gave an insight into the true nature of the
porosities by which the blood passed from the terminal
arteries to the commencing veins in the lungs and
proved them to be vessels. The capillary circulation
was still further investigated by Leeuwenhoek in 1674
who described it as it is seen in the web of a frog's

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HARVEY'S ANATOMICAL WORKS

foot, and in other transparent membranes ; Biankaart
in 1676, William Cowper in 1697, and afterwards
Ruysch, studied the arrangement of the capillaries by
means of injection. In 1664 Stenson demonstrated
that the heart was a purely muscular organ./

The various histological details being thus settled
there came a long interval until chemistry was suffi-
ciently advanced to enable definite statements to be
made about the aeration of the blood.

The work of Black in 1757 and of Priestley and
others in 1774 and 1775 at last allowed the process of
respiration and the true function of the lungs to be
explained upon scientific grounds. But the interval
between the discovery of the capillaries and the ex-
planation of the act of respiration was not wholly
barren ; for in 1732 Archdeacon Hales, by means of
experiments, obtained an important insight into the
hydraulics of the circulation. During the present
century our knowledge of the physics of the heart and
circulation has been reduced almost to an exact science
by the labours of the German, French, and Cambridge
schools of physiology under the guidance respectively
of Ludwig, of Chauveau, and of Foster j whilst the
nervous mechanism of the heart and of the arteries has
been thoroughly investigated by Graskell and others.^^

237

CHAPTER IX

The Treatise on Development

T^ULLER, speaking of Harvey, says very ingeni-
A ously : ** The Doctor though living a Bachelor,
may be said to have left three hopeful sons to
posterity : his books,

" I. De circulatione sanguinis, which I may call his
son and heir : the Doctor living to see it at
full age and generally received.

" 2. De generatione, as yet in its minority : but I
assure you growing up apace into public
credit.

"3. De ovo, as yet in the nonage thereof; but in-
fants may be men in due time."^

The treatises on Development are so full of detail
that it is impossible to give an exact notion of their

238

THE TREATISE ON DEVELOPMENT

contents in a popular work. They contain however
certain passages of personal and of general interest
which must not be omitted.

Harvey shows the instinct of a naturalist in the
following account of the cassowary which was not only
new to him, but was unknown to Europe at the time
he wrote. He says : " A certain bird, as large again
as a swan, which the Dutch call a cassowary, was
imported no long time ago from the island of Java in
the East Indies into Holland. Ulysses Aldrovandus
gives a figure of this bird and informs us that it is
called an emu by the Indians. It is not a two-toed
bird like the ostrich but has three toes on each foot,
one of which is furnished with a spur of such length,
strength, and hardness that the creature can easily
kick through a board two fingers' breadth in thick-
ness. The cassowary defends itself by kicking for-
wards. In the body, legs, and thighs it resembles the
ostrich : it has not a broad bill like the ostrich, how-
ever, but one that is rounded and black. On its head
by way of crest it has an orbicular protuberant horn.
It has no tongue and devours everything that is pre-
sented to it — ^stones, coals even though alight, pieces
of glass — ^all without distinction. Its feathers sprout
in pairs from each particular quill and are of a black

WILLIAM HARVEY

colour, short and slender, and approaching to hair or
down in their character. Its wings are very short and
imperfect. The whole aspect of the creature is tru-
culent, and it has numbers of red and blue wattles
longitudinally disposed along the neck.

" This bird remained for more than seven years in
Holland and was then sent among other presents by
the illustrious Maurice Prince of Orange to his Serene
Majesty, our King James, in whose gardens it con-
tinued to live for a period of upvirards of five years."

It has already been shown that Harvey was on a
footing of something like intimacy with his master
the King, whose artistic and scientific tastes are well
known. This fact is again made clear by the follow-
ing passages, in which Harvey followed his usual
custom of showing to the King anything unusually
curious. " I have seen a very small egg covered with
a shell, contained within another larger egg, perfect in
all respects and completely surrounded with a shell.
An egg of this kind Fabricius calls an ovum centen-
nium, and our housewives ascribe it to the cock.
This egg I showed to his Serene Majesty King
Charles, my most gracious master, in the presence ot
many persons. And the same year, in cutting up a
large lemon, I found another perfect but very small

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THE TREATISE ON DEVELOPMENT

lemon included within it, having a yellow rind like
the other, and I hear that the same thing has fre-
quently been seen in Italy." Speaking in another
place of these eggs, he says : " Some eggs too are
larger, others smaller ; a few extremely small. These
in Italy are commonly called centennia, and our country
folks still believe that such eggs are laid by the cock,
and that were they set they would produce basilisks.
* The vulgar,' says Fabricius, * think that this small
egg is the last that will be laid and that it comes as the
hundredth in number, whence the name ; that it has
no yolk, though all the other parts are present — the
chalazae, the albumen, the membranes, and the shell.'
" It was customary with his Serene Majesty, King
Charles, after he had come to man's estate, to take
the diversion of hunting almost every week, both for
the sake of finding relaxation from graver cares and
for his health. The chase was principally the buck
and doe, and no prince in the world had greater herds
of deer, either wandering in freedom through the
wilds and forests or kept in parks and chases for this
purpose. The game, during the three summer months,
was the buck then fat and in season ; and in the
autumn and winter for the same length of time the doe.
This gave me an opportunity of dissecting numbers of

241 R

WILLIAM HARVEY

these animals almost every day during the whole of the
season. ... I had occasion, so often as I desired it,
to examine and study all the parts . . . because
the great prince, whose physician I was, besides
taking much pleasure in such inquiries and not disdain-
ing to bear witness to my discoveries, was pleased in
his kindness and munificence to order me an abundant
supply of these animals, and repeated opportunities of
examining their bodies." Speaking of the first rudi-
ments of the heart, he says : " I have exhibited this
point to his Serene Highness the King, still palpitating.
... It was extremely minute indeed, and without
the advantage of the sun's light falling upon it from
the side, its tremulous motions were not to be
perceived."

The late Sir George Paget published, in 1850, an
autograph letter from Dr. Ward the learned divine and

stout-hearted Royalist, who was master of Sidney Sussex
College, Cambridge, from 1609 to 1643. Both the
letter and Harvey's reply show the interest taken
by King Charles in such scientific curiosities ; but
Harvey's letter is also valuable because the peculiarities
of its writing and annotation led to the discovery
that the manuscript lectures in the British Museum
[pp. 52-69] were in the handwriting of Harvey. It

242

THE TREATISE ON DEVELOPMENT

-/ -r ' .' T

^ ^ • _^,'-' ,_.. .- ' ' '•

musty therefore, be looked upon as the origin of most
of the recently acquired knowledge of the discoverer
of the circulation of the blood, of his methods of
observatiorij, of his readings and of his system oT
arrangement^, ^nd. of verbal exposition.
Dr. Ward's letter is as follows : —

"Sir, — I received your letter by which I under-
stand his Majesty's pleasure that I should send up the
petrified skull, which we have in our College Library,
which accordingly I have done, with the case wherein
we keep it. And I send in this letter both the key of
the case and a note which we have recorded of the
Donor and whence he had it. And so with my
aficctionate prayers and best devotions for the long
life of his sacred Majesty and my service to yourself
I rest

" At Your Command,

"Samuel Ward.
"Sidney College, June lo, Sunday ^^

The address is —

" To his much honoured friend Doctor Harvey one of
his Majesty's Physicians at his house in the Black-
friars be this delivered."

243

WILLIAM HARVEY

The following is Harvey's reply 5 it is written on
the back of Dr. Ward's letter : —

" Mr. Doctor Ward, I have showed to his Majesty
this skull incrustated with stone which I received from
you, and his Majesty wondered at it and looked con-
tent to see so rare a thing. I do now with thanks
return it to you and your College, the same with the
key of the case and the memorial you sent me enclosed
herein, thinking it a kind of sacrilege not to have
returned it to that place where it may for the instruc-
tion of men hereafter be conserved."

The letter and skull have been preserved in a small
ancient cabinet of carved oak, whiclT stands in the
Library of Sidney College. The skull is very
curious. It is that of a young person and is encrusted
with carbonate of lime, which is very hard and com-
pact and is spread over the bone in such a manner as
to resemble a petrification of the soft parts. The
"note of the Donour" states that he was Captain
William Stevens of Rotherhithe, one of the elder
brethren of the Trinity, and that he brought the skull
in 1627 fro^ Crete where it was discovered about ten
yards (circiter passus decem) below the surface of the
ground in digging a well near the town of Candia.

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Harvey's pathological knowledge was sometimes
called into use by the King as in the following case : —
'* A young nobleman, eldest son of the Viscount Mont-
gomery,! when a child, had a severe fall attended with
fracture of the ribs of the left side. The consequence
of this W2LS a suppurating abscess, which went on dis-
charging abundantly for a long time, from an immense
gap in his side : this I had from himself and other
credible persons who were witnesses. Between the
eighteenth and nineteenth years of his age, this young
nobleman having travelled through France and Italy,
came to London, having at this time a very large open
cavity in his side, through which the lungs as it was
believed could both be seen and touched. When this
circumstance was told as something miraculous to his
Serene Majesty King Charles, he straightviray sent me
to wait upon the young man, that I might ascertain
the true state of the case. And what did I find ? A
young man, well grown, of good complexion and
apparently possessed of an excellent constitution, so
that I thought the whole story must be a fable.
Having saluted him according to custom, however,

' Dr. Norman Moore suggests that this young nobleman was possibly
Philip Herbert (d, 1669), son of Philip Herbert, the second son of
Henry, Earl of Pembroke {d, 1648), created Earl of Montgomery
1605-6, and Lord Chamberlain.

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WILLIAM HARVEY

and informed him of the King's expressed desire that
I should wait upon him, he immediately showed me
everything, and laid open his left side for my inspec-
tion, by removing a plate which he wore there by way
of defence against accidental blows and other external
injuries. I found a large open space in the chest, into
which I could readily introduce three of my fingers
and my thumb : which done, I straightway perceived
a certain protuberant fleshy part, affected with an
alternating extrusive and intrusive movement : this
part I touched gently. Amazed with the novelty of
such a state, I examined everything again and again,
and when I had satisfied myself, I saw that it was a
case of old and extensive ulcer, beyond the reach of
art, but brought by a miracle to a kind of cure, the
interior being invested with a membrane and the edges
protected with a tough skin. But the fleshy part
(which I at first sight took for a mass of granulations,
and others had always regarded as a portion of the
lung) from its pulsating motions and the rhythm they
observed with the pulse — when the fingers of one of
my hands were applied to it, those of the other to the
artery at the wrist — as well as from their discordance
with the respiratory movements, I saw was no portion
of the lung that I was handling, but the apex of the

2|6

THE TREATISE ON DEVELOPMENT

heart ! covered over with a layer of fungous flesh by
way of external defence as commonly happens in old
foul ulcers. The servant of this young man was in
the habit daily of cleansing the cavity from its accumu-
lated sordes by means of injections of tepid water : after
which the plate was applied, and with this in its place, the
young man felt adequate to any exercise or expedition,
and in short he led a pleasant life in perfect safety.

" Instead of a verbal answer, therefore, I carried the
young man himself to the King, that his Majesty might
with his own eyes behold this wonderful case : that,
in a man alive and well, he might without detriment
to the individual, observe the movement of the heart,
and with his own hand even touch the ventricles as
they contracted. And his most excellent Majesty, as
well as myself, acknowledged that the heart was with-
out the sense of touch : for the youth never knew
when we touched his heart, except by the sight or
sensation he had through the external integument.

" We also particularly observed the movements of
the heart, viz., that in the diastole it was retracted and
withdrawn : whilst in the systole it emerged and pro-
truded : and the systole of the heart took place at the
moment the diastole or pulse in the wrist was per-
ceived ; to conclude, the heart struck the walls of the

247

WILLIAM HARVEY

chest and became prominent at the time it bounded
upwards and underwent contraction on itself."

Harvey's powers of observation were particularly
brought into play in connection with his experiments
on the development of the chick. He fully appreciated
the method of Zadig, for he says that " different hens
lay eggs that differ much in respect of size and figure,
some habitually lay more oblong, others rounder eggs
that do not differ greatly from one another : and although
I sometimes found diversities in the eggs of the same
fowl, these were still so trifling in amount that they
would have escaped any other than the practised eye
... so that I myself, without much experience, could
readily tell which hen in a small flock had laid a given
egg and that they who have given much attention to
the point of course succeed much better. But that
which we note every day among huntsmen is far more
remarkable : for the more careful keepers who have large
herds of stags or fallow deer under their charge, will
very certainly tell to which herd the horns they find in
the woods or thickets belonged. A stupid and unedu-
cated shepherd, having the charge of a numerous flock
of sheep, has been known to become so familiar with
the physiognomy of each, that if any one had strayed
from the flock though he could not count them, he

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THE TREATISE ON DEVELOPMENT

could still say which one it was, give the particulars as
to where it had been bought or whence it had come.
The master of this man for the sake of trying him,
once selected a particular lamb from among forty others
in the same pen and desired him to carry it to the ewe
which was its dam, which he did forthwith. We
have known huntsmen who having only once seen a
particular stag or his horns or even his print in the
mud (as a lion is known by his claws) have afterwards
been able to distinguish him by the same marks from
every other. Some, too, from the footprints of deer,
seen for the first time, will draw inferences as to the
size and grease and power of the stag which has left
them : saying whether he were full of strength or
weary from having been hunted, and farther whether
the prints are those of a buck or doe. I shall say this
much more, there are some who in hunting, when
there are some forty hounds upon the trace of the
game and all are giving tongue together will never-
theless, and from a distance, tell which dog is at the
head of the pack, which at the tail, which chases on
the hot scent, which is running off at feult, whether
the game is still running or at bay, whether the stag
have run far or have but just been raised from his lair.
And all this amid the din of dogs and men and horns

249

WILLIAM HARVEY

and surrounded by an unknown and gloomy wood.
We should not therefore be greatly surprised when we
see those who have experience telling by what hen
each particular egg in a number has been laid. I wish
there was some equally ready way from the child of
knowing the true father."

The next extract gives a good example of Harvey's
general style. Speaking of the escape of the chicken
from the egg, he says : " Now we must not overlook
a mistake of Fabricius and almost every one else in
regard to this exclusion or birth of the chick. Let
us hear Fabricius.

" * The chick wants air sooner than food, for it has
still some store of nourishment within it : in which
case the chick by his chirping gives a sign to his
mother of the necessity of breaking the shell, which
he himself cannot accomplish by reason of the hard-
ness of the shell and the softness of his beak, to say
nothing of the distance of the shell from the beak and
of the position of the head under the wing. The
chick, nevertheless, is already so strong, and the cavity
in the egg is so ample, and the air contained within it
so abundant, that the breathing becomes free and the
creature can emit the sounds that are proper to it.
These can be readily heard by a bystander, and were

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THE TREATISE ON DEVELOPMENT

recognised both by Pliny and Aristotle, and perchance
have something of the nature of a petition in their
tone. For the hen hearing the chirping of the chick
within, and knowing thereby the necessity of now
breaking the shell in order that the chick may enjoy
the air which has become needful to it, or if you will,
you may say, that desiring to see her dear ofispring,
she breaks the shell with her beak, which is not hard
to do, for the part over the hollow long deprived of
moisture and exposed to the heat of incubation, has
become dry and brittle. The chirping of the chick is
consequently the first and principal indication of the
creature desiring to make its escape and of its requiring
air. This the hen perceives so nicely, that if she
hears the chirping to be low and internal, she straight-
way turns the egg over with her feet, that she may
break the shell at the place whence the voice proceeds
without detriment to the chick.' Hippocrates adds,
* Another indication or reason of the chick's desiring
to escape from the shell, is that when it wants food it
moves vigorously, in search of a larger supply, by
which the membrane around it is torn, and the mother
breaking the shell at the place where she hears the
chick moving most lustily, permits it to escape.'

"All this is stated pleasantly and well by Fabricius ;

251

..■N

WILLIAM HARVEY

but there is nothing of solid reason in the tale. For
I have found by experience that it is the chick himself
and not the hen that breaks open the shell, and this
fact is every way in conformity with reason. For
how else should the eggs which are hatched in dung-
hills and ovens, as in Egypt and other countries, be
broken in due season, where there is no mother pre-
sent to attend to the voice of the supplicating chick
and to bring assistance to the petitioner ? And how
again are the eggs of sea and land tortoises, of fishes,
silkworms, serpents, and even ostriches to be chipped ?
The embryos in these have either no voice with which
they can notify their desire for deliverance, or the eggs
are buried in the sand or slime where no chirping or
noise could be heard. The chick, therefore, is born
spontaneously, and makes its escape from the eggshell
through its own efforts. That this is the case appears
from unquestionable arguments : when the shell is first
chipped the opening is much smaller than accords with
the beak of the mother, but it corresponds exactly to
the size of the bill of the chick, and you may always
see the shell chipped at the same distance from the
extremity of the egg and the broken pieces, especially
those that yield to the first blows, projecting regularly
outwards in the form of a circlet. But as any one on

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THE TREATISE ON DEVELOPMENT

looking at a broken pane of glass can readily determine
whether the force came from without or from within
by the direction of the fragments that still adhere, so in
the chipped egg it is easy to perceive, by the projection
of the pieces around the entire circlet, that the breaking
force comes from within. And I myself, and many
others with me besides, hearing the chick scraping
against the shell with its feet, have actually seen it per-
forate this part with its beak and extend the fracture in a
circle like a coronet. I have further seen the chick raise
up the top of the shell upon its head and remove it.

"We have gone at length into some of these matters,
as thinking that they were not without all speculative
interest, as we shall show by and by. The arguments
of Fabricius are easily answered. For I admit that the
chick produces sounds whilst it is still within the egg,
and these perchance may even have something of the
implorative in their nature : but it does not therefore
follow that the shell is broken by the mother. Neither
is the bill of the chick so soft, nor yet so far from the
shell, that it cannot pierce through its prison walls,
particularly when we see that the shell, for the reasons
assigned, is extremely brittle. Neither does the chick
always keep its head under its wing, so as to be thereby
prevented from breaking the shell, but only when it

253

WILLIAM HARVEY

sleeps or has died. For the creature wakes at intervals
and scrapes, and kicks, and struggles, pressing against
the shell, tearing the investing membranes and chirps
(that this is done whilst petitioning for assistance I
willingly concede), all of which things may readily be
heard by any one who will use his ears. And the
hen, listening attentively, when she hears the chirping
deep within the egg, does not break the shell, but she
turns the egg with her feet, and gives the chick within
another and a more commodious position. But there
is no occasion to suppose that the chick by his chirp-
ing informs his mother of the propriety of breaking
the shell, or seeks deliverance from it ; for very fre-
quently for two days before the exclusion you may
hear the chick chirping within the shell. Neither is
the mother when she turns the egg looking for the
proper place to break it ; but as the child when un-
comfortably laid in his cradle is restless and whimpers
and cries, and his fond mother turns him this way and
that, and rocks him till he is coniposed again, so does
the hen when she hears the chick restless and chirping
within the egg, and feels it, when hatched, moving
uneasily about in the nest, immediately raise herself and
observe that she is not pressing upon it with her
weight, or keeping it too warm, or the like, and then

254

THE TREATISE ON DEVELOPMENT

with her bill and her feet she moves and turns the egg
until the chick within is again at its ease and quiet."

This extract shows that here, as in all Harvey's
work there was a union of common sense, observation,
and experiment which enabled him to overturn with-
out any unkindly feeling the cherished teachings of
his predecessors and contemporaries.

When it was necessary he did not hesitate to experi-
ment upon himself, for he says : " I have myself, for
experiment's sake, occasionally pricked my hand with
a clean needle, and then having rubbed the same
needle on the teeth of a spider, I have pricked my
hand in another place. I could not by my simple
sensation perceive any difference between the two
punctures : nevertheless there was a capacity in the
skin to distinguish the one from the other ; for the
part pricked by the envenomed needle immediately
contraTcted into a tubercle, and by and by became red,
hot, and inflamed, as if it collected and girded itself up
for a contest with the poison for its overthrow."

The seventy-first essay of the treatise of Develop-
ment is a good example of the mystic or philosophical
side of Harvey's character. The essay is entitled " Of
the innate Heat." It begins, " As frequent mention
is made in the preceding pages of the calidum innatum

255

WILLIAM HARVEY

or innate heat, I have determined to say a few words
here, by way of dessert, both on that subject and on
the humidum primigenium or radical moisture, to
which I am all the more inclined because I observe
that many pride themselves upon the use of these
terms without, as I apprehend, rightly understanding
their meaning. There is, in fact, no occasion for
searching after spirits foreign to or distinct froni the
blood ; to evoke heat from another source ; to bring
gods upon the scene, and to encumber philosophy with
any fanciful conceits. What we are wont to derive
from the stars is in truth produced at home. The
blood is the only calidum innatum or first engendered
animal heat." .

Harvey then proceeds to examine the evidence for a
spirit different from the innate heat, of celestial origin
and nature, a body of perfect simplicity, most subtle,
attenuated, mobile, rapid, lucid, ethereal, participant
in the qualities of the quintessence. Of this spirit
Harvey confesses that " we, for our own parts, who
use our simple senses in studying natural things, have
been unable anywhere to find anything of the sort.
Neither are there any cavities for the production and
preservation of such spirits, either in fact or presumed
by their authors."

256

THE TREATISE ON DEVELOPMENT

Harvey then discusses at some length the Aristotelian
and scholastic views of the word " spirit " and " vital
principle," and in the end arrives at the conclusion
that "the blood, by reason of its admirable pro-
perties and powers, is ' spirit.' It is also celestial ; for
nature, the soul, that which answers to the essence of
the stars is the inmate of the spirit, in other words,
it is something analogous to heaven, the instrument
of heaven, vicarious of heaven. . . . The blood, too,
is the animal heat in so far namely as it is governed
in its actions by the soul ; for it is celestial as sub-
servient to heaven, and divine because it is the instru-
ment of God the great and good.";

Harvey next attacks the doctrine of those who
maintained that nothing composed of the elements can
show powers superior to the forces exercised by these
unless they at the same time partake of some other
and more divine body, and on this ground conceive
the spirits they evoke as constituted partly of the ele-
ments, partly of a certain ethereal and celestial sub-
stance. He observes very pertinently in opposition
to such a train of reasoning : " In the first place you
will scarcely find any elementary body which in acting
does not exceed its proper powers ; air and water, the
winds and the ocean, when they waft navies to either

257 s

WILLIAM HARVEY

India and round this globe, and often by opposite
courses, when they grind, bake, dig, pump, saw
timber, sustain fire, support some things, overwhelm
others, and suffice for an infinite variety of other and
most admirable offices — who shall say that they do
not surpass the power of the elements? In like
manner what does not fire accomplish ? In the kitchen,
in the furnace, in the laboratory, softening, hardening,
melting, subliming, changing, in an infinite variety of
ways ! What shall we say of it when we see iron
itself produced by its agency ? — iron * that breaks the
stubborn soil and shakes the earth with war ' ! Iron
that in the magnet (to which Thales therefore ascribed
a soul) attracts other iron, ^subdues all other things
and seeks besides I know not what inane,' as Pliny
says ; for the steel needle only rubbed with the lode-
stone still steadily points to the great cardinal points ;
and when our clocks constantly indicate the hours of
the day and night, shall we not admit that all of these
partake of something else, and that of a more divine
nature than the elements ? And if in the domain and
rule of nature so many excellent operations are daily
effected, surpassing the powers of the things them-
selves, what shall we not think possible within the
pale and regimen of nature, of which all art is but

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THE TREATISE ON DEVELOPMENT

imitation ? And if, as ministers of man, they effect
such admirable ends, what I ask may we not expect
of them, when they are instruments in the hand of
God?

"We must therefore make the distinction and say,
that whilst no primary agent or prime efficient pro-
duces effects beyond its powers, every instrumental
agent may exceed its own proper powers in action ;
for it acts not merely by its own virtue but by the
virtue of a superior efficient. . . .
. Since the blood acts, then, with forces superior to
the forces of the elements, and exerts its influence
through these forces or virtues and is the instrument
of the Great Workman, no one can ever sufficiently
extol its admirable, its divine faculties.

"In the first place and especially, it is possessed by a
soul which is not only vegetative, but sensitive and
motive also. It penetrates everywhere and is ubiqui-
tous; abstracted, the soul or the life too is gone, so
that the blood does not seem to differ in any respect
from the soul or the life itself (anima) ; at all events
it is to be regarded as the substance whose act is the
soul or the life. Such, I say, is the soul, which is
neither wholly corporeal nor yet wholly incorporeal ;
which is derived in part from abroad and is partly

259

WILLIAM HARVEY

produced at home ; which in one way is part of the
body, but in another is the beginning and cause of all
that is contained in the animal body, viz., nutrition,
sense, and motion, and consequently of life and death
alike ; for whatever is nourished, is itself vivified, and
vice versa. In like manner that which is abundantly
nourished increases ; what is not sufficiently supplied
shrinks ; what is perfectly nourished preserves its
health ; what is not perfectly nourished falls into
disease. The blood therefore, even as the soul, is to
be regarded as the cause and author of youth and old
age, of sleep and waking, and also of respiration.
All the more and especially as the first instrument in
natural things contains the internal moving cause
within itself. It therefore comes to the same thing,
whether we say that the soul and the blood, or the
blood with the soul, or the soul with the blood per-
forms all the acts in the animal organism." A lame
and impotent conclusion which does not advance our
knowledge, though perhaps it was the most plausible
that could be drawn from the premisses at Harvey's
command. Indeed he was himself dissatisfied with
his conception of the vital principle, for in another
essay after a discussion to show that the egg is not the
product of the body of the hen, but is a result of the

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THE TREATISE ON DEVELOPMENT

vital principle, he turns away from the subject with
evident relief to more profitable subjects, and with
the words ^^ Leaving points that are doubtful and
disquisitions bearing upon the general question, we
now approach more definite and obvious matters."

The ideas then prevalent in physical science led him
in like manner to spend much time and thought upon
the unprofitable subject of the primigenial moisture,
and with these speculations the treatise on development
comes to an abrupt end.

The whole essay is an interesting one. It shows us
the range of Harvey's mind filled with the knowledge
of ancient philosophy, but animated by the experi-
mental spirit of modern science. All that the work
contains of observation and experiment is valuable, for
Harvey had made use of his uncommon opportunities
to acquire a knowledge, such as is usually possessed
only by huntsmen and gamekeepers, and has very rarely
been attained by a man of science. Harvey's know-
ledge, as shown in this treatise, may be compared to
that shown by Darwin in his " Variation of Animals
and Plants under Domestication." Harvey tries to
explain his observations in the terms of an existing
philosophy, while Darwin uses his facts to establish
an original hypothesis of his own. We have so

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WILLIAM HARVEY

completely outlived the age of the schoolmen that
it is difficult for us to recognise the bondage ' endured
by so great a mind as Harvey's until we consider it in
the light of Darwin's work. Then we recognise that
the theoretical disquisitions in the treatises on develop-
ment are not so foreign to the true nature of Harvey
as they appear to be at first sight. They are in reality
an illustration of the profound influence of the prevalent
thought of a period upon every contemporary mind,
and show that the most thoughtful and original are
not always the least a£Fected.

We thus take leave of one of the master minds of
the seventeenth century. Harvey's osteological lecture
has not yet been found, and many of his investigations
in comparative anatomy are still wanting. But there
is a possibility that his papers and books were only
dispersed, and were not destroyed at the pillage of his
lodgings in Whitehall. Some of the wreckage is still
cast up from time to time, and we may hope that more
may yet be found. So recently as 1888 Dr. Norman
Moore recognised thirty-five lines of Harvey's hand-
writing on a blank page at the end of the British
Museum copy of Goulston's edition of Galen's
" Opuscula Varia." Here, as in all the other manu-
scripts, the peculiarities of Harvey's writing are too

262

THE TREATISE ON DEVELOPMENT

distinct to leave any doubt of the authorship, ^' Every
fragment of his work is interesting, and even in these
few lines we seem to learn his opinion of artificial
exterior elevation as opposed to the genuine exalta-
tion of worth or learning, for against a passage in
which Galen prefers learning to rank, Harvey has
written "wooden leggs." A fitting testimony from
one who, though he had spent the greater part of
his life at court, was yet the foremost thinker of
his age.

FINIS.

263

APPENDIX

•f-

'i'i;

j! :

< ■

APPENDIX

AUTHORITIES

Chapter I.

" The Genealogy of the Family of Harvey, compiled
from Original Sources," by W. J. Harvey, Esq.,
F.S.A., Scotland, in the "Misc. Geneal. and
Herald." Second Series, 1888-9, vol. iii. pp.

329> 362, 381.
Loftie's " History of London," ed. ii., vol. i.

Willis' "William Harvey," London, 1878.

Fuller's "Worthies of England," folio, 1662.

Sir James Paget's "Records of Harvey," London,

(reprinted) 1887, by the kind permission of Sir

James Paget, Bart., F.R.S.
Walpole's Works, Cunningham's ed. vol. vii., p. 329.

Chapter II.

Prof. Montague Burrows' "Cinque Ports" (Historic
Towns), 1888.

267

APPENDIX

Prof. George Darwin*s " Monuments to Cambridge
Men at the University of Padua.*' Publications
of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, vol. viii.,

1895, pp. 337-347-
Andrich's " De natione Anglica,** Padua, 1892.

Rashdairs '' The Universities of Europe in the Middle

Ages," Oxford, 1895.
The Harveian Orations of Dr. Barclay, Dr. Ogle,

Dr. Johnson, Dr. Charles West, Dr. Pollock,

and Dr. Pye-Smith.
Dr. Munk's "Roll of the College of Physicians,"

ed. ii.
Dr. Moore's Life of Harvey in the " Dictionary of

National Biography."
Register of Marriage Licenses granted by the Bishop

of London — Harleian Society's publications.
Sir James Paget's " Records of Harvey."
Harvey's Works — Sydenham Soc. Ed., London, 1847.
Information given by Prof. Carlo Ferraris, the Rector

magnificus, and by Dr. Gerardi, the Librarian of

the University of Padua, at the request of Prof

Villari and Prof. George Darwrin, F.R.S.

Chapter IIL

South's " Memorials of the Craft of Surgery," Messrs.

Cassell, 1886.
Young's " Annals of the Barber Surgeons' Company."
Holingshed's Chronicle.
Alexander Reid's " Manual of Anatomy."

268

APPENDIX

The Harveian Orations of Sir George Paget, Sir
E. H. Sieveking, Dr. Ogle, Dr. Charles West,
Dr. Chambers, Dr. Johnson, Dr. Pavy, and Dr.
Church.

Harvey's MS. Notes, Messrs. Churchill, London, 1886.

Chapter IV.

Calendar of State Papers — Domestic Series.

Aubrey's "Lives of Eminent Persons," London, 181 3.

Munk's " Roll of the College of Physicians."

Munk's " Notae Harveianae," St. Bartholomew's Hos-
pital Reports, vol. xxiii.

Wadd's " Mems., Maxims, and Memoirs.

Sir James Paget's " Records of Harvey.

Dr. Norman Moore's Life of Harvey in the " Dic-
tionary of National Biography."

Mackay's " Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular De-
lusions."

Upham's " History of Witchcraft and Salem Village."

Young's " Annals of the Barber Surgeons' Company.

Chapter V.

Munk's " Notse Harveianae."

Gardiner's " History of the Great Civil War."

Aveling's " Memorials of Harvey," Messrs. Churchill,

1875.
Highmore's " Corporis Humani Disquisitio ana-

tomica," folio, 1651.

269

APPENDIX

Aubrey's Lives of Eminent PerscMis.
Munk's ** RM of the CoU^e of Physicians."
Brodrick's ** Memoriab of Merton College," Oxford

Historical Society.
Wood's ** Life and Times," Oxford Historical Society's

Edition.
The Han'eian Orations of Dr. Rolleston and Dr.

Andrew.

Chapter VI.

Willis' "William Harvey."

Wood's " Athenae Oxoniensis," Edition 1 72 1

Aubrey's Lives of Eminent Persons.

MacMichael's Life of Harvey in "Lives of British
Physicians."

Munk's " Notae Harveianae " and " Roll of the Col-
lege of Physicians."

Harvey's Works — Sydenham Society's Edition.

Howell's "Epistoiae Ho-Elianae," Ed., J. Jacobs, 1889.

Sir George Paget's " Account of an unpublished Manu-
script of Harvey," London, 1850.

The Lancety vol. ii., 1878, p. 176, and vol. ii., 1883,
p. 706.

Chapter IX.

Brooks, W. K., "William Harvey as an Embryo-
logist," Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletinj vol.
viii., p. 167.

Harvey's Notes on Galen, The Athenaurn^ October,
1888, No. 3180, p. 452.

270

INDEX

Alston, Dr., 157
Ameius Gulielmus, 18
Anatomical demonstrations,
41-46 ; method of con-
ducting, 57-60 ; lectures,
cost of, 45, 46 ; teaching
of Reid compared with
that of Harvey, 232-237 ;
works of Harvey, 188
Anatomy, early teaching of,
39 ; study of, at Cam-
bridge, 1 3 ; value ot com-
parative, 201
Andrewes, Dr., 88, 90, 91,

97, 98, 104, 232 .
Andrich, Dr., 18, 27
Anecdotes of Eliab Harvey,
8 ; William Harvey, 144-
145 ; Sir Charles Scar-
borough, 142
Appearance of Harvey,

Apothecaries' opinions of

Harvey's prescriptions,

74 ; visitations of, 75-79
Aristotle, capillamenta of,

213; Harvey's opinion

of, 68, 72
Armorial bearings of the

Harvey family, 2
Art, Harvey an authority

on, 115
Arteries, course of blood in,

213
Artistarum universitas, 16,

Arundel, Earl of, 1 1 1
Aubrey's first recollection of

Harvey, 130; Harvey's

advice to, 146
Auricle, movement of, 200
Autograph of Harvey in de

Glarges' album, 123
Aveling, Dr., 83
Aylesford, Earls of, their

r«lationship to Harvey, 7

INDEX

Bacon and Harvey, 71

Barber Surgeons Company,

abortive attempt to found

a surgical lectureship,

46; anatomical teaching

at, 39» 40-44* S7-6o;
Reid's lectures at, 47,
231 ; Dr. Scarborough's
lectures at, 142

Barnacle goose, account of,
93, note

Bartholomew's Hospital, see
St. Bartholomew's Hos-
pital

Bass rock, description of,

93
Bathurst, George, 130

Bethune, Dr., 83, 118
Birthplace of William Har-
vey, 4
Bleeding, proof of the cir-
culation from the opera-
tion of, 214, 216
Blood, circulation of, as
described in Lumleian
lectures, 65
Blood, quantity of, 208
Brent, Sir Nathaniel, 134,

138, 139
Breviarium Bartholomei,

215

Broderield, the, 1 1

Browne, Dr. Lancelot, 29

Burmarsh, Harvey's estate

at, 163
Butcher's proof of the cir-
culation, 210

Caius College, Cambridge,

Harvey entered at, 1 2
Caius, Dr., 13, 15
Caldwall, Dr., 46, 47, 48
Calidum innatum, 192,

Cambridge, anatomy at, 1 3 ;
graduation of Harvey at,
14, 27 ; Harvey matricu-
lated at, 12, 21

Canons, Harvey's lecture,
62-64

Capillamenta of Aristotle,
213

Cassowary, Harvey's account
of, 239

Censors of the College of
Physicians, their duties,

75. 76
Centennial eggs, 240

Cesalpino, 213, 217

Chambers, Dr., 83

Charge of the Physician at
St. Bartholomew's Hos-
pital, 35

Charles I., escape of, from
Oxford, 138 ; Harvey
appointed physician to,

272

INDEX

70 ; Harvey's friendship
with, 240-246 ; interest
of, in the pursuits of
Harvey, 240-46

Chick heard in shell, 198,
251 ; reasons for the
escape of from the egg,
250-254

"Christianismi Restitutio,"
207

Circulation of the blood,
account of, 199-202 ;
anatomical proof of, 206,
219 ; butcher's proof of,
210; comparative anatomy
of, 222 ; deduced from
syncope, 210, 218 ; dis-
quisition to Riolanus on,
224 ; formulation of
theory of, 206 ; Harvey's
account of, 190;
Harvey's propositions
about, 207 ; mathematical
proof of, 208 ; proof of,
206 ; proof of from
amount of milk secreted,
211; proof by demonstra-
tion, 221, d'] ; by continu-
ous flow in, 217 ; mathe-
matical, 208 ; from phle-
botomy, 214, 216; from
surgical operation, 214;
theory of enunciated in
Lumleian lectures, 65

Circulator, meaning of term,

74
Civil war, 1 17-140

Clarke, John, Dr., 104
Clavis Mathematica, 161
Cold blooded animals, heart's

movements in, 195-
College of Physicians, ana-
tomical teaching in, 39 ;
attend the funeral of
Harvey, 167 ; Harvey
admitted a member, 29 ;
admitted a Fellow, 31 ;
Harvey's bequests to,
163, 182 ; Harvey's gifts
to, 154-156 ; Harvey
elected censor, 75 ; erect
a statue to Harvey, 155;
Harvey's pointer at, 57,
note; Harvey portraits at,
10 ; leave of absence
granted to Harvey, 81 ;
library rules, 86 ; Lum-
leian lectures at, 45-50 ;
offices held by Harvey,
51, 75, 80, 157, 158 ;
portraits of the Harvey
family at, 10 ; sites of,
50, 51 ; tanned skin
presented to, 103 ; trans-
lation of Harvey's remains
by, 173
Columbus Realdus, 207
Combe, near Croydon, 7

273

INDEX

Comparative anatomy of the
circulation, 222 ; destruc-
tion of Harvey's notes on,
125, 262 ; value of, 202

Concilarius, duties of, 16;
Harvey elected at Padua,
18

Cookseus, Joh., 17

Contemporary estimate of
Harvey, 225

Court physician, 70

Criticism, contemporary of
Harvey, 225

Croydon, 7

Cusa, Cardinal Nicholas de,
2 1 5, note

Cusanus, 215, note

Darcy, Sir Robert, the case

of, 228
Darwin, Prof. George, 19,

20
Davies, Dr., 51
Death mask of Harvey,

167, 175
Demonstration, anatomical

method of conducting,

57-61 ; of Anatomy, 42-

47 ; of the circulation,

221
Derby, Dr. Harvey at, 126
Destruction of Harvey's

papers, 125, 262

Development, treatise on,
89, 238-263 ; introduc-
tion to, 147-154

Diastole, meaning of the
term, 193, note

Diploma, of Harvey, 26

Dunne, William, 51

Eccentricities of Harvey,

144, 145
Edgehill, Harvey at, 1 26
Eggs, centennial, 240
Elect, Harvey chosen, 80 ;

duties of, 80
English nation at Padua, 18
Ent, Dr., 182 ; account of

Harvey, 146-153 ; meets

Harvey at Rome, 1 1 5
Epitaph of Joan Harvey, 5
Estey, George, 1 1
Euclid, Scarborough the

first English editor of,

139

Fabricius Hieronymus, 1 5,
23, 219 ; lectures of, 23 ;

honours paid to, 23

J >

relation of to Harvey, 25,
240, 249-254 ; theatre

of, 23
Fainting, assigned cause of,

214 ; proof of circulation

deduced from, 211, 218

274

INDEX

Ferraris, Prof. Carlo, i8, 19
Finch, Sir H., 7
Floyer, Sir John, 215, note
Folkestone, 3, 5, 11
Footman, the King's, 5
Forster, Richard, 51
Fracastorius* opinion of the

heart's movement, 193
France, Harvey in, 84

Generation, account of

treatise on, 238-263 ;

introduction* to, 147-

1 54 ; treatise on, 89
Gerarde's "Herbal" quoted,

93, note
Germany, Harvey's travels

in, 123
Girardi, Dr., 18
Glarges, Philip de, 123
Glove, Harvey's experiment

with, 196
Gonville Hall, 13
Goose, solan or barnacle

account of, 93, note
Gurgany, John, 137
Guestling, the, 12

Halke, Joane, 3
Halke, Thomas, 3
Hamey, Dr., 157
Harvey, Amye, 9

Harvey, Aubrey's description
of William, 52

Harvey, mortuary chapel,
the, 8, 168

Harvey, Daniel, 6, 143

Harvey, Eliab, 7, 38, 143,
166, 168, 177, 182

Harvey, Sir Eliab, g.c.b.,
anecdote of, 8

Harvey, Elizabeth, 29-3 1

Harvey, Joan, 3-5

Harvey, John, 5, 30, 33,
141

Harvey, Matthew, 9, 141

Harvey, Michael, 9, 141

Harvey, Mrs., 29-31, 141

Harvey, Sarah, 5

Harvey, Thomas, 3-5, 6,
II, 29

Harvey, Walter, i

Harvey, Dr. William, advice
to Aubrey, 146 ; ana-
tomical teaching com-
pared with that of Reid,
23 ^ - ^37 ; anatomical
works of, 188-237 5 *^
art collector, 115; and
Hofmann, 113 ; and Sir
Charles Scarborough,
109, 139, 140, 142 ; and
the Civil War, 1 17-140 ;
and the English school
of Anatomy, 134; and
Willoughby, 1 26 ; anec-

27s

INDEX

dotes of, 144-146;
apothecaries* opinion of,
74 ; appearance of, 52 ;
armorial bearings of, 2 ;
as a literary man, 1 59 ;
at Cambridge, 12, 27 ; at
Padua, 14-27 ; at Padua,
elected councillor, 19

Harvey, Dr. William,
at College of Physicians,
censor, 75 ; demonstra-
tor's rod at, 57, note ;
Elect, 80 ; elected can-
didate, 29 ; elected
Fellow, 3 1 ; elected Con-
cilarius, 158; elected
President, 157 ; leave of
absence granted to, 82 ;
Lumleian lecturer, 51 ;
Lumleian lectures, notes
of, 53-56, 62-69 5 "^^^^^
for library drawn up by,
87 ; Tabulae Harveianae,
68 ; Treasurer, 80

Harvey, William, Dr., at
Court, accompanies King
to Scotland, 92; Physician
in Ordinary to King
Charles I., 70, 87-88;
relation to the King, 89 ;
Physician Extraordinary
to King James I., 70 ;
Senior Physician in
Ordinary, 118 ; at Ox-

ford, 126-140 ; Letters to
Prince Rupert, 130, 131
Harvey, Dr. William,
at Ratisbon, 115 ; at
Rome, 115; at St. Bar-
tholomew's Hospital,
elected physician in
reversion, 32 ; last pay-
ment to, 132, 133 ; re-
tirement from, 132, 133 ;
leave of absence granted
to, 82 ; physician to, 34-
38 ; rules for the govern-
ment of, 96 ; stipend as
physician, 38 ; substitute
appointed for, 90 ; at
Trinity College, Oxford,
1 30; attends Prince Mau-
rice, 131 ; autograph in
de Glarges' album, 123 ;
autopsy on old Parr, 1 1 1 ;
birthplace of, 4 ; builds
library and museum at
College of Physicians,
1 54-1 57 ; burial of, 167 ;
candidate at the College
of Physicians, 29 ; com-
pared with John Hunter,
184-187; complains of
old age, 1 59 ; contempo-
rary criticism of, 225 ; es-
timate of, 1 84-1 87 ; death
of, 1 66; death mask of, 1 67,
175; I debt to Fabricius,

276

INDEX

24, 25 ; demonstrator's
rod at the College of
Physicians 57, note ; de-
struction of his manu-
scripts, 1 24, 262 ; diploma
of, 26 ; dissections by,
S(i ; early life of, 1 1-13 ;
eccentricities of, 144, 145,
146 ; elected consiliarius
at Padua, 18 ; elected
President of College of
Physicians, 157; elected
Warden of Merton, 135 ;
Ent*s account of, 146--
157; entries concerning,
at Padua, 18, 27 ; eulogy
of, 184-187 ; experiments
on himself, 255 ; Fellow
of the College of Phy-
sicians, 31 ; friendship of
Charles I. with, 240-247;
graduates M.D., at Cam-
bridge, 27 ; at Oxford, 1 30;
at Padua, 26 ; Howell's
letter to, 1 60 ; humour
of, 30, 64, 68, 69;
ill practice by, iio; in
London, 28, 31 ; jargon
used by, 56 ; knowledge
of Latin, 14, 18 ; Lanca-
shire witches, 104-109 ;
later years of, 141 ; lec-
ture canons of, 62-64 ;
letters to Prince Rupert,

I44» H5> H^ ; per-
sonal appearance of, 52 ;

physiological advances
since the time of, 237,
238 ; pillage of his lodg-
ings, 124, 262 ; powers of
observation of, 247-254 ;
practice of, 71-75 ; pro-
bate of will of, 1 84 ; pub-
lication of his work, " De
motu sanguinis,** 73 ; re-
ligion of, 55, 187 ; 256-
260 ; remains, treatment
of, 170-175 ; rules drawn
up by, 87 ; treatise on
development by, 238-
242 ; estimate of treatise

277

INDEX

dotes of, 144-146;
apothecaries* opinion of,
74 ; appearance of, 52 ;
armorial bearings of, 2 ;
as a literary man, 1 59 ;
at Cambridge, 12, 27 ; at
Padua, 14-27 ; at Padua,
elected councillor, 19

Harvey, Dr. William,
at College of Physicians,
censor, 75 ; demonstra-
tor's rod at, 57, note ;
Elect, 80 ; elected can-
didate, 29 ; elected
Fellow, 3 1 ; elected Con-
cilarius, 158; elected
President, 157 ; leave of
absence granted to, 82 ;
Lumleian lecturer, 51 ;
Lumleian lectures, notes
of, 53-56, 62-69 ; rules
for library drawn up by,
87 ; Tabulae Harveianae,
68 ; Treasurer, 80

ford, 126-140 ; Letters to
Prince Rupert, 130, 131
Harvey, Dr. William,
at Ratisbon, 115 ; at
Rome, 115 ; at St. Bar-
tholomew's Hospital,
elected physician in
reversion, 32 ; last pay-
ment to, 132, 133 ; re-
tirement from, 132, 133 ;
leave of absence granted
to, 82 ; physician to, 34-
38 ; rules for the govern-
ment of, 96 ; stipend as
physician, 38 ; substitute
appointed for, 90 ; at
Trinity College, Oxford,
1 30; attends Prince Mau-
rice, 131 ; autograph in
de Glarges' album, 123 ;
autopsy on old Parr, 1 1 1 ;
birthplace of, 4 ; builds
library and museum at
College of Physicians,
1 54-1 57 ; burial of, 167 ;
candidate at the College
of Physicians, 29 ; com-
pared with John Hunter,
184-187; complains of
old age, 159; contempo-
rary criticism of, 225 ; es-
timate of, 1 84-1 87; death
of, 1 66 ; death mask of, 167,
175;! debt to Fabricius,

276

INDEX

24, 25 ; demonstrator's
rod at the College of
Physicians 57, note ; de-
struction of his manu-
scripts, 124, 262 ; diploma
of, 26 ; dissections by,
dd ; early life of, 11-13 ;
eccentricities of, 144, 145,
146 ; elected consiliarius
at Padua, 18 ; elected
President of College of
Physicians, 157; elected
Warden of Merton, 135;
Ent*s account of, 146-
157; entries concerning,
at Padua, 18, 27 ; eulogy
of, 184-187 ; experiments
on himself, 255 ; Fellow
of the College of Phy-
sicians, 31 ; friendship of
Charles I. with, 240-247 ;
graduates M.D., at Cam-
bridge, 27 ; at Oxford, 1 30;
at Padua, 26 ; Howell's
letter to, 160 ; humour

of, 3o» 64» 68, 69;
ill practice by, iio; in
London, 28, 31 ; jargon
used by, 56 ; knowledge
of Latin, 14, 18; Lanca-
shire witches, 104-109 ;
later years of, 141 ; lec-
ture canons of, 62-64 ;
letters to Prince Rupert,

I44> H5» 146 ; per-
sonal appearance of, 52 ;
physiological advances
since the time of, 237,
238 ; pillage of his lodg-
ings, 1 24, 262 ; powers of
observation of, 247-254 ;
practice of, 71-75 ; pro-
bate of will of, 1 84 ; pub-
lication of his work, " De
motu sanguinis,** 73 ; re-
ligion of, 55, 187 ; 256-
260 ; remains, treatment
of, 170-175 ; rules drawn
up by, 87 ; treatise on
development by, 238-
242 ; estimate of treatise

277

INDEX

on Generation, 261 ;
resigns the Lumleian
Lectureship, 163 ; similes
used by, 68, 69 ; speech
at Merton College, 135 ;
"stemma** of, 19, 20;
stipend as Court Phy-
sician, 88, 1 1 8-1 2 1 ; as
Physician to St. Bartholo-
mew's Hospital, 38 ; sues
Lumleian trustees, 122;
surgery as well as medi-
cine practised by, 109 ;
translation of remains,
170-175 ; travels with
the Earl of Arundel, 112;
travels with the Duke of
Lennox, 81-87 ; travels
with King Charles, 90 ;
treatise on development,
89 ; will of, 176-184

Hawke, Joane, 3

Hawke, Thomas, 3

Heat, innate, 255

Heart and lungs, connection
of, 201

Heart, mechanism of con-
traction, 196

Heart's movements, experi-
ments concerning, 195 ;
in cold blooded animals,
194, 197 ; Fracastorius'
opinions of, 193 ; simile
for, 200 ; relation of lungs

to, 223 ; Reid's knowledge

of, 232-236
Heberden, Dr., 144
Hempstead, Harvey's burial

at, 168, 169, 170, 175;

mortuary chapel at, 8
Henry HI., death of, i
Hervey, Sir Walter, i
Henrietta Maria, Queen, at

Merton College, 136
Hofmann and Harvey, 113
Hollar's anecdote of Harvey,

114
Holsbosch,Dr.,bequest of,87
Horst, Dr., 1 59
Hospital, see St. Bartholo-
mew's Hospital
Howell's letter to Harvey,

160
Humidum primigenium,

256, 261
Hunter, John, compared

with Harvey, 184-187

Identification of students in
Italy, 17

Innate Heat, 255

Insects, destruction of Har-
vey's notes on, 125; heart
in, 198

Italian Universities, 14-16

Italy, identification of stu-
dents in, 17

278

INDEX

James I., Harvey appointed

physician to, 70
Jargon used by Harvey in

his notes, 56
Jenkin, Juliana, 3
Jen kin, William, 3
Juristarum, universitas, 16,

King's footman, 5
King's turnspit, 6

Lancashire Witches, story

of, 104-109
Lecture, anatomical import-
ance of, 58
Lectures, Lumleian, 39-69
Lectures, notes of Harvey's

Lumleian, 53-69
Lennox, Duke of, 81
Library, rules for use of, 87
Li nacre, 50
Lineage of Harvey, i
Listerus, Josephus, 17, 26
Literature, Harvey's love

for, 160
Lock Hospitals, 99, note
London, Harvey settles in,

•28, 31
Lumlcy, Lord, 47

Lumley, Lord, heirs of, sued

by Harvey, 122
Lumleian lecturer, Harvey

appointed, 51
Lumleian lectures, 39-69
Lumleian lecturers, early,

Lumleian lectures, founda-
tion of, 46, 47

Lumleian lectures, schemes
of, 48-50

Lumleian lectureship re-
signed by Harvey, 163

Lumleian trustees sued by
Harvey, 122

Lungs, circulation in, 204

Lungs and heart, connection
of, 201

Lungs, relation of heart to,
223

Lungs, use of, 204

Magistral universities, 16
Mantuan war, Harvey's de-
scription of the results of,

85,

Marriage of Harvey, 29

Mathematical proof of cir-
culation, 208

Matriculation, Harvey's, at
Cambridge, 12 ; at Pa-
dua, 17

Maurice, Prince, 131, 138

279

Merton College, Harvey at,
134-140 ; marriages at,
during royalist occupa-
tion, IJ7 i Queen Hen-
rietta at, 1 36
Micttlethwaite, Sir John, 133
Midwifery, practical know-
ledge of, possessed by
Harvey, no, 116
Milk, proof of circulation

from secretion oij Zll
Mirfield. John of, 216
M<esler, Dr. Adam, 83
Moore, Dr. Norman, 36,

53, ai 5, 261
Moisture the printigenial,

Muscular lecture, 67

N
Nardi, Dr^ 160, 161
Nottingham, the first Earl

of, 7
Nuremberg, Harvey at, 113

O'Birne, Mr., anecdote of, 8
Observation, Harvey's
powers of, 247
. Oxford, surrender of, 138
Oxford, Harvey at, 1 16-140
Oughtred's "Clavis Mathe-

Old Parr, 1 1 1

Padua, celebration at, 19 ;
diploma granted to Har-
vey, 16 ; election of rector
at, XI ; entries concern-
ing Harvey at, 18, 17 ;
nations at, 18 ; the Uni-
versities at, 14-17

Padua University, life at,
ai-23 ; why selected by
Harvey, i;

Paget, Sir George, 69, 242

Paget, Sir Jame&, J

Parr, Old, 1 1 1

Paris, Harvey in, 84

Parrot, Mrs. Harvey's, 30

Pachological observations by
Harvey 227 245

Pcpperer,WalterHarveya,I

Pepys, Mr., attends an ana-
tomical lecture, 44

Perfusion experiment, (97

Perquisites of Court Phy-
sicians, 118-119, III

Phlebotomy, proofs of the
circulation from, 214,216

Physicians, College of, sre
College of Physicians

Physicians, their relation to
Surgeons, 100, loi

Physiolo^cal advances since
the time of Harvey, 2j6

Pigeon, experiment vvith
heart of, 197

INDEX

Pillage of Harvey's lodg-
ings, 124, 262

Portraits of the Harvey
family, 10

Prayers used to measure
time, 216

Prescriptions, secrecy at-
taching to, 102, 103

Primrose, James, 80

Primrose, Serjeant-Surgeon,

Probate of Harvey's will,

184
Prujean,Dr., 154, 156, 157,

158
Pulmonary circulation, 204

Pulse watch, 2 1 5, note

Ratisbon, Harvey at, 115

Rector of Italian Univer-
sity, honours paid to, 23

Rector of Italian Univer-
sity, election of, 21

Reid, Alexander, 47, 57,

231,237
Religion of Harvey, 55,

187

Richardson, Sir Benj. Ward,

170
Riolanus, treatise to, 224-

230
Roehampton, 5, 7, 166
Rolls Park, 4, 10

Rolls Park portraits, 10
Rome, Harvey at, 115
Rupert, Prince, 130, 131,

138

Royal College of Physicians,
see Physicians, College
of

St. Bartholomew's Hospital
charge to the physician,
35 ; duties of physician,
34-38 ; Harvey appointed
physician, 34 ; Harvey
appointed physician in
reversion, 32 ; physician's
lodgings at, 37 ; rules for
governance of, 96, 99-
103

St. Sepulchre's, Harvey
married at, 29

Scarborough, Sir Charles,
44, 52, 109, 122, 139,
140, 142, 162, 182

Scotland, Harvey in, 92

Scotch nation at Padua, 18

Screopeus, Hen., 17

Scrope, Adrian, treated by
Harvey, 127

Serve tus, 207

Shakespeare's death, 62

Shrimps, heart in, 198

Sieveking, Sir E. H., 53

Silvius, Jacques, 24

INDEX

Skin, human, presented to
College of Physicians,
103

Skull, human, at Sidney
Sussex College, Cam-
bridge, 244

Slegel, Dr., letter to, 230

Smith, Capt., at Edgehill,
129

Smith, Dr. Edward, 82, 90,
91,92, 130, 131, 156

Solan goose, account of, 93,
note

Spider, experiment with
poison of, 255

"Stemma" of Harvey at
Padua, 19, 20

Stipend of Court Physician,
88, 118, 119, 121 ; of
physician to St. Bartholo-
mew's Hospital, 38

Student Universities, 16

Students, identification of,
in Italy, 17

Surgical Lectureship foun-
ded at the Royal College
of Physicians, 48

Surgeons subordinate to
physicians, 100-102

Surgery practised by Harvey,
109 ; proof of circulation
from, 214

Syllabus of Lumleian lec-
tures, 49

Syncope, assigned cause of,

214
Systole, meaning of the

term, 193, note

Tabulae Harveianae, 66

Tearne, Dr., 44

Theatre of Fabricius at Pa-
dua, 23

Thirty Years' War, account
of devastation by, 114

Tight lacing, Harvey's treat-
ment for, 65

Time, measurement of, 215

Turnspit, the King's, 6

Trinity College, Oxford,
Harvey at, 130

Universitas artistarum, 16,

Universitas juristarum, 16,

21, 27
University of Cambridge,

Harvey graduates at, 14,

27 ; Harvey matriculated

at, 12
Universities of Italy, 14
University of Oxford, 1 29-

140
University life at Padua,

H-27
Universities, types of, 16

282

INDEX

Valves in veins, their dis-
covery, 24

Valves, uses of in veins,
219, 220

Veins, course of the blood
in, 2 1 3 ; uses of valves in,
219, 220 ; valves of, their
discovery, 24

Ventricles, movements of,
199

Verney, Sir Edward,
128

Viewing patients, the prac-
tice of. III

Visitation of Apothecaries'
shops, 75-79

Virgil, Harvey's love for,

54
Viae k veld. Dr., Harvey's

letter to, 163

Walpole's anecdote of Eliab

Harvey, 8
Ward, Samuel, Master of

Sidney Sussex College,

Ward, Seth, 162
Watch for the pulse, 2 1 5
Wilkenson, Dr., 34
Will of Harvey, 176
Willoughby, Dr. Percival,

126
Winchelsea and Aylesford,

Earls of, their relationship

to the Harvey femily, 7
Witches, Lancashire, story

of, 104
Wood, Anthony, 138, 142

Y
York, Duke of, 127, 138

Zadig, method of, 248

283

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INDEX

dotes of, 144-146;
apothecaries* opinion of,
74 ; appearance of, 52 ;
armorial bearings of, 2 ;
as a literary man, 1 59 ;
at Cambridge, 12, 27 ; at
Padua, 14-27 ; at Padua,
elected councillor, 19

Harvey, Dr. William,
at College of Physicians,
censor, 75 ; demonstra-
tor's rod at, 57, note ;
Elect, 80 ; elected can-
didate, 29 ; elected
Fellow, 31 ; elected Con-
cilarius, 158; elected
President, 157 ; leave of
absence granted to, 82 ;
Lumleian lecturer, 51 ;
Lumleian lectures, notes
of, 53-56, 62-69 ; rules
for library drawn up by,
87 ; Tabulae Harveianae,
68 ; Treasurer, 80

ford, 126-140 ; Letters to
Prince Rapert, 130, 131
Harvey, Dr. William,
at Ratisbon, 115 ; at
Rome, 115 ; at St. Bar-
tholomew's Hospital,
elected physician in
reversion, 32 ; last pay-
ment to, 132, 133 ; re-
tirement from, 132, 133 ;
leave of absence granted
to, 82 ; physician to, 34-
38 ; rules for the govern-
ment of, 96 ; stipend as
physician, 38 ; substitute
appointed for, 90 ; at
Trinity College, Oxford,
1 30; attends Prince Mau-
rice, 131 ; autograph in
de Glarges' album, 123 ;
autopsy on old Parr, 1 1 1 ;
birthplace of, 4 ; builds
library and museum at
College of Physicians,
154-157 ; burial of, 167;
candidate at the College
of Physicians, 29 ; com-
pared with John Hunter,
184-187; complains of
old age, 159; contempo-
rary criticism of, 225 ; es-
timate of, 1 84-1 87 ; death
of, 1 66 ; death mask of, 1 6jy
175 ; idebt to Fabricius,

276

INDEX

24, 25 ; demonstrator's
rod at the College of
Physicians 57, note ; de-
struction of his manu-
scripts, 124, 262 ; diploma
of, 26 ; dissections by,
66 ; early life of, 11-13 ;
eccentricities of, 144, 145,
146 ; elected consiliarius
at Padua, 18 ; elected
President of College of
Physicians, 157; elected
Warden of Merton, 135;
Ent's account of, 146-
157; entries concerning,
at Padua, 18, 27 ; eulogy
of, 184-187 ; experiments
on himself, 255 ; Fellow
of the College of Phy-
sicians, 31 ; friendship of
Charles I. with, 240-247;
graduates M.D., at Cam-
bridge, 27 ; at Oxford, 1 30;
at Padua, 26 ; Howell's
letter to, 160 ; humour
of, 30, 64, 68, 69;
ill practice by, iio; in
London, 28, 31 ; jargon
used by, 56 ; knowledge
of Latin, 14, 18 ; Lanca-
shire witches, 104-109 ;
later years of, 141 ; lec-
ture canons of, 62-64 >
letters to Prince Rupert,

130, 131 ; liberality of,
24, 38, 86, 154; lineage
of, I ; love for Virgil, 54 ;
marriage of, 29 ; meets
Dr. Ent at Rome, 115;
midwifery, practical
knowledge of, possessed
by, IIO; muscular lec-
ture, d'] ; mystical side of,
255; notes of muscular
lecture, 67-69 ; notes of
visceral lecture, 53-56 ;
opinion of Aristotle, 68 ;
pathological knowledge
of, 228 ; pathological
observations of, 228,
246; peculiarities of,
144, 145, 146; per-
sonal appearance of, 52 ;
physiological advances
since the time of, 237,
238 ; pillage of his lodg-
ings, 1 24, 262 ; powers of
observation of, 247-254 ;
practice of, 71-75 ; pro-
bate of will of, 1 84 ; pub-
lication of his work, " De
motu sanguinis," 73 ; re-
ligion of, 55, 187 ; 256-
260 ; remains, treatment
of, 170-175 ; rules drawn
up by, 87 ; treatise on
development by, 238-
242 ; estimate of treatise

277

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