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Title: William Harvey
Author: Powers, D'Arcy
Language: English
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Masters of Medicine
Title. Author.
JOHN HUNTER _Stephen Paget_
WILLIAM HARVEY _D'Arcy Power_
EDWARD JENNER _Ernest Hart_
SIR JAMES SIMPSON _H. Laing Gordon_
HERMANN VON HELMHOLTZ _John G. McKendrick_
WILLIAM STOKES _Sir William Stokes_
CLAUDE BERNARD _Michael Foster_
SIR BENJAMIN BRODIE _Timothy Holmes_
THOMAS SYDENHAM _J. F. Payne_
VESALIUS _C. Louis Taylor_
MASTERS
OF
MEDICINE
WILLIAM HARVEY
[Decoration]
[Illustration: MASTERS OF MEDICINE]
[Illustration: _Art Repro. Co.y Ph. Sc._
_Cornelius Jonson_ _Engraved by Hall._
WILLIAM HARVEY.
1578 1657]
WILLIAM HARVEY
BY
D'ARCY POWER, F.S.A.,
F.R.C.S. Eng.
SURGEON TO THE VICTORIA HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN,
CHELSEA
_LONDON_
T. FISHER UNWIN
PATERNOSTER SQUARE
MDCCCXCVII
_Copyright by T. Fisher Unwin, 1897, for Great Britain
and Longmans Green & Co. for the
United States of America_
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
PREFACE
[Decoration]
It 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 Archæological Society has laid me
under 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
[Decoration]
PAGE
I. HARVEY'S LINEAGE 1
II. EARLY LIFE 11
III. THE LUMLEIAN LECTURES 39
IV. THE ZENITH 70
V. THE CIVIL WAR 117
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
I
HARVEY'S LINEAGE
The history of the Harvey family begins with Thomas Harvey, father of
William, the discoverer 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 III. 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.
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 government, 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 discoverer 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 nebulée sable, on
a chief of the last three crosses pattée fitchée; with the crest, a
dexter hand appaumée 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.
Thomas Harvey, the father of William, was born in 1549, and was one of
a 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, 1576-1577, 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 1st 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 Folkestone, 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 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 sones & 2 Daughters.
A Godly harmles Woman: A chaste loveinge Wife:
A Charitable qviet Neighbour: A c[~o]fortable frendly Matron:
A provident diligent Hvswyfe: A carefvll t[-e]der-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--
(1) William, born at Folkestone on the 1st of 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 18th of June, 1591.
(3) John, born at Folkestone on the 12th of 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 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 _turnspit_ 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, 1584-1585.
He married first Elizabeth Exton, about 1613; and, secondly, Elizabeth
Parkhurst, on the 10th 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, 1622-1623, and was buried in St. Peter-le-Poor.
(5) Daniel, also of Laurence Pountney Hill, a Turkey merchant and
member of the Grocers' Company, 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 1619, paid a fine
rather than serve the office of Sheriff of London at some time before
1640, and died on the 10th of September, 1649. He was a churchwarden
of St. Laurence Pountney in 1624-1625, 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' Company, was born at Folkestone on the 26th
of February, 1589-1590. He was the most successful of the merchant
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, 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,
1624-1625, 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 descendants. "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 thousand
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 _Téméraire_ 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. With him the male line of the family 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 from wounds received in the service of King James II.
Michael Harvey died on the 22nd of January, 1642-1643, and is buried in
the church of Great St. Helen's, Bishopsgate.
(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. He married Mary Hatley on
the 15th of December, 1628, and dying on the 21st 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 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 family at Rolls Park (page
4) are now suspended on the left-hand side wall of the hall of the
Royal College of Physicians in Pall Mall. They represent (1) Thomas
Harvey and his seven sons. (2) William Harvey, probably an enlarged
portrait of that in the preceding group. (3) A 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.
II
EARLY LIFE
Very little is known of the early life of William Harvey. His
preliminary education was probably 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 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 £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 effaced 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 transport 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 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 16, 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 observation, his fondness for dissection and his love of
comparative 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 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.
His education, in all probability, had 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 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 fame 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 cheerfully in his
resolve. Padua was the University town of Venice, and the tolerance
which it enjoyed under the protection of the great commercial republic
rendered it a much safer place of residence for a Protestant 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
mediæval cosmopolitanism were elsewhere rapidly passing away.
The Universities of Europe have always been of two 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 offshoot
of Bologna. Hitherto he had received a general education 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 Universitas juristarum and the Universitas
artistarum. The jurists' University was the most important, both in
numbers and in the rank of its students; the artistarum 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."
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 of
the University, which consisted of 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
each 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 sinistrâ, die nonâ
Junii, 1593." [Mr. Henry Scrope, an Englishman, with a birthmark on his
left hand (matriculated), 9 June, 1593.]
"Johannes Cookaeus, anglus, cum cicatrice in articullo medii digiti
die dicta." [John Cook, an Englishman, 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 Englishman, with a little scar
on his right eyebrow (matriculated on the 21st 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 "nation" 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 1600-1601, and a similar entry occurs in 1601-1602. There are
also entries about this person which show that at the usual time of
election, that is to say, on the 1st of August in the years 1600, 1601,
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 office for two
years. He was therefore either elected earlier into the council, or
he was resident in the university for a somewhat longer time than the
majority of the students.
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 symbolical. 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
Cambridge men, but he was unable to find any memorial of Harvey.
Professor Ferraris continued the search, and on the 20th of March,
1893, he wrote to Professor Darwin: "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 disappeared; 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.
[Illustration:
[_To face page 20._
]
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
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, to commemorate 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
conciliarius 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 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 light 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 of the Holy Ghost. The session lasted until the Feast of the
Assumption, on August 15th, 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 (horà 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 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 Harvey'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 warmed
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 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, Fox
[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 examination, and had shown such skill, memory,
and 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 somewhat close relationship
with his Italian friends for some years afterwards as the following
entries appear:--
"1608-9 xxi. julii d. Gulielmus Herui, anglus.
ix-xxx d. Gulielmus Heruy.
30 D. Gulielmus Heruy anglus die xx aug. cons. anglicae electus."
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 when Harvey should have belonged to the humanists. Perhaps
the prestige of the dominant University more than compensated for the
separation from his colleagues 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 members 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. Admission 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 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
Physicians. 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 I. 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 incidentally
mentioned by her husband in the following account of an accomplished
parrot, who was Mrs. Harvey's pet. Through a long life the parrot
maintained 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 cheerfully
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, whilst a gentle movement
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 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 Physicians, June 5, 1607,
and thereupon he sought almost immediately to attach himself to St.
Bartholomew's Hospital.
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 possession. 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
(and others).
"Mr.[1] 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 the
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 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 recommendatory which rendered his
brother's application 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, and
on August 28 in the same year Harvey offered himself to the House
Committee "to execute the office of physician of this house until
Michaelmas next, without any recompense for his pains herein, which
office Mr. Doctor Wilkinson, 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 appointment to an uncontested vacancy. The
House Committee 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 is admitted to the
office of Physician 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 physician 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 God 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 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 of 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 his side on a settle--the apothecary, the
steward, and the matron standing by whilst he wrote his prescriptions
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 maintain the fire in it, Henry III. granted a supply of wood from
the Royal Forest at Windsor. The surgeons 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, 1614, 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,
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 £33 6s. 8d. In 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.
III
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.
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 knowledge, 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 be unnecessary, considering 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 allowing the College
of Physicians to take annually the bodies of six felons executed in
London, Middlesex, 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 differ greatly at the two
institutions, 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, 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 21st 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 Company inviting whom
it chose.
Every effort was made to insure the punctual attendance 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 freeman,
foreigner, or alien stranger, shall come unto 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 sometimes 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 Company,
the heavier was his fine for non-attendance; so that the assistants
of the Company, who corresponded 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 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, 1662-1663: "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. 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 Harvey, whose interest had obtained the
post for him. He seems to have been succeeded by Dr. Christopher Terne,
assistant physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, whose lecture Pepys
heard.
The cost of the lectures and demonstrations was 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 performance 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
1581, two years later, Lord Lumley in conjunction with Dr. Caldwell,
and at his instance, founded 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 whilst he 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 established 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
I. he was made one of the Commissioners for settling the claims at
his coronation. He died April 11, 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
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 amount than that received by the Regius Professors of law,
divinity, and physic, 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; 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 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 Physicians made every effort to fulfil its trust
adequately. Linacre, its founder and first President in 1518, allowed
the Fellows to use the front part of his house--the stone house in
Knightrider Street, consisting of a parlour below and a chamber above,
as a council 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 Institution of the
Surgery lecture the Fellows determined to appropriate the sum of a
hundred pounds out of their 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, 1583-1584, that a capacious theatre should be added to the
College thus enlarged.
Dr. Richard Forster was appointed the first Lumleian 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
accommodation, 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 25th of June, 1614, and its first
meeting in Amen Corner was held on the 23rd of August, 1614. Dr. Davies
died in the following year, and on the 4th of August, 1615, William
Harvey was appointed to the office of Lumleian lecturer, though his
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, 1616, 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
unconsciously 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, 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 Manuscript 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 facsimile 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 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
Anatomie 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
contemplare." 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.
He there shows that he understands it to mean that the finger of God or
nature, for with him they are synonymous terms, is manifest in every
detail of our structure 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 ourselves,
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 of 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 contents so that they show us the exact point which 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 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 [Greek: D].
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 frontispiece showing that the method of
lecturing adopted in England was the same as that in use throughout
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[2] to
indicate the part he mentions, though in many cases the demonstration
was made by a second doctor of medicine known as the demonstrator,
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 points of
difficulty. The audience grouped themselves 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 considerable 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
gentlemen 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 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 see 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._,
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 say: Be pleased to
attend in your Gown only, and if 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.e._, the Council] in the Hall Parlour where every
gentlemen cloathes himself [_i.e._, 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 [_i.e._, 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 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 always 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 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 16, 17, and
18, 1616. On the following Tuesday, April 23rd, Shakespeare died at
Stratford-on-Avon, and on the succeeding Thursday, April 25th, he 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.
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[3]]. 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 physician 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.
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.
11. To serve in their three courses according to the glass (_i.e._,
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 [_i.e._, 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 contents; whilst the third portion is devoted
to a consideration of the head with the brain and its nerves. Only
nine pages of the ninety-eight which the book contains 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 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.
"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
communication 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 displayed 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 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 1619 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 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 Cives, 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 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].
IV
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, 1618, 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 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
Westminster Hall, which ended at the death of Sir Robert Hyde, Lord
Chief Justice. Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, 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 speculative
genius, entirely failed to impress the more practical mind of Harvey,
who would not allow him to be a 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 undermining his authority, Harvey taking
the experimental side actually enhanced his lustre.
The following notice of Harvey's practice is preserved in the Domestic
Series of the State Papers. It is dated the 18th 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. Harvey, to dispense with their stay in
London this winter season, notwithstanding the proclamation. And
accordingly 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, 1627-1628:--
"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 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 contemporaries
took advantage of the double meaning attaching to the word Circulator
which Celsus applies to a merry andrew. 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 remember that as the apothecaries
objected to the 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 contemporary opinion.
Harvey early attained to high office in the College of Physicians, then
but a small body, though it contained 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. The
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 name 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, 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--
MR. G----'S SHOP.
_London Laudanum_ without either colour or smell.
_Oxycroceum_ without saffron.
_Pil. Ruff._ no colour of saffron. [This was a pill largely used as
a preservative against the plague. It contained myrrh, aloes, and
saffron.]
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----'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 word those recommended by Galen in his treatise, [Greek: Peri
Antidotôn]. 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 philosophically 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 in the Dispensatory, being
strong but yet safe. It was especially useful against scurvy,
dropsy, and gout. It consisted of colocynth, scammony, and cloves.]
MR. S----'S SHOP.
_Diascordium_ of a thin body without the gums.
_Mithridate_ 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 complex, 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 this nature, but on
the 3rd of December, 1627, he 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
testimonial. These examinations were conducted at the house of the
President, where, on the 9th of December, 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 family.
In this year Harvey received the commands of the 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 afterwards settled down again into anything
like his old habits. He was nearly fifty-two years of age when, in
September, 1629, the 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 I. 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
resign his office of Treasurer at the College of Physicians, a request
which was immediately granted. On the 21st 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."
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 [physicians 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 Mervyn 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 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 10th 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, 1631, saying: "Blois proved a place not long to be endured by
my Lord because of the plague 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 continually been in good health and intends now to follow
your Lordship's directions this winter for Spain whither we are now
bending our course (_viâ_ Bordeaux) 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 could scarce see
a dog, crow, kite, raven or any other bird, or any thing to anatomise,
only some few miserable 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 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
consolidate 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, perhaps,
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 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]
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 1635. To 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, 1635-1636--"Dr. William Harvey upon his annuity of £300 per
annum £150." 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.
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 fact,
became the personal friend of his king, he accompanied him everywhere,
and consequently took a share in the hunting excursions to which his
Majesty was so devoted.
This constant attendance at Court naturally interfered 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 1632-1623,
"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 poor
as heretofore he hath been, but sometimes doth appoint his deputy
for the same. That therefor 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 Scotland, 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 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 25th
of July, 1634.
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 accustomed 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 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 Scotland, such flights of
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.[4] What I have seen myself, however, I will relate
truthfully.
"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 precipitous 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 screaming and the din too are so
great that you can hardly hear any one speaking close to you. If you
look 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 cliffs are as bright as if they were made of the whitest
chalk; yet the natural colour of the rock is dusky and black. It is
due to a brittle 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, for on this
day, at St. 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 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 convenient.
"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 £33 6s, 8d. for his pains henceforth during the pleasure of
this court.
"And this court, for the long service of the said Dr. 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 considerations
abovesaid), it is thought fit and so granted, that £10 be yearly added
to his salary from Michaelmas last past for and towards the
maintenance of a journeyman 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 £10 in gratuity from this court, and he is
thereupon intreated in respect the hospital hath now two physicians,
that he do not henceforth trouble himself any more to visit or
prescribe to the poor of this hospital."
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.:--
"1. 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 discharged at the end of that time also.
"In use.
"3. That all such are certified by the doctor uncurable, and
scandalous or infectious shall be put out of the said house or to
be sent to an outhouse,[5] 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.
"5. That no Chirurgion, to save himself labour, take in or present
any for the doctor; 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. That 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._, the
Surgeon] himself relate to the Doctor what he conceiveth of the
cure and what he hath done therein. And in a decent and orderly
manner proceed by the Doctor's directions for the good of the poor
and credit of the house.[6]
"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 physic
to the poor without the approbation 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 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.[7]
"13. That every Chirurgion shall follow the direction 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.
"16. That the Apothecary keep secret and do not disclose what the
Doctor prescribeth nor the prescriptions he useth but to such as
in the Doctor's absence may supply his place and that with the
Doctor's approbation.
"Allowed."
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 same day by the order of the
President he made a speech to the Apothecaries persuading them to
conform 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 and was 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 woodcutter living on the borders of Pendle Forest in Lancashire,
played truant and to excuse himself accused Mother Dickenson of being a
witch. The 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 greyhounds 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 inconceivable 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 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 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 midwives 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 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 Chirurgeons 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
followeth, 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 of the
skin without any hollowness or issue for any blood or juice to come
from thence."
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 practising 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 occasionally, 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." 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 contain 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 Briscoe the Apothecary, so the patient
died by ill practice, the fracture being neglected and the Company 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 "viewing" 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
16th 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 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 attended 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 friendship 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
connection with the peace which the Protestant States of Germany had
concluded in 1635. The mission 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 are 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 offering 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 perfectly made blood merely
to find her something to do." Tradition says that Harvey actually
gave this demonstration in public, and that it proved satisfactory
to every one except to Hofmann himself. The old man--then past the
grand climacteric--remained unconvinced, and as he continued to urge
objections Harvey at length threw down his knife and walked out of the
theatre.
We are indebted to Aubrey for the following anecdote, which is probably
more true than some of his other statements about Harvey, for it is
in exact accordance with what we know of his habits. Aubrey says that
one of the Ambassador's gentlemen, Mr. William Hollar--the celebrated
painter--told him that in this voyage "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 remembering
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 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 arrangement, 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; to be
printed or preserved unpublished as Ent should think most fit.
Nothing 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 hath better recovered
his health and strength.
"WILL. HARVEY."
CHAPTER V
THE CIVIL WAR
The life of Harvey, like that of all his contemporaries, 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 Germany, 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 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 Whitehall 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 pleasure is that you give order for the settling a diet
of three dishes of meat a meal, with all incidents 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 culminated in the
destruction of episcopacy and the formation of the Covenant, acts of
rebellion which were assisted by Richelieu in revenge for Charles's
opposition 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 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 commanding 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 18th of June, 1639, and
known as the "Pacification of Berwick,"--and returned to London. The
pacification was not of long duration, but it led to the summoning
of that Parliament whose actions soon showed the more sagacious
politicians 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 Commissioners 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, Tynemouth,
and Shields were occupied, whilst the fortresses 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 disbanded, 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." 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 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 autographs show that he was provided with first-rate
introductions, and that he was apparently a promising student. It would
be difficult, says Dr. 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 Strafford was beheaded. On January 3,
1641-1642, 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 16th 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 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 politicians. 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
on 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 suffered, I here give vent to a sigh. This is the cause of my
sorrow:--Whilst in attendance on His Majesty the King during our late
troubles, and more than civil wars, not only with the permission but
by the command of the Parliament, 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
observations, particularly on the generation of insects, have perished
with detriment, I venture to say, to the republic of letters."
Charles left Nottingham on the 13th 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, 1640-1641. 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 knowledge an infirmity
which he had seen in women, and he gave it the name of a honey-comb
[epithelioma] 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 collecting the King's troops from their scattered quarters,
and it was not until one o'clock that the royal army descended 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 10 years old, who afterwards became Charles
II. and James II., and in the course of the morning he probably walked
along the brow of the hill from the inn at Sunrising to the Royalist
headquarters 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, 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 immortal 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 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 London. Banbury surrendered
on the 27th of October, 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 fame as a scientific man, must have combined to render his
entrance to the most exclusive Common Rooms a matter of ease. In
Oxford he very soon settled down to his accustomed pursuits, 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 professional 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
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 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
farewell."
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 office 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. 1643-1644. 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 fact 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 physicians 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 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 honourable, 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 27th of Jan., 1645, letters were
received from the King, then lodged at Christ Church, reciting that
Sir Nathaniel Brent had absented himself 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, Savilian Professor of Astronomy, and the senior Linacre
lecturer upon anatomy, that he was the person who drew up the petition
against the Warden, and "inveigled 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, including 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 11th,
he addressed the Fellows in a short speech which is still preserved.
The extract from the College register runs:--"Dominus Custos,
Convocatis in Altâ Gaul Sociis, haec verba ad illos fecit. Forsitan
decessores Custodiam Collegii ambiisse, ut exinde sese locupletarent,
se vere longe alio animo nimirum ut College lucro et emolumento potius
foret: simulque socios, ut concordiam amicitiamque inter se colerent
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 forerunners had sought the Wardenship to enrich
themselves, 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 harmonious 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 presented more the appearance of
a Court than of a seat of learning. From 1643 to 1646, when the Queen
was 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 Warden's lodgings were available
for the purpose.
The year 1645-1646, during which Harvey held the office of Warden of
Merton, was long a memorable one in the annals of Oxford. The City was
invested by Fairfax for fifteen days from May 22nd, whilst the King
was at Droitwich. 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 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 off to begin his
wearisome captivity. On May 11, 1646, Oxford was summoned by Fairfax,
and on June 24th it was surrendered 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 which the past three years had left the
University--the colleges impoverished, lectures almost abandoned, many
of the students dispersed and others quite demoralised--"in a word,
scarce the face of an University 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
animals. He was created a Doctor of Physic on June 23, 1646, by virtue
of letters from the Chancellor of the University, 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
Mathematics.
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 affectionate 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 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 off thy
gunning and stay here. I will bring thee into practice." And well he
kept his word, for on the 8th of October, 1649, Dr. 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 mechanical speculations into Anatomy, and applied them
in all his learned conversation, as more particularly in his famous
lectures upon the muscles of the human body for sixteen or seventeen
years 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
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 office was transferred
to Charles Scarborough. In his will, too, Harvey makes affectionate
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 striking 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 Office. 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, 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 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:--
"1761, 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 fancy; 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 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: whilst
most men are learned through others' wits, and under cover of a
different diction and a new arrangement, vaunt themselves on things
that belong to the ancients, thou ever interrogatest Nature herself
concerning 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,
informed 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 omnipotent
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 consummately and
absolutely investigated by an Aristotle or a Galen or some other
mighty name, that nothing could by any possibility be added to
their knowledge. Nature, however, is the best and most faithful
interpreter 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 knowledge 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 discovered
something for the general good, whether led to it by accident or
compelled by necessity, which had been overlooked by more civilised
communities. 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 verisimilitude 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 likewise 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 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 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 admirable 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--a 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.
[Illustration:
[_To face page 152._
FACSIMILE OF WILLIAM HARVEY'S HANDWRITING.]
"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
contributing 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[8] (a thing that is common among our men of letters), I have
taken some pains to prevent the printer committing any very grave
blunders through this--a point which I observe not to have been
sufficiently attended to in the small work[9] of his which lately
appeared. 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 Development in 1651 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, 1651, 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 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 work both for conveniency and
ornament?" This offer 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 prompté gratéque itum est ab omnibus in
suffragia" [the proposition 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.
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 inscription 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 fabrica An. Mdcliii" (This building was begun and
finished in the year 1653, at the 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.
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. Prujean'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 themselves 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 affairs of the College had greatly prospered.
This disinterested counsel had a fitting response, and Harvey's
advice being adopted by general consent, Dr. Prujean was forthwith
re-elected President. 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.
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 1st of February, 1654-1655: "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 fatigues
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 mind--a 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 commentary 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; and I believe it
omits not 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 principio, 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 Jan._"
As a rule it is almost impossible to fix the dates of the "Epistolæ
Ho-Elianæ," 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
1651. 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 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 textbook.
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. He had lived to see his grand
discovery of the circulation 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 prepared 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 Burmarsh in Kent, then valued at £56 a year. The
particular purposes of this donation were the institution of an annual
feast, at which a Latin oration should be spoken in commemoration
of the benefactors 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, 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 our 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
commentary by way of illustration. But it is in vain that you
apply the spur to urge me, at my present age, not mature merely
but declining, to gird myself for any new investigation; for I
now consider myself entitled to my discharge from duty. It will,
however, always be a pleasant sight to see distinguished men like
yourself engaged in this honourable arena. Farewell, most learned
sir, and whatever you do, still love
"Yours, most respectfully,
"WILLIAM HARVEY.
"LONDON, _April 24, 1657_."
CHAPTER VII
HARVEY'S DEATH, BURIAL, AND EULOGY
Harvey died at Roehampton in the house of his brother Eliab 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
apothecary 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 he was stricken, the palsy giving him an easy
passport.
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 requesting them, clothed in their gowns, to attend the
funeral on the following day. In the meantime, Eliab, as his brother's
executor, had decided that Harvey should be buried at Hempstead
in Essex, and accordingly, on the 26th of June, 1657, the 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 was 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 communicating with the chancel
and lighted by three large windows. 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 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 breastplate was broad and the
inscription upon it was in raised letters. The body of the case was
long and 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 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 appliance for making what may
be called a sarcophoscopic 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--a 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 suggestion 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 fall 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 Westminster, 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 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 full 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 architect 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 sarcophagus in the
presence of the President, the Office Bearers, and many Fellows of the
Royal College of 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 corporate 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, by 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 repaired, and was, as far
as possible, restored to its original state, and on this 18th 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 presented 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
before 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 head of
hair is altogether out of character, imaginary and badly executed,
and the drapery 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.
"I, WILLIAM HARVEY, of London, Doctor of Physic, 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
testaments 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 annexed 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 Leicestershire, 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 Lambeth 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 contriving 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 Folkestone 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. Cullen 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 diligence in my
service and sickness twenty pounds. And to Alice Garth, my servant,
ten pounds over and 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 hundred 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 servants 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 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 of 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 continued 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 be paid half yearly at the two
most usual feasts in the year, viz.:--Michaelmas and our Lady day
without any deduction 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 stuff, 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.
"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, 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 Scarborough.
"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 executor, 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 discovery
of the circulation of the blood. Hunter laid the foundation of modern
pathology, not by any 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. Harvey'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 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 knowledge in the hundred years
and more which separated him from Harvey afforded him many additional
data.
Harvey's acquaintance with the literature of medicine 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.
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 facts 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.
CHAPTER VIII
HARVEY'S ANATOMICAL WORKS
Harvey's _liber aureus_ is certainly his "Exercitatio 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 College of Physicians.] The work was issued from the press of
William Fitzer, of Frankfort, in the year 1621. Harvey chose Frankfort
as the place of publication 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
Lumleian 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 communication 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 intimate friends] as well as to the
other learned physicians, his most esteemed colleagues." In this
preface 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 demonstrations 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 says, "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 _à priori_ reasoning with a logical deduction from the
facts 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 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 Leeuwenhoek, 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. It had been maintained 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 fan and cool the
blood, as the lungs fanned and cooled the heart, for the pulse was due
to an active dilatation and contraction 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 an incorrect apprehension of the nature
of heat. It was looked upon as a fundamental principle or entity, and
until chemistry and physics reached the stage of experimental 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 heart must be examined whilst it is
alive; but he says, "I found the task so truly arduous and so full of
difficulties that I was almost tempted to think with Fracastorius that
the movement of the heart was only to be comprehended by God. For I
could neither rightly perceive at first when the systole[10] 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 accomplished 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 observations, 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 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 perchance 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 shell-fish, 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
contraction which occurs in the muscles of the forearm when the fingers
are moved. "The contraction of the heart is therefore of greater
importance than its relaxation. During its contraction the heart
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 dissection of 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 punctured 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 facts enabled Harvey to disprove the current theory that the
heart's systole corresponded with the 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
synchronously 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 movements. 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 ventricles 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." 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 accident, 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: "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 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 incubation, 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 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 conclusions 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 knowledge,
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 storehouse 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 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 suffice at this time, when it
is shown that by the action of the heart the blood 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....
"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 he who, having studied the forms of a single
commonwealth, should set about the composition of a general system 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.
"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 a most logical manner with
the various difficulties in following the course taken by the blood
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
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 concealed 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 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 conveniently
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 by the
glorious eighth chapter, in which Harvey's style, always impressive and
solid, rises into real eloquence, for a great occasion justifies the
use of repetitions, of antitheses and an abundance of metaphors. He now
quits the method of demonstration and experiment for that of indirect
but irrefragable argument. He deals with the quantity of blood 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
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 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 anticipated 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.
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 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 have 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. The facts
are simple and they are easily ascertained. But the reasoning was
absolutely new and the conclusion 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 ventricles which he knew to be well under the average.
This part of his argument is ended with an appeal to practical
experience. "The truth, indeed, presents 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 speedily will the body be
exhausted of its blood during hæmorrhage. Hence also it happens that
in fainting fits and in states of alarm when the heart beats more
languidly and less forcibly, hæmorrhages 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 effectually 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 circulation, that all may come from the meat and drink
consumed, and quote as an illustration the abundant supply of milk in
the mammæ--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 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 compressed 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; but
the obstacle removed, all things immediately return to their natural
state in colour, size, and impulse."
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; 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 [Greek: neura] 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 one of the
commonest pitfalls of defective scholarship.
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 familiar 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 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.[11] 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 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 inappropriately
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 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--a subject upon which his
contemporaries 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 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 offered 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
far, 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 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
proposition will be made sufficiently clear from the valves which are
found in the cavities of the veins themselves, from the uses of these,
and from experiments cognisable by the senses."
Harvey returns again to his anatomical demonstrations 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 anatomists 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 the jugular veins hang downwards,
and are so contrived 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 gravity 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 contrary
movement.... And this I have frequently experienced in my dissections
of the veins: if I attempted 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 from the branches towards
the trunks and roots." He concludes his argument 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 "Conclusion 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 demonstration 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 supplied by the
ingesta, and is much greater than can be required for mere purposes of
nutrition; it is absolutely necessary to conclude that the blood in
the animal body is impelled in a circle, and is in a state of
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 seventeenth 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 putrefaction and do
not preserve their species. 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
the food through the intestines, like a black spot or stain, may be
perceived by the aid of the same magnifying 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 without 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 difference 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 ventricles becomes
apparent. In the altered circumstances 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 Circulation 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 disquisitions 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 with 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 between 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
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 portæ 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 of the contemporary
criticism upon his treatise. "But scarce a day, scarce an hour has
passed since the birthday 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 infant, 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 vivisections, and who scoff 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.
"To return evil speaking with evil speaking, however, 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 conclusive 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--wisdom--to the wicked. Let them go on railing, I say, until
they are weary, if not ashamed."
Amidst a mass of unprofitable speculation, the second Disquisition
contains one or two gems of pathological observation, illustrating
physiological conclusions. 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 contract 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 have expanded in
the manner of bellows through the action of their tunics.
"I have several times opened the breast and pericardium 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
demonstrated 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 distressed, 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 affront 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 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 symptoms 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, 1651, Harvey writes: "It may be well here
to relate an experiment which I lately tried in the presence of several
of my colleagues.... 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 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 effort, 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 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, and 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. For
some reason Harvey's doctrines did not recommend themselves to Reid,
and the Manual therefore 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 _Conus_, _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 becometh 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 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 instrument 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."
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 demonstration 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, and 1658,
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 implanted 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.
"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 sigmoides 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 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 contained 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 contemporary 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 1661 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 foot, and
in other transparent membranes; Blankaart 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 sufficiently advanced to enable definite
statements to be made about the aëration 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 explanation 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; whilst the nervous mechanism of the heart and
of the arteries has been thoroughly investigated by Gaskell and others.
CHAPTER IX
THE TREATISE ON DEVELOPMENT
Fuller, speaking of Harvey, says very ingeniously: "The Doctor though
living a Bachelor, may be said to have left three hopeful sons to
posterity: his books,
"1. 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 infants 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 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 thickness.
The cassowary defends itself by kicking forwards. In the body, legs,
and thighs it resembles the ostrich: it has not a broad bill like the
ostrich, however, 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 presented 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 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
truculent, 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 continued to
live for a period of upwards 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 following
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 centennium, 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 of many persons. And the same year, in
cutting up a large lemon, I found another perfect but very small lemon
included within it, having a yellow rind like the other, and I hear
that the same thing has frequently 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
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 disdaining 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 rudiments 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 must, 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 observation, of his
reading, and of his system of arrangement, and of verbal exposition.
Dr. Ward's letter is as follows:--
"SIR,--I received your letter by which I understand 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 affectionate 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 10, Sunday_."
The address is--
"To his much honoured friend Doctor Harvey one of his Majesty's
Physicians at his house in the Blackfriars be this delivered."
The following is Harvey's reply; 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 content 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 instruction of men hereafter be
conserved."
The letter and skull have been preserved in a small ancient cabinet of
carved oak, which 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 compact 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 from 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.
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 Montgomery,[12] when a child, had a severe fall attended
with fracture of the ribs of the left side. The consequence of this
was a suppurating abscess, which went on discharging 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
straightway 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, 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 inspection,
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 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 accumulated 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 without 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 protruded: and the systole of the heart took place
at the moment the diastole or pulse in the wrist was perceived; to
conclude, the heart struck the walls of the 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 uneducated
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
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 nevertheless, 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 fault, 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 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 hardness 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
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 offspring, 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 straightway 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; 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 present 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 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 perforate 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
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 chirping informs his mother
of the propriety of breaking the shell, or seeks deliverance from it;
for very frequently 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
uncomfortably 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 composed 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 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 without any unkindly feeling the cherished teachings of his
predecessors and contemporaries.
When it was necessary he did not hesitate to experiment 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 contracted 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 Development 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 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 from 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."
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
properties 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 subservient to heaven, and divine because
it is the instrument 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 elements, partly of a certain
ethereal and celestial substance. 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 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 lodestone 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 themselves, what shall we not think possible within the pale
and regimen of nature, of which all art is but 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 produces 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 ubiquitous; 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 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 versâ_. 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 performs
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
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 experimental 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 knowledge, 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 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
development 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 affected.
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 handwriting 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 manuscripts, the
peculiarities of Harvey's writing are too 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 exaltation 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.
_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.
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.
Rashdall's "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 Darwin, F.R.S.
CHAPTER III.
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."
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, 1813.
Munk's "Roll of the College of Physicians."
Munk's "Notæ Harveianæ," St. Bartholomew's Hospital 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 "Dictionary of National
Biography."
Mackay's "Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions."
Upham's "History of Witchcraft and Salem Village."
Young's "Annals of the Barber Surgeons' Company."
CHAPTER V.
Munk's "Notæ Harveianæ."
Gardiner's "History of the Great Civil War."
Aveling's "Memorials of Harvey," Messrs. Churchill, 1875.
Highmore's "Corporis Humani Disquisitio anatomica," folio, 1651.
Aubrey's Lives of Eminent Persons.
Munk's "Roll of the College of Physicians."
Brodrick's "Memorials of Merton College," Oxford Historical Society.
Wood's "Life and Times," Oxford Historical Society's Edition.
The Harveian Orations of Dr. Rolleston and Dr. Andrew.
CHAPTER VI.
Willis' "William Harvey."
Wood's "Athenae Oxoniensis," Edition 1721.
Aubrey's Lives of Eminent Persons.
MacMichael's Life of Harvey in "Lives of British Physicians."
Munk's "Notæ Harveianæ" and "Roll of the College of Physicians."
Harvey's Works--Sydenham Society's Edition.
Howell's "Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ," Ed., J. Jacobs, 1889.
Sir George Paget's "Account of an unpublished Manuscript of Harvey,"
London, 1850.
_The Lancet_, vol. ii., 1878, p. 176, and vol. ii., 1883, p. 706.
CHAPTER IX.
Brooks, W. K., "William Harvey as an Embryologist," _Johns Hopkins
Hospital Bulletin_, vol. viii., p. 167.
Harvey's Notes on Galen, _The Athenæum_, October, 1888, No. 3180, p.
452.
INDEX
A
Alston, Dr., 157
Ameius Gulielmus, 18
Anatomical demonstrations, 41-46;
method of conducting, 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 Cambridge, 13;
value of comparative, 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 Scarborough, 142
Appearance of Harvey, 52
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, 27
Arundel, Earl of, 111
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 relationship to Harvey, 7
B
Bacon and Harvey, 71
Barber Surgeons Company, abortive attempt to found a surgical
lectureship, 46;
anatomical teaching at, 39, 40-44, 57-60;
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 Hospital
Bass rock, description of, 93
Bathurst, George, 130
Bethune, Dr., 83, 118
Birthplace of William Harvey, 4
Bleeding, proof of the circulation from the operation 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, 11
Browne, Dr. Lancelot, 29
Burmarsh, Harvey's estate at, 163
Butchers proof of the circulation, 210
C
Caius College, Cambridge, Harvey entered at, 12
Caius, Dr., 13, 15
Caldwall, Dr., 46, 47, 48
Calidum innatum, 192, 255
Cambridge, anatomy at, 13;
graduation of Harvey at, 14, 27;
Harvey matriculated 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 Hospital, 35
Charles I., escape of, from Oxford, 138;
Harvey appointed physician to,
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;
disquisition 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 demonstration, 221, 67;
by continuous flow in, 217;
mathematical, 208;
from phlebotomy, 214, 216;
from surgical operation, 214;
theory of enunciated in Lumleian lectures, 65
Circulator, meaning of term, 74
Civil war, 117-140
Clarke, John, Dr., 104
Clavis Mathematica, 161
Cold blooded animals, heart's movements in, 195
College of Physicians, anatomical 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;
Lumleian 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;
translation of Harvey's remains by, 173
Columbus Realdus, 207
Combe, near Croydon, 7
Comparative anatomy of the circulation, 222;
destruction of Harvey's notes on, 125, 262;
value of, 202
Concilarius, duties of, 16;
Harvey elected at Padua, 18
Cookæus, Joh., 17
Contemporary estimate of Harvey, 225
Court physician, 70
Criticism, contemporary of Harvey, 225
Croydon, 7
Cusa, Cardinal Nicholas de, 215, _note_
Cusanus, 215, _note_
D
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;
introduction to, 147-154
Diastole, meaning of the term, 193, _note_
Diploma, of Harvey, 26
Dunne, William, 51
E
Eccentricities of Harvey, 144, 145
Edgehill, Harvey at, 126
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, 115
Epitaph of Joan Harvey, 5
Estey, George, 11
Euclid, Scarborough the first English editor of, 139
F
Fabricius Hieronymus, 15, 23, 219;
lectures of, 23;
honours paid to, 23;
relation of to Harvey, 25, 240, 249-254;
theatre of, 23
Fainting, assigned cause of, 214;
proof of circulation deduced from, 211, 218
Ferraris, Prof. Carlo, 18, 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
G
Generation, account of treatise on, 238-263;
introduction to, 147-154;
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
H
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, 29-31
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, 11, 29
Harvey, Walter, 1
Harvey, Dr. William, advice to Aubrey, 146;
anatomical teaching compared with that of Reid, 231-237;
anatomical works of, 188-237;
an art collector, 115;
and Hofmann, 113;
and Sir Charles Scarborough, 109, 139, 140, 142;
and the Civil War, 117-140;
and the English school of Anatomy, 134;
and Willoughby, 126;
anecdotes of, 144-146;
apothecaries' opinion of, 74;
appearance of, 52;
armorial bearings of, 2;
as a literary man, 159;
at Cambridge, 12, 27;
at Padua, 14-27;
at Padua, elected councillor, 19
Harvey, Dr. William, at College of Physicians, censor, 75;
demonstrator's rod at, 57, _note_;
Elect, 80;
elected candidate, 29;
elected Fellow, 31;
elected Concilarius, 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;
Tabulæ Harveianæ, 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 Oxford, 126-140;
Letters to Prince Rupert, 130, 131
Harvey, Dr. William, at Ratisbon, 115;
at Rome, 115;
at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, elected physician in reversion, 32;
last payment to, 132, 133;
retirement from, 132, 133;
leave of absence granted to, 82;
physician to, 34-38;
rules for the government of, 96;
stipend as physician, 38;
substitute appointed for, 90;
at Trinity College, Oxford, 130;
attends Prince Maurice, 131;
autograph in de Glarges' album, 123;
autopsy on old Parr, 111;
birthplace of, 4;
builds library and museum at College of Physicians, 154-157;
burial of, 167;
candidate at the College of Physicians, 29;
compared with John Hunter, 184-187;
complains of old age, 159;
contemporary criticism of, 225;
estimate of, 184-187;
death of, 166;
death mask of, 167, 175;
debt to Fabricius, 24, 25;
demonstrator's rod at the College of Physicians, 57, _note_;
destruction of his manuscripts, 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 Physicians, 31;
friendship of Charles I. with, 240-247;
graduates M.D., at Cambridge, 27;
at Oxford, 130;
at Padua, 26;
Howell's letter to, 160;
humour of, 30, 64, 68, 69;
ill practice by, 110;
in London, 28, 31;
jargon used by, 56;
knowledge of Latin, 14, 18;
Lancashire witches, 104-109;
later years of, 141;
lecture canons of, 62-64;
letters to Prince Rupert, 130, 131;
liberality of, 24, 38, 86, 154;
lineage of, 1;
love for Virgil, 54;
marriage of, 29;
meets Dr. Ent at Rome, 115;
midwifery, practical knowledge of, possessed by, 110;
muscular lecture, 67;
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;
personal appearance of, 52;
physiological advances since the time of, 237, 238;
pillage of his lodgings, 124, 262;
powers of observation of, 247-254;
practice of, 71-75;
probate of will of, 184;
publication of his work, "De motu sanguinis," 73;
religion of, 55, 187; 256-260;
remains, treatment of, 170-175;
rules drawn up by, 87;
treatise on development by, 238-242;
estimate of treatise 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 Physician, 88, 118-121;
as Physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 38;
sues Lumleian trustees, 122;
surgery as well as medicine 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 contraction, 196
Heart's movements, experiments 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 III., death of, 1
Hervey, Sir Walter, 1
Henrietta Maria, Queen, at Merton College, 136
Hofmann and Harvey, 113
Hollar's anecdote of Harvey, 114
Holsbosch, Dr., bequest of, 87
Horst, Dr., 159
Hospital, _see_ St. Bartholomew's Hospital
Howell's letter to Harvey, 160
Humidum primigenium, 256, 261
Hunter, John, compared with Harvey, 184-187
I
Identification of students in Italy, 17
Innate Heat, 255
Insects, destruction of Harvey's notes on, 125;
heart in, 198
Italian Universities, 14-16
Italy, identification of students in, 17
J
James I., Harvey appointed physician to, 70
Jargon used by Harvey in his notes, 56
Jenkin, Juliana, 3
Jenkin, William, 3
Juristarum, universitas, 16, 17
K
King's footman, 5
King's turnspit, 6
L
Lancashire Witches, story of, 104-109
Lecture, anatomical importance of, 58
Lectures, Lumleian, 39-69
Lectures, notes of Harvey's Lumleian, 53-69
Lennox, Duke of, 81
Library, rules for use of, 87
Linacre, 50
Lineage of Harvey, 1
Listerus, Josephus, 17, 26
Literature, Harvey's love for, 160
Lock Hospitals, 99, _note_
London, Harvey settles in, 28, 31
Lumley, Lord, 47
Lumley, Lord, heirs of, sued by Harvey, 122
Lumleian lecturer, Harvey appointed, 51
Lumleian lectures, 39-69
Lumleian lecturers, early, 51
Lumleian lectures, foundation of, 46, 47
Lumleian lectures, schemes of, 48-50
Lumleian lectureship resigned 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
M
Magistral universities, 16
Mantuan war, Harvey's description of the results of, 85
Marriage of Harvey, 29
Mathematical proof of circulation, 208
Matriculation, Harvey's, at Cambridge, 12;
at Padua, 17
Maurice, Prince, 131, 138
Merton College, Harvey at, 134-140;
marriages at, during royalist occupation, 137;
Queen Henrietta at, 136
Micklethwaite, Sir John, 133
Midwifery, practical knowledge of, possessed by Harvey, 110, 126
Milk, proof of circulation from secretion of, 211
Mirfield, John of, 216
Moesler, Dr. Adam, 83
Moore, Dr. Norman, 36, 53, 215, 262
Moisture the primigenial, 256, 261
Muscular lecture, 67
N
Nardi, Dr., 160, 161
Nottingham, the first Earl of, 7
Nuremberg, Harvey at, 113
O
O'Birne, Mr., anecdote of, 8
Observation, Harvey's powers of, 247
Oxford, surrender of, 138
Oxford, Harvey at, 126-140
Oughtred's "Clavis Mathematica," 162
Old Parr, 111
P
Padua, celebration at, 19;
diploma granted to Harvey, 26;
election of rector at, 21;
entries concerning Harvey at, 18, 27;
nations at, 18;
the Universities at, 14-27
Padua University, life at, 21-23;
why selected by Harvey, 15
Paget, Sir George, 69, 242
Paget, Sir James, 5
Parr, Old, 111
Paris, Harvey in, 84
Parrot, Mrs. Harvey's, 30
Pathological observations by Harvey, 227, 245
Pepperer, Walter Harvey a, 1
Pepys, Mr., attends an anatomical lecture, 44
Perfusion experiment, 197
Perquisites of Court Physicians, 118-119, 121
Phlebotomy, proofs of the circulation from, 214, 216
Physicians, College of, _see_ College of Physicians
Physicians, their relation to Surgeons, 100, 101
Physiological advances since the time of Harvey, 236
Pigeon, experiment with heart of, 197
Pillage of Harvey's lodgings, 124, 262
Portraits of the Harvey family, 10
Prayers used to measure time, 216
Prescriptions, secrecy attaching to, 102, 103
Primrose, James, 80
Primrose, Serjeant-Surgeon, 83
Probate of Harvey's will,184
Prujean, Dr., 154, 156, 157,158
Pulmonary circulation, 204
Pulse watch, 215, _note_
R
Ratisbon, Harvey at, 115
Rector of Italian University, honours paid to, 23
Rector of Italian University, 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
S
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
Servetus, 207
Shakespeare's death, 62
Shrimps, heart in, 198
Sieveking, Sir E. H., 53
Silvius, Jacques, 24
Skin, human, presented to College of Physicians, 103
Skull, human, at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, 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. Bartholomew's Hospital, 38
Student Universities, 16
Students, identification of, in Italy, 17
Surgical Lectureship founded 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 lectures, 49
Syncope, assigned cause of, 214
Systole, meaning of the term, 193, _note_
T
Tabulæ Harveianæ, 66
Tearne, Dr., 44
Theatre of Fabricius at Padua, 23
Thirty Years' War, account of devastation by, 114
Tight lacing, Harvey's treatment for, 65
Time, measurement of, 215
Turnspit, the King's, 6
Trinity College, Oxford, Harvey at, 130
U
Universitas artistarum, 16, 27
Universitas juristarum, 16, 21, 27
University of Cambridge, Harvey graduates at, 14, 27;
Harvey matriculated at, 12
Universities of Italy, 14
University of Oxford, 129-140
University life at Padua, 14-27
Universities, types of, 16
V
Valves in veins, their discovery, 24
Valves, uses of in veins, 219, 220
Veins, course of the blood in, 213;
uses of valves in, 219, 220;
valves of, their discovery, 24
Ventricles, movements of, 199
Verney, Sir Edward, 128
Viewing patients, the practice of, 111
Visitation of Apothecaries' shops, 75-79
Virgil, Harvey's love for, 54
Vlackveld, Dr., Harvey's letter to, 163
W
Walpole's anecdote of Eliab Harvey, 8
Ward, Samuel, Master of Sidney Sussex College, 243
Ward, Seth, 162
Watch for the pulse, 215
Wilkenson, Dr., 34
Will of Harvey, 176
Willoughby, Dr. Percival, 126
Winchelsea and Aylesford, Earls of, their relationship to the Harvey
family, 7
Witches, Lancashire, story of, 104
Wood, Anthony, 138, 142
Y
York, Duke of, 127, 138
Z
Zadig, method of, 248
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New Zealand. By R. GARNETT, C.B., LL.D.
6. =RAJAH BROOKE=; the Englishman as Ruler of an Eastern State. By Sir
SPENSER ST. JOHN, G.C.M.G.
7. =ADMIRAL PHILIP=; the Founding of New South Wales. By LOUIS BECKE
and WALTER JEFFERY.
8. =SIR STAMFORD RAFFLES=; England in the Far East. By the Editor.
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] The usual contraction for Magister, indicating his university
degree of Artium Magister or M.A.
[2] 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.
[3] P. 54.
[4] The reference is to the passage in Gerarde's "Herbal," giving an
account 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
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 20_d._ He also quotes the following newspaper cutting:--"SOLAN
GOOSE.--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."
[5] 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 founded
originally as Lazar-houses 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.
[6] This and the two following regulations illustrate in a very
remarkable 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.
[7] 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.
[8] 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., 1895, p. 136.
[9] Perhaps the Essay on the Circulation of the Blood addressed to
Riolanus, published at Cambridge in 1649.
[10] The _systole_ of the heart means its contraction: the _diastole_
of the heart means its dilatation.
[11] 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 Floyer'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.
[12] 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
1605-1606, and Lord Chamberlain.
Transcriber's Notes:
Words surrounded by _ are italicized.
Words surrounded by = are bold.
In this e-text, [~o] represents diacritical mark tilde (~) above the
letter o whereas [-e] represents a straight horizontal line (-) above
the letter e.
Obvious printer's errors have been repaired, other inconsistent
spellings have been kept, including inconsistent use of hyphen (e.g.
"blood-vessels" and "blood vessels"), proper names (e.g. "Micklethwayte"
and "Micklethwaite") and accent (e.g. "Tabulæ" and "tabulae").
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "William Harvey" ***
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