CHAPTER II.-SECTION I. HARVEY. HARVEY (William), the immortal discoverer of the Circulation of the Blood, was the eldest son of Thomas Harvey by his second wife Joan Halke, both of Folkestone in Kent, where he was born on the 1st of April, 1578.' Of the parents of Harvey little is known. His father, in our printed accounts, is always designated gentleman,2 and must have been in easy circumstances, inasmuch as, though he had a numerous family, consisting of a daughter by his first wife, and seven sons and two daughters by his second, he was able to start all his sons in life in a manner that implies the possession of considerable wealth. William, the firstborn, adopted the profession of medicine. Five of his brothersThomas, Daniel, Eliab, Michael, and Matthew-were merchants, and not merchants in a small and niggardly 1 The birthday in some of the lives is stated to be the 2nd of April, for no better reason apparently than that All Fools' Day should not lose its character by giving birth to a great man. Harvey, I believe, was born on the 1st of April. 2 In the register of William Harvey's matriculation at Cambridge his father is styled Yeoman Cantianus-Kentish yeoman. 2 way-non tenues et sordidi, as Dr. Lawrence has it in his "Life of Harvey," but of weight and substance -magni et copiosi, trading especially with Turkey and the Levant, then the main channel through which the wealth of the East flowed into Europe. The Harveys were undoubtedly men of consideration in the city of London, and several of them, in the end, became possessed of ample independent fortunes. The son whose name does not appear in the list given above was John, the immediate junior to William. He, too, was a man of note in his day, having been one of the King's receivers for Lincolnshire, having sat as member of parliament for Hythe, and for some time held the office of king's footman,—an office of more dignity than the title, as we apprehend it, might seem to imply. Of the sisters, Sarah died young; of the others nothing is known. 1 Prefixed to the Latin edition of Harvey's Works published by the Royal College of Physicians, in two vols. 4to, 1766. 2 To show the esteem in which the Brothers Harvey were held, I may mention among other things that Ludovic Roberts dedicates his excellent and comprehensive work, entitled "The Merchant's Mapp of Commerce" (Folio, London, 1638), to "The thrice worthy and worshipful William Harvey, Dr. of Physic, John Harvey, Esq., Daniel Harvey, Mercht., Matthew Harvey, Mercht., Brethren, and John Harvey, Mercht., onely sonne to Mr. Thomas Harvey, Mercht., deceased." The dedication is quaint, in the spirit of the times, but full of right-mindedness, respectfulness, and love for his former masters and present friends, in which relations the Harveys stood to Roberts. Thomas Harvey died in 1622, as appears by his monumental tablet in St. Peter-le-Poore's Church, in the city of London. Eliab and Daniel lived rich and respected, the former near Chigwell, co. Essex, the latter at Combe, near Croydon, co. Surrey. Michael Harvey retired to Longford, co. Essex. Matthew Harvey died in London. Great men in many well-authenticated instances have certainly had noble-minded women for their mothers. We have not a word of the period to aid us in estimating the mental and moral constitution of Harvey's father; but the inscription on his mother's monumental tablet in Folkestone Church assures us that she, at least, was a woman of such mark and likelihood, that it was held due to her memory to leave her moral portrait to posterity in these beautiful words, penned, it may be, by her illustrious eldest son :— A.D. 1605, Nov. 8th, died in y° 50th yeere of her age, JOAN, Wife of THO: HARVEY. Mother of 7 Sones & 2 Daughters. A Godly harmles Woman: A chaste loveing Wife: A charitable quiet Neighbour: A co ̃fortable friendly Matron: A provident diligent Huswyfe: A careful te ̃der-harted Mother. Deere to her Husband; Reverensed of her Children; Beloved of her Neighbours; Elected of God. Whose Soule Rest in Heaven, her Body in this Grave: Mural inscriptions may not always be authorities implicitly to be relied on; but we unhesitatingly accept everything as part of our faith that goes to the credit of William Harvey's mother. At ten years of age, Harvey was put to the grammarschool of Canterbury, having, doubtless, already imbibed the rudiments of his English education at home under the eye of his excellent mother, and in some neighbouring school for the young. In the grammarschool of Canterbury he was initiated into a knowledge of the Latin and Greek languages-the routine practice then as now; and there he seems to have remained until he was about fifteen years of age. At sixteen he removed to Caius-Gonvil College, Cambridge,' where he spent from three to four years in the study of classics, dialectics, and physics; such discipline being held specially calculated to fit the mind of the future physician for entering on the study of the difficult science of medicine. At nineteen (1597) he took his degree of B.A. and quitted the University. Cambridge, in Harvey's time, was a school of logic and divinity rather than of physic. Then, even as at the present day, the student of medicine obtained the principal part of his professional education from another than his alma mater. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, France and Italy boasted of medical schools of higher repute than any in Europe; and to one or other of these must the young Englishman who dedicated himself to physic repair, in order to furnish himself with the lore that was indispensable in his vocation. Harvey chose Italy; and Padua, about the year 1598, numbering such men as Hieronymus Fabricius of Aquapendente, Julius Casserius, and Jo. Thomas Minadous among its professors, Harvey's preference of that school was well founded. There it was, under these and other able masters, that Harvey drank in the elementary knowledge which served him as foundation for the Induction that has made his name 1 "Gul. Harvey, Filius Thomæ Harvey, Yeoman Cantianus, ex Oppido Folkston, educatus in Ludo Literario Cantuar.; natus annos 16, admissus pensionarius minor in commeatum scholarium ultimo die Mai, 1593.” (Regist. Coll. Caii Cantab. 1593.) immortal; for we take nothing from his glory when we own that, but for the professional education he received at Padua, Harvey would, in all likelihood, have passed through life, not undistinguished, indeed, but without having his name associated for all time with one of the most admirable and useful inferences ever given to the world—the General Circulation of the Blood. "Our natures are subdued By that we work in, like the Dyer's hand;" and morally and mentally we are what we are in virtue of the constitution we have from our parents, the influence of our surroundings, and the education we receive. Italy should have no jealousy of Harvey as discoverer of the circulation. She it was who fashioned him to that which his happier genius fitted him to become. Thousands of her own children, and the children of other lands, had sat before Harvey on the benches of the Anatomical Theatre of Padua ; hundreds sat with him there; but he alone of all was privileged by partial Nature's fiat to put to interest the lessons of his teachers, to divine the goal to which ever accumulating facts were pointing, and through them to conquer immortality for himself. Having passed four years at Padua, Harvey, then in the twenty-fourth year of his age (1602), obtained his diploma as doctor of physic, with licence to practise and to teach arts and medicine in every land and seat of learning. Having returned to England in the course of the same year, and submitted to the requisite forms, he |