The Works of William Harvey M.D. William Harvey
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ON THE UTERINE MEMBRANES AND HUMOURS.
OF THE UTERINE MEMBRANES AND HUMOURS.
ANATOMICAL EXAMINATION OF THE BODY OF THOMAS PARR.
THE LIFE OF WILLIAM HARVEY, M.D.
William Harvey, the immortal discoverer of the Circulation of the Blood, was the eldest son of Thomas Harvey and Joan Halke, of Folkstone, in Kent, where he was born on the 1st of April, 1578.[3] Of the parents of Harvey, little is known. His father, in our printed accounts, is generally designated Gentleman,[4] and must have been in easy circumstances; inasmuch as he had a numerous family, consisting of seven sons and two daughters, all the males of which he felt himself competent to launch upon life in courses that imply the possession of money wealth. William, the first-born, adopted the profession of physic. Five of his brothers—Thomas, Daniel, Eliab, Michael, and Matthew—were merchants, and not merchants in a small and niggardly way—non tenues et sordidi, as Dr. Lawrence has it in his Life of Harvey,[5] but of weight and substance—magni et copiosi, trading especially with Turkey or 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 the most ample independent fortunes.[6] 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. Of the two sisters—Sarah died young; of the fate of Anne, or Amy, nothing is known.
Great men seem, in almost all authenticated instances, to have had noble-minded women for their mothers. We have not a word of his age or generation to assist us in forming an estimate of Harvey’s male progenitor; but the inscription on his mother’s monumental tablet, in Folkstone 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, dyed in yᵉ 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 frendly Matron:
A p~ovident 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:
To Her a Happy Advantage: to Hers an Unhappy Loss.”
Epitaphs may not always be authorities implicitly to be relied on; but we unhesitatingly accept of everything to the credit of William Harvey’s mother as a portion of our faith.
At ten years of age, Harvey was put to the grammar school of Canterbury, having, doubtless, already imbibed the rudiments of his English education at home under the eye of his excellent mother. In the grammar school of Canterbury he was, of course, 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 was removed to Caius-Gonvil College, Cambridge,[7] where he spent from three to four years in the study of classics, dialectics, and physics, such discipline being held peculiarly 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 physic obtained the principal part of his medical education from another than his alma mater. In the 16th and 17th centuries, France and Italy boasted 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 profession. Harvey chose Italy; and Padua, about the year 1598, numbering such men as Fabricius of Aquapendente, Julius Casserius, and Jo. Thomas Minadous among its professors, Harvey’s preference of that school was well founded. There, then, it was, under these and other able masters, that our Harvey drank in the elementary knowledge which served him as a foundation for that induction which has made his name immortal; for without detracting from the glory of Harvey, but merely in recognizing the means to an end, we may admit that, but for the lessons of his master, Fabricius, Harvey might have passed through life, not unnoticed, indeed—for such as Harvey was in himself, he must still have been remarkable—but his name unconnected with one of the most admirable and useful inferences ever given to the world.
Having passed five years at Padua, Harvey, then in the twenty-fourth year of his age (1602), finally 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 also received his doctor’s degree from his original University of Cambridge; and then coming to London, and taking to himself a wife in his six and twentieth year, he entered on the practice of his profession.
History is all but silent in regard to the woman of our great anatomist’s choice. We only know that she was the daughter of a physician of the day, Dr. Lancelot Browne, and that Harvey’s union with her proved childless. He himself mentions his wife incidentally as having a remarkable pet parrot, which must also, if we may infer so much from the pains he takes in specifying its various habits and accomplishments, have been a particular favorite of his own.[8]
In 1604, Harvey joined the College of Physicians, his name appearing on the roll of candidates for the fellowship