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,

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:—

The address is—

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

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.