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:—

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:—

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.”