[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 20d. 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.