THE ANATOMICAL EXAMINATION OF THE BODY OF THOMAS PARR, WHO DIED AT THE AGE OF ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-TWO YEARS; MADE BY WILLIAM HARVEY 205 THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF WILLIAM HARVEY, M.D. 212 INDEX 223 AN ANATOMICAL DISQUISITION ON THE MOTION OF THE HEART AND BLOOD IN ANIMALS TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS AND INDOMITABLE PRINCE CHARLES KING OF GREAT BRITAIN, FRANCE, AND IRELAND DEFENDER OF THE FAITH MOST ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCE! The heart of animals is the foundation of their life, the sovereign of everything within them, the sun of their microcosm, that upon which all growth depends, from which all power proceeds. The King, in like manner, is the foundation of his kingdom, the sun of the world around him, the heart of the republic, the fountain whence all power, all grace doth flow. What I have here written of the motions of the heart I am the more emboldened to present to your Majesty, according to the custom of the present age, because almost all things human are done after human examples, and many things in a King are after the pattern of the heart. The knowledge of his heart, therefore, will not be useless to a Prince, as embracing a kind of Divine example of his functions,--and it has still been usual with men to compare small things with great. Here, at all events, best of Princes, placed as you are on the pinnacle of human affairs, you may at once contemplate the prime mover in the body of man, and the emblem of your own sovereign power. Accept therefore, with your wonted clemency, I most humbly beseech you, illustrious Prince, this, my new Treatise on the Heart; you, who are yourself the new light of this age, and indeed its very heart; a Prince abounding in virtue and in grace, and to whom we gladly refer all the blessings which England enjoys, all the pleasure we have in our lives. Your Majesty’s most devoted servant, WILLIAM HARVEY. LONDON, 1628. To his very dear Friend, DOCTOR ARGENT, the excellent and accomplished President of the Royal College of Physicians, and to other learned Physicians, his most esteemed Colleagues. I have already and repeatedly presented you, my learned friends, with my new views of the motion and function of the heart, in my anatomical lectures; but having now for nine years and more confirmed these views by multiplied demonstrations in your presence, illustrated them by arguments, and freed them from the objections of the most learned and skilful anatomists, I at length yield to the requests, I might say entreaties, of many, and here present them for general consideration in this treatise.