The Works of William Harvey M.D.: Translated from the Latin with a life of the authorHarvey, William
Science
The Works of William Harvey M.D.: Translated from the Latin with a life of the author
Harvey, William
Blood -- Circulation -- Early works to 1800; Embryology -- Early works to 1800; Physiology -- Early works to 1800
From the year 1633 Harvey appears to have devoted much of his time to
attendance upon the king and retainers of the court, so that we have
little or no particular information of his movements for several years.
We know, however, from Aubrey, that he accompanied Thomas Howard, Earl
of Arundel, whose physician he was, in his extraordinary embassy to the
emperor, in the year 1636.[15] In the course of this journey, Harvey had
an opportunity of visiting several of the principal cities of Germany,
and of making the acquaintance of many of the leading medical men of the
time. The place of date of one of Harvey’s letters, that namely to
Caspar Hofmann, from Nuremberg, in the month of May, 1636, has not been
noticed; but his presence with the Earl of Arundel at once accounts for
it; and we therefore see that Harvey’s offer to demonstrate to the
distinguished professor of Nuremberg, the anatomical particulars which
made the circulation of the blood a necessary conclusion was no vain
boast, made at a distance, but a substantial proposition in presence of
his opponent, and which there is tradition at least to assure us he was
called upon to fulfil.--Harvey is reported to have made a public
demonstration of his anatomical views at Nuremberg, satisfactory to all
present save Caspar Hofmann himself; to whom, as he still continued to
urge objections, the futile nature of which we in these days can readily
understand, Harvey is further related to have deigned no other answer
than by laying down the scalpel and retiring, conduct which we find in
entire conformity with our estimate of the character of the man.[16]
On his return to England, in the winter of 1636, Harvey must have
resumed his place near the person of the sovereign, and by and by, as in
duty bound, accompanied him on his first hostile expedition into
Scotland in 1639, when matters were happily accommodated between the
King and his Scottish subjects, whom he had driven to take up arms so
righteously in defence of their religious liberties. Harvey, as
physician to the person, may be further presumed to have been with
Charles when he marched towards the Border the following year, so
memorable in the annals of English history, when the war with the Scots
was renewed, when the king’s authority received the first check at the
battle of Newbury, and when Charles, returning to his capital after his
defeat, encountered the still more formidable opposition of the English
Parliament.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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