Harvey, William, 1578-1657; Physicians -- England -- Biography
Charles left Nottingham on the 13th of September, so that it was
probably early in this month that Harvey took the opportunity of
riding over to Derby to see Percival Willoughby, who had been admitted
an extra-licentiate at the College of Physicians on the 20th of
February, 1640-1641. Willoughby says: "There came to my house at
Derby, my honoured good friend Dr. Harvey. We were talking of several
infirmities incident to the womb. He added to my knowledge an infirmity
which he had seen in women, and he gave it the name of a honey-comb
[epithelioma] which he said would cause flooding in women."
A few weeks later Harvey was actually under fire at Edgehill. The
battle took place on the 23rd of October, 1642. All the morning was
spent in collecting the King's troops from their scattered quarters,
and it was not until one o'clock that the royal army descended the
steep hill leading to the wide plain in which stand the village of
Radway and the little town of Kineton. Harvey took charge of the two
Princes, boys of 12 and 10 years old, who afterwards became Charles
II. and James II., and in the course of the morning he probably walked
along the brow of the hill from the inn at Sunrising to the Royalist
headquarters which were placed about a mile further east. Weary with
waiting he and the boys betook themselves to the wide ditch at the
very edge of the hill, and to while away the time Harvey took a book
out of his pocket and read. "But," says Aubrey, "he had not read very
long before the bullet from a great gun grazed the ground near him,
which made him remove his station." As soon as the battle had really
begun, Harvey, we may be sure, was alive and interested, his book was
pocketed and he devoted himself at once to assist the wounded. The very
nature of the wounds would give additional zest to the work for, unless
he was present at the battle of Newburn-on-Tyne, this must have been
his first opportunity of treating gunshot wounds. Anthony Wood in his
account of Adrian Scrope shows that Harvey was no impassive spectator
of the fight, for he says: "This most valiant person, who was son of
Sir Jervais Scrope, did most loyally attend his Majesty at the fight
of Edgehill, where receiving several wounds he was stripped and left
among the dead, as a dead person there, but brought off by his son and
recovered by the immortal Dr. Will. Harvey, who was there but withdrawn
under a hedge with the Prince and Duke while the battle was at its
height. 'Tis reported that this Adrian Scrope received 19 wounds in one
battle in defence of his Majesty's cause, but whether in that fight at
Edgehill I cannot justly say. Sure I am that he was made Knight of the
Bath at the Coronation of King Charles II., An. 1661."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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