Memorials of Harvey : including a letter and autographs in facsimile / collected and edited by J. H. Aveling.

  • James Hobson Aveling
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memorials of Harvey : including a letter and autographs in facsimile / collected and edited by J. H. Aveling. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    of therapeutics] I will give you in one, that was the gieatest Anatomist of his time, and no extraordinary Physician, namely, Dr. William Harvey, whose erroneous judgment was very remarkable in the prescription of a purge foi Esq. Rainton, of Enfield, where the apothecary refraining to prepare more than half the proportion, notwithstanding gave him fourscore stools, which otherwise, according to the Doctor’s measures, must unavoidably have scowered him from the close stool into the other world. The Consult made a great noise, when Dr. Wright, Prudgean, Bates, and others, together with the famed Dr. Harvey were Principals, and one Mr. Farwell, Barrister of the Temple, was Patient and Complainent of a painful disease in his belly, that deprived him of the use of his limbs, strength, appetite and digestion, &c.. the foremen- tioncd Dr. Harvey ingrossed to himself the speaking part, by reason of his extraordinary claim to Anatomy, and which here if any where, seemed to be of use ; after a long contrec- tation of all the abdomen, did very magisterially and positively assert all his symptoms to arise from an Aneurism of an artery, and therefore incurable, as being too remote to come at, wherein all, except Dr. Bates, very readily concur’d, though it was a most absurd offer in opinion, as ever I yet heard. The patient being unwilling to give up his cause so, removed his corpus cum causa to Chelsie, where Sir Theodore Majerne lay bed-ridden at his country-house, who upon no long cxamcn of the matter told him, he was the second, or third patient he had met with diseased in the same kind, and very boldly expressed, he would cure him, but with this incon- venience, that he could throw the cause of the disease either into his arms or legs, according to the choice he would make of those limbs, which he could best spare, or which of ’em might be more or less useful to him, without consulting the will and pleasure of God Almighty, an an'ogancy unheard of, and