Some recently discovered letters of William Harvey, with other miscellanea / by S. Weir Mitchell ; with a bibliography of Harvey's works by Charles Perry Fisher.
- William Harvey
- Date:
- 1912
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Some recently discovered letters of William Harvey, with other miscellanea / by S. Weir Mitchell ; with a bibliography of Harvey's works by Charles Perry Fisher. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![his collections and scattered papers which he ventures to think were a loss to the republic of letters. Life which had given much had also taken much. It is pleasant to know that he loved the Latin poets and finding occupation and interest in science used his later years to write his great work De Generatione Animalium, and so to leave with us a lesson on the conduct of life and the consoling value of the love of scientific pursuits when the practical day is over and the twilight of life has come. Harvey died in his brother's house on June 3, 1657. It is strange that of this wonderful life so little that is personal is known to us. In fact, almost all that we do know we owe to the gossiping pages of a la3^man, Aubrey. Here we find the only detailed contemporary statement of Harvey's final illness and death. More might have been found in the archives of the college had not these, as I presume, been destroyed in the fire of 1666. Aubrey's account of Harvey's brief illness bears internal evidence of being correct. Sudden deaths were apt however in that da}^ to be explained as due to other than natural agencies. Harvey's death did not escape suspicion as to having been caused by poison self-administered. Aubrey gives a positive denial to the scandall that ran strongly against him (Harvey), viz., that he made himself away, to put himself out of his paine, by opium. ''The scandall aforesaid is from Sir Charles Scar- borough's saying that he (Harvey) had, toward his [51]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21173370_0065.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
