Harvey as a histologist, and certain less familiar facts of his life / [David Fraser Fraser-Harris].

  • David Fraser Fraser-Harris
Date:
[1908]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Harvey as a histologist, and certain less familiar facts of his life / [David Fraser Fraser-Harris]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    were agitating Scotland. Harvey was apparently not one of those medical men who can take an interest in a great number of different subjects, such as was Dr Meade or Dr William Hunter in the eighteenth century and Sir James Simpson in our own day. , Harvey’s interests were entirely professional: he studied embryology when Charles and Laud were forcing Episcopacy on Scotland; he read Fabricius on generation during the battle of Edgehill. It has been surmised that Harvey was again in Scotland with King Charles in 1639 and in 1641. It appears that he ivas present at the skirmish of Newburn-on-Tyne in 1640. Aubrey distinctly states that he had charge of the Royal children, afterwards Charles II. and James II., during the battle of Edgehill. Of a second visit of Harvey to Padua (cf. Pye- Smith, Ency. Brit., 9th ed.), viz. in the year 1637, when he is said to have demonstrated the circulation of the blood to Professor Yesling, I can find no corroboration. It is believed that it was during his absence in 1636 with the Earl of Arundel that Harvey sat for his portrait to William van Bemmel at Nuremberg. This portrait is the one in which the heart and arteries are displayed, as in a dissec¬ tion, on the left of the canvas. The painting was engraved at Amsterdam by Houbraken in 1739: it was in Dr Meade’s collection. We are fortunate in possessing several portraits of our great countryman. The best-known is the oil painting by Cornelius Janssen (1590-1665), preserved in the upper library hall of the Royal College of Physicians, Pall Mall East. This portrait, gifted before 1666, represents Harvey as an old man with white hair, seated beside a pillar on his left. It was en¬ graved by Hall. It faces the visitor coming into the room by the chief entrance; it survived the Fire of London. There is a replica of this portrait in the Hunterian Museum in the University of Glasgow; it formed part of Dr William Hunter’s very valuable collection. Janssen is known to have made replicas of many of his works. In the National Portrait Gallery, London, there is the head of an old man catalogued as a portrait of Harvey. This is the vol. v. 4
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