The man who discovered the circulation of the blood / [David Fraser Fraser-Harris].

  • David Fraser Fraser-Harris
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The man who discovered the circulation of the blood / [David Fraser Fraser-Harris]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    on the records of that assembly. With Newton and Carlyle, Harvey is in distinguished company as regards the destruction of manuscripts. William Harvey, the eldest of the nine children (seven sons and two daughters) of Thomas Harvey and Joan Halke, was born at Folke¬ stone on the south coast of England on April 1, 1578. Queen Eliza¬ beth was at this time on the throne. His father was a prosperous yeoman, and in 1600 mayor of Folkestone. The Harvey family had not been a medical one; William was the only son who did not go into business. There still exists a memorial brass to Harvey’s mother in the parish church (St. Mary’s) at Folkestone: she was only fifty years old at the time of her death. From a nephew, Daniel Harvey, are de¬ scended the noble families of Winchelsea and Aylesford. One of William’s brothers was called Eliab; he became a Turkey merchant in London and managed his brother’s affairs; for, like many geniuses, William was “ constitutionally incapable of making a bargain.” Eliab managed his money matters so well that William was always quite comfortably off. One of Eliab’s descendants was Sir Eliab Harvey, G.C.B., who commanded the Temeraire at the battle of Trafalgar. In 1588, when ten years old, Harvey was sent to the King’s School at Canterbury, where he remained five years. It is thus perfectly pos¬ sible that from his home on the English Channel he may have witnessed some of those engagements which led to the overthrow of the Spanish Armada, which occurred in August, 1588. When sixteen years old he entered Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, on May 31, 1593. The entry is still to be seen in the records of that notable seat of medical learning founded by John Keys, the man who introduced into England from Italy the academic study of anatomy and the dissection of the human body as an essential means thereto. Harvey took his B.A. degree in 1597. As Harvey’s father was a man of means, he could afford to send his son to study at the great University of Padua in north Italy, at that time and for long afterwards the most famous of the European schools of medicine. Harvey entered the University of Padua in 1598, and left it as doctor of medicine in 1602. The original of his doctor’s diploma is in a glass case in the library of the Boyal College of Physicians in London. I have had this priceless document in my hand; it is printed in the Latin language on vellum; the margins have been beautifully decorated by some artist in colors which are still perfectly fresh. As an undergraduate, Harvey seems to have been a representative student, for he was elected three years in succession concilarius of the English nation, as it was called. The students at Padua were divided into nations for the purpose of voting for their rector, a system, for instance, only just abolished in the University of St. Andrews, Scot-
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