Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Ent, George
ENT, Sir GEORGE, M.D. (1604–1689), physician, son of Josias Ent, a merchant of the Low Countries whom religious persecution had driven into England, was born at Sandwich, Kent, 6 Nov. 1604. He was sent to school at Rotterdam, where James Beckman was his master. In April 1624 he entered at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, graduated B.A. 1627, and M.A. 1631. He then studied for five years at Padua, and graduated M.D. 28 April 1636. In accordance with the custom of that university some pages of verses addressed to him by his friends were published under the title ‘Laureæ Apollinari,’ Padua, 1636. On the back of the title-page, with true Low Country pride, his arms are finely engraved: Sable between three hawk-bells a chevron or; the crest a falcon with bells and the motto an anagram of his name, ‘Genio surget.’ Among the fellow-students who wrote verses to him is John Greaves [q. v.], afterwards Savilian professor of astronomy at Oxford. Ent was incorporated M.D. at Oxford 9 Nov. 1638, and was elected a fellow of the College of Physicians 25 June 1639. He married 10 Feb. 1646 Sarah, daughter of Dr. Meverall [q. v.], treasurer of the College of Physicians. In 1642 Ent was Gulstonian lecturer in the college. He was censor for twenty-two years, registrar 1655–70, president 1670–5, and again in 1682 and 1684. In 1665, after an anatomy lecture at the college in Warwick Lane, at which the king was present, Charles II knighted Ent in the Harveian Museum. Dryden (Epistle to Dr. Charleton) has commemorated the friendship of Harvey and Ent, and Harvey left Ent five pounds to buy a ring. He was one of the original fellows of the Royal Society. His house was in the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, where he died 13 Oct. 1689, and was buried in the church of St. Lawrence Jewry, close to the Guildhall of London.
His works are: 1. ‘Apologia pro circuitione sanguinis,’ London, 1641, of which a second edition was published in 1683. Both editions are dedicated to Sir Theophilus Clinton, earl of Lincoln, and are preceded by an address to Harvey, with laudatory Greek verses by Dr. Baldwin Hamey, and Latin verses by John Greaves. The book defends Harvey's doctrine of the circulation in general, and is a particular reply to Æmylius Parisanus, a Venetian physician. The argument is somewhat too long, but is in excellent Latin, with many happy quotations from Greek and Latin poets. The original manuscript is in the library of the College of Physicians. 2. A dedicatory letter prefixed to Harvey's ‘De generatione animalium,’ 1651. Harvey was inclined to postpone the publication of this book indefinitely for further observations, but Ent persuaded the great physiologist to entrust the manuscript to him, and with the author's leave published it, giving in the dedication to the president and fellows of the College of Physicians a full account of the transaction. 3. ‘ANTIΔIATPIBH sive animadversiones in Malachiæ Thrustoni M.D. Diatribam de respirationis usu primario,’ London, 1679. Thurston in his introduction implies that his work was approved by Ent, which was probably the reason of this careful examination of his several propositions. The book contains a portrait of Ent as an old man in full-bottomed wig and doctor's gown. A collected edition of Ent's works was published at Leyden in 1687.
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. i. 223; Willis's William Harvey, a History of the Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood, 1878; Works; Thurston's De Respiratione, Leyden, 1671.]