Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Havers, Clopton
HAVERS, CLOPTON (d. 1702), physician and anatomist, son of a clergyman, Henry Havers, was born probably between 1650 and 1660. He studied at Catharine Hall, Cambridge, but left the university without taking any degree. He was admitted extra-licentiate of the College of Physicians of London on 28 July 1684, took the degree of M.D. at Utrecht 3 July 1685, and was admitted licentiate of the College of Physicians on 22 Dec. 1687, after which he practised in London, apparently in the city. Besides his medical practice, Havers occupied himself with anatomy, and was admitted fellow of the Royal Society on 15 Dec. 1686. He was cut off in middle life by a malignant fever in April 1702, and was buried at Willingale Doe, Essex, leaving a widow and children.
Havers's chief anatomical work, ‘Osteologia Nova, or some new Observations of the Bones and the parts belonging to them,’ was communicated to the Royal Society in several discourses, and printed in octavo, London, 1691. It was a work of considerable importance in its day, and gave the first minute account of the structure of bone. The celebrated Baglivi made use of it in his competitive lecture for the professorship of anatomy at Rome, and generously attributed his success to the help which it afforded him. The book was well received on the continent, and was more than once published in Latin versions (Frankfurt, 1692, and Amsterdam, 1731, both 8vo). The author's name is commemorated in the term ‘Haversian canals,’ still used for the minute channels of bone in which the blood-vessels run.
His dissertation for the degree of M.D. (‘De Respiratione,’ Utrecht, 1685, 4to) contains at least one curious observation. Havers afterwards edited, or rather corrected, the English version of a curious anatomical work, Remmelini's ‘Catoptrium Microcosmicum,’ with the title ‘A Survey of the Microcosme; or the Anatomy of the Bodies of Man and Woman,’ folio, London, 1695 and 1702. It is a collection of dissected anatomical plates, formed by superimposed slips, so as to show the relations of the parts of the body, with descriptions. He also published in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ ‘An Account of an Extraordinary Bleeding from the Lachrymal Gland’—a case of shedding tears of blood (Abr. iii. 618, 1694), and a ‘Discourse of the Concoction of the Food’ (ib. iv. 418, 1699).