Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/104

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of Arundel, who was sent as ambassador to the emperor (Munk, Notæ Harveianæ). In May he was in Nuremberg, and dined at the English College in Rome on 5 Oct. 1636, Dr. George Ent [q. v.] also being a guest (Foley, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, vi. 614). While at Nuremberg he visited his opponent Hoffman, but did not convince him.

Harvey remained in London till the outbreak of the great rebellion. A certificate signed by him on 2 Dec. 1637 as to the health of Sir Thomas Thynne is in the State Paper Office (Aveling, Memorials of Harvey). The ‘Galeni Opuscula Varia’ of Dr. Theodore Goulston [q. v.] was published by Gataker in 1640. He had been a friend of Harvey, and his copy in the British Museum has many marginal notes in Harvey's hand, and some signed with his initials. He read the Latin, and not the Greek text (Harvey's copy of ‘Galen’). The album of Philip de Glargis in the British Museum (Addit. MS. 23105) has an entry written for the owner by Harvey, ‘Dii laboribus omnia vendunt,’ 8 May 1641. In 1642 he left London in attendance on the king. He cared little for politics (letter to John Nardi, Sydenham Society's edition of Harvey, p. 611), and while the king's army was assembling he visited his friend Percival Willughby at Derby, and talked with him of uterine diseases (Aveling, p. 22). He was present at the battle of Edgehill, and, according to Aubrey, all whose remarks about him are to be received with suspicion, had charge of the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York while the fight was in progress, and read a book he had in his pocket. He went to Oxford with the king, and was incorporated M.D. on 7 Dec. 1642. On 17 Oct. 1643 he wrote a report at Milton on the health of Prince Maurice, who was suffering from the typhus fever, which was then epidemic in the royal army. Harvey worked at anatomy, making dissections at Oxford (Highmore, preface to Anatomy), and in 1645 was made by royal mandate warden of Merton College, in the place made vacant by the departure of Sir Nathaniel Brent [q. v.] In 1643 he had received his payment as physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital for the last time. In 1646, after the surrender of Oxford, he returned to London and resided in the houses of his brothers, who were wealthy merchants. In 1649 he published at Cambridge, at the press of Roger Daniels, ‘Exercitatio Anatomica de Circulatione Sanguinis, ad Joannem Riolanem filium Parisiensem,’ in which he discusses the arguments against his doctrines set forth in a book, ‘Encheiridium Anatomicum,’ Leyden, 1648, written by Riolanus, and presented by him to Harvey. Riolanus's shallow remarks are considered courteously. At the end Harvey mentions that he had intended to write a morbid anatomy of diseases based upon the notes of the numerous post-mortem examinations he had made. At Christmas 1650 Dr. George Ent visited Harvey at his brother's house, and after a conversation, which is recorded by Ent, brought away the manuscript of a treatise entitled ‘Exercitationes de Generatione Animalium, quibus accedunt quædam de Partu, de Membranis ac Tumoribus Uteri et de Conceptione.’ This was published in 1651 by Pulleyn, in St. Paul's Churchyard, London. The parts of the hen's egg, and the growth of the chick within it, are fully described, and all the points of growth and development discussed in relation to it. It shows vast labour and careful observation; but the discovery of the microscope was wanting to make clear much of what Harvey could only see in part. This was his last published work, except a few letters printed at the end of his Works (Sydenham Society, 1846–7). On 4 July 1651 he offered to the College of Physicians, through its president, Dr. Prujean, to build a library. This was done anonymously, but became known, and on 22 Dec. 1652 the college voted the erection of Harvey's statue. On 2 Feb. 1654 the library was complete, and the donor handed it over to the college. On 30 Sept. 1654 he was elected president of the college, but declined the honour on the ground of age. He served on the council in 1655 and 1656. In 1656 he resigned his Lumleian lectureship; gave the college his estate at Burmarsh, Romney Marsh, Essex, and took leave of the fellows. He had had many attacks of gout, and used to check it by putting his feet in cold water. The attacks became more frequent, and he died on 3 June 1657. The fellows of the College of Physicians followed his body on its way to Hempstead in Essex, where it was deposited, wrapped in lead, in a vault of the family. Here it remained till St. Luke's day (18 Oct.) 1883, when it was translated, in the presence of the president (Sir William Jenner) and several fellows of the college, to a white marble sarcophagus provided by the college in the Harvey chapel erected in Hempstead Church; with the leaden coffin, bearing the inscription, ‘Doctor William Harvey. Decesed the 3 of June 1657. Aged 79 years,’ there were deposited in the sarcophagus a copy of the large edition of Harvey's works and a roll recounting the incidents of the translation, a duplicate of which hangs in the library of the College of Physicians.