Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/100

H the ‘Funerall Monuments.’ Of the numerous heraldic visitations made by Harvey the following have been printed: 1. ‘Essex’ (1558), Harl. Soc. vol. xiii., London (1878), edited by Walter C. Metcalfe, F.S.A. 2. ‘Suffolk’ (1561), edited by Joseph Jackson Howard, LL.D., F.S.A., 2 vols., Lowestoft, 1866, 8vo; and again by Walter C. Metcalfe, Exeter, 1882, 4to. 3. ‘Norfolk’ (1563), edited by the Rev. G. H. Dashwood, F.S.A., for the Norfolk and Norwich Archæological Society, Norwich, 1878, 8vo. 4. ‘Dorsetshire’ (1565), edited by Walter C. Metcalfe from the Harleian MSS. 888 and 1092, and printed at Exeter (one hundred copies only) in 1887. 5. ‘Oxfordshire’ (1566), Harl. Soc. vol. v., London, 1871, 8vo, edited by W. H. Turner. 6. ‘Bedfordshire’ (1566), edited by Frederic Augustus Blaydes, Harl. Soc. vol. xix., London, 1884, 8vo.

 HARVEY, WILLIAM, M.D. (1578–1657), physician and discoverer of the circulation of the blood, was born at Folkestone, Kent, 1 April 1578, in a house which was in later times the posthouse of the town and which still belongs to Caius College, Cambridge, to which Harvey bequeathed it. His father was Thomas Harvey, a Kentish yeoman, and in May 1600 jurat of Folkestone. His mother, Joane, daughter of Thomas Halke of Hastingleigh, Kent, was the second wife of Thomas Harvey, and William was the second child and eldest son of the family. His father died 12 Jan. 1623, his mother 8 Nov. 1605, and they had six other sons. In 1588 William was sent to the King's School, Canterbury. Thence he went to Cambridge, where he was admitted a pensioner in Gonville and Caius College, 31 May 1593, George Estey, fellow, being his surety (Caius Admission Book, manuscript). He graduated B.A. 1597, and, determining to study medicine, travelled through France and Germany to Padua, the most famous school of physic of that time. Here, in the curious anatomical theatre, lined with carved oak, which is still standing, he attended the candle-light lectures of the great anatomist Fabricius of Aquapendente, and pursued the other medical studies of the place. He graduated M.D. 25 April 1602, and the diploma expresses the warm satisfaction of the university of Padua at his graduation (original in the College of Physicians of London). He returned to England, graduated M.D. at Cambridge 1602, and soon after took a house in the parish of St. Martin-extra-Ludgate in London. In November 1604 he married, at the church of the neighbouring parish of St. Sepulchre, Elizabeth, daughter of Dr. Lancelot Browne [q. v.], formerly physician to Queen Elizabeth. On 5 Oct. in the same year Harvey was admitted a candidate of the College of Physicians and was elected a fellow 5 June 1607. On Saturday 28 Feb. 1609, at a court of the governors of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Sir John Spencer [q. v.] in the chair, he applied for the reversion of the office of physician, and brought a recommendation from the king and testimonials of professional competence from Dr. Atkins, president of the College of Physicians, and from several of the senior doctors of the college. Harvey was elected to the reversion, a condition comparable to that of an assistant physician at the present day. Dr. Wilkinson, also a Cambridge man, gave his assistant the benefit of his professional experience and friendship. Wilkinson died in the summer, and his assistant discharged the duties of the physiciancy till his formal election as physician at a meeting of the president, Sir John Spencer, and the governors on Saturday, 14 Oct. 1609. He was then solemnly charged to attend at the hospital ‘one day in the weeke at the leaste thorough the yeare, or oftner, as neede shall requyer;’ to give the poor the full benefit of his knowledge; to prescribe only such medicines as should ‘doe the poore good,’ without regard to the pecuniary interests of the apothecary; to take no reward from the patients, and to render account for any negligence on his part. The hall of the hospital in which he sat once a week to see patients was a spacious room, pulled down about 1728, with a great fireplace, to the fire of which Henry III had granted a supply of wood from the forest of Windsor. Harvey sat at a table and the patients brought to him sat upon a settle beside it, the apothecary, the steward, and the matron standing by. The surgeons discharged their duties in the wards, and the physician only went into them to see such patients as could not walk. His prescriptions were written in a book which was kept locked up. On 28 July 1614, at a court of governors under the presidency of Sir Thomas Lowe, it was resolved that Harvey should have an official residence