Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/101

H formed of two houses and a garden in West Smithfield, adjoining the hospital. The premises were then on a lease, and the tenure was to begin at its expiration. This did not take place till 1626, when Harvey, after consideration, decided not to accept the residence, and on 7 July 1626 his stipend was in consequence increased from 25l. to 33l. 6s. 8d.

On 4 Aug. 1615 he was elected Lumleian lecturer at the College of Physicians (note under the year 1617 in the manuscript Annales of the College of Physicians, placed there by order of the president, who had been present in 1615), and in the following April, on the 16th, 17th, and 18th, he delivered at the college in Knightrider Street, near St. Paul's Cathedral, the lectures in which he made the first public statement of his thoughts on the circulation of the blood. The notes from which he delivered these lectures exist in their original manuscript and binding at the British Museum. The pages measure six inches in length by three and three quarters in breadth, and are closely written over, the notes being generally arranged in a tabular form. Here and there they are underlined with red ink, and opposite the statement which the author thought especially his own are the initials ‘W. H.’ written somewhat obliquely but in right lines. This habit of initial signature also occurs in another manuscript of Harvey (Sloane 486) and in his notes on the copy of Gulston's ‘Opuscula Varia Galeni’ (British Museum Library), and thus he probably signed his prescriptions. The notes of the lectures have a carefully written title-page; at the top is the line ‘Stat Jove principium, Musæ, Jovis omnia plena,’ and then the words ‘Prelectiones Anatomiæ universalis per me Gulielmum Harveium, medicum Londinensem Anatomie et Chirurgie Professorem Anno Domini 1616, anno ætatis 37 prelectæ, Aprili 16, 17, 18,’ and at foot is a quotation from Aristotle's ‘Historia Animalium,’ lib. i. c. 16, in Latin, which advises the study of comparative anatomy for the elucidation of the difficulties of human anatomy. The notes cover ninety-six pages, some of them containing more than forty lines of close writing. There are divisions which indicate where the lectures ended. The book does not complete the treatment of the subject. Some further notes are contained in another manuscript (Sloane 486), although these do not directly continue the first collection of notes. The lectures are three in number, and begin by a statement of the general arrangement of the subject, followed by eleven rules, which the lecturer lays down for his own guidance. They direct demonstration of what is before the audience, the illustration of human anatomy by that of animals, the avoidance of controversy, of minute details, and of telling what may as well be learnt at home. The first lecture treats of the outside of the body, then of the skin, fat, and superficial muscles, and then of the abdomen and all its contents. Each organ is described, often with homely illustrations, as of the names of the various parts of the alimentary canal (f. 20), ‘from Powles to Ledenhale, one way but many names, as Cheape, Powtry, &c.,’ or of the stomach, ‘Figura like a horne, a bagpipe, rotunda quo capacior, less and less quo cibaria cocta minorem locum.’ The notes are in Latin, with many intercalated English words or sentences. The second lecture deals with the chest and its contents. Nine pages (ff. 72–80) refer to the heart, and show that the lecturer had already completed his discovery of the circulation of the blood. The first describes the structure of the heart and of the great vessels, explains the contraction of the several cavities of the heart, the form and use of its valves and of the valves in the veins, and he concludes by clearly stating that he has thus demonstrated that the perpetual motion of the blood in a circle is produced by the beat of the heart. The third lecture is on the head, including the brain and nerves, and ends with the remark that Galen was not the first to whom had occurred the notion that nerves went from the brain to the organs of sense, since Cicero had twice suggested it, once in the Tusculan disputations and once in the ‘De Natura Deorum.’ The lectures show their author to have been widely read. He had studied Aristotle and Galen evidently in Latin editions, and had a profound veneration for Aristotle and a professional respect without much personal admiration for Galen. He quotes Aristotle oftener than any other author, and after Aristotle Galen. He was familiar with all the anatomists from Vesalius to his own times, and had Columbus, Fallopius, Fernelius, Laurentius, Nicholaus Massa, and Bauhin at his fingers' ends. Of the Latin poets he cared most for Virgil, and knew Plautus and Horace, and of the prose writers Cæsar, Cicero, and Vitruvius. He had read St. Augustine, and was well versed in the Bible. He does not mention the works of Shakespeare nor any of the literature of his time, though he often quotes verbal remarks of his contemporaries, chiefly, however, of physicians. He had already attained considerable practice, and must have laboured incessantly, for he showed that he had thoroughly dissected more than eighty species of animals. The lectures lasted more than an hour each day, as it was necessary to