Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/92

H scapes were, for the most part, the work of his later life. Among the finest of them are ‘Ferragon,’ 1857; ‘We Twa hae paidled in the Burn,’ 1858; ‘Sheap-shearing,’ 1859; ‘Glen Dhu, Arran,’ 1861; and ‘Inverarnan, Loch Lomond,’ 1870. In 1829 Harvey became a full member of the Scottish Academy, to whose interests, in its early days of struggle, he devoted himself unweariedly. In 1864 he succeeded Sir John Watson Gordon [q. v.] as president, and received the honour of knighthood, and six years later he published his ‘Notes on the Early History of the Royal Scottish Academy’ (London, 1870, 8vo), giving curious particulars regarding its foundation and progress, a volume which attained a second edition in 1873. In 1867 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, to which he contributed, 21 Dec. 1868, a paper ‘On the Colour of Aërial Blue.’ He died at Edinburgh on 22 Jan. 1876. Three of his works are in the National Gallery of Scotland; his portrait by Robert Herdman, R.S.A., and his bust by John Hutchison, R.S.A., are in the possession of the Royal Scottish Academy. 

HARVEY, GIDEON (1640?–1700?), physician, born in Holland probably between 1630 and 1640, was son of John and Elizabeth Harvey, as appears by his petition for denization in 1660 (Cal. State Papers, Dom. Series, 1660–1). According to his own account (in ‘Casus Medico-Chirurgicus’) he learned Greek and Latin in the Low Countries, and on 31 May 1655 matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford, then under the rule of the energetic Dr. Conant, where he studied philosophy. On 4 Jan. 1657 he was entered at Leyden, where he studied medicine, anatomy, and botany, attending also the hospital practice of Professor van Linden. At the same time, he says, he learned chemistry from a German, and received instruction from a surgeon and an apothecary in their respective arts. Apparently in the same year he passed to Paris, where he studied and attended the hospitals. He took his degrees of M.B. and M.D. while making ‘le petit tour,’ probably at a small French university. He was probably very young, but his subsequent boast that he took his final degree in his seventeenth year is an obvious exaggeration. After completing his studies in Paris he returned to Holland, and was made a fellow of the College of Physicians at the Hague. There seems to be no authority for Wood's statement that he was physician to Charles II when in exile. Harvey was in London during the interregnum, and on 6 July 1659 was appointed by the committee of safety, on the motion of Desborow, to go as physician to Dunkirk (ib. 1659–60, p. 9). Whether he actually went there is not clear, but after the Restoration he appears as physician, or doctor-general, to the king's army in Flanders. Wearying of this employment he resigned, travelled through Germany and Italy, and afterwards settled as a physician in London. He never belonged to the College of Physicians, but at first was on good terms with that body, and spoke of it in an anonymous pamphlet published in 1670 with great respect (see The Accomplisht Physician, &c.) About 1675 he was made physician to Charles II. In 1678 he was called, in consultation with other physicians, to attend a nobleman (Charles, lord Mohun, father of the more notorious duellist), who had received a wound in a duel, of which he ultimately died. Harvey, pleading that he was commanded by the king to write an account of the case, made it the occasion of virulent personal attacks, under feigned names, on the other physicians concerned (Casus Medico-Chirurgicus). He was already in bad odour with the profession for some rather discreditable publications on venereal diseases, and for a book of popular medicine (‘The Family Physician,’ &c.), which was displeasing to the apothecaries, because it revealed secrets of their trade. Five years later (1683) Harvey published a scurrilous attack on the College of Physicians, under the title of ‘The Conclave of Physicians.’ The scene is supposed to be laid in Paris, but eminent London physicians were abused under scarcely veiled disguises. Charles II, who had a strong leaning towards irregular doctors, seems to have in some way countenanced, and perhaps enjoyed, this attack on the institution of which he was the official patron; but from a contemporary pamphlet (‘Gideon's Fleece,’ a poem, 4to, 1684, attributed to Dr. Thomas Guidott [q. v.], p. 9) it appears that he was believed to have interfered in order to soften the asperity of an attack on the illustrious Willis. The pamphlet called forth an anonymous reply (‘A Dialogue between Philiater and Momus,’ 1686) besides the very poor poem ‘Gideon's Fleece.’ Harvey nevertheless prospered in practice, and, though he held no court appointment under James II, was made in the first year of William and Mary ‘their majesties' physician of the Tower,’ a lucrative sinecure, which he enjoyed till his death, probably about 1700–2, and in which he was