Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/467

Rh Some of Harvey's experiences were unique; he dissected the body of one of the oldest men that ever livedo Thomas Parr. Old Parr, a native of Shropshire, died in 1635, aged 152 years; he had lived under nine British monarchs. Harvey found no physical signs of senility in the body, no lime in the costal cartilages. He suggests that the sudden change from the old man's simple fare to the rich food of Lord Arundel's establishment was the cause of death. Harvey tells us that old Parr lived on sour milk and rancid cheese; he thinks he survived in spite of this diet, the followers of Metchnikoff would tell us that he lived so long on account of it.

Another of Harvey's curious experiences was the affair of the Lancashire witches. This reveals the gross superstitions that could flourish in 1634 and engage the attention of the king, a bishop or two, a secretary of state and the Lord Privy Seal. A boy playing truant in the woods in Lancashire swore that he had been carried off by a witch, Mother Dickenson. She bore him over fields and forests till she came to a barn where seven other witches were having supper when, he said, they assumed the shapes of all sorts of animals. This rigmarole and a great deal else was actually believed. The king commanded the Earl of Manchester to order a commission of medical men, one of whom was Dr. Harvey, to empower certain midwives to examine the bodies of these women, to see whether they had any marks on them indicating anything unnatural. The examination was carried out in Dr. Harvey's presence, and, of course, nothing was found. "We have no scrap of evidence to make us think that Harvey in any way shared the popular superstition as to these women; he was merely carrying out the royal commands.

In personal appearance Harvey was of short stature; "of the lowest stature" and "little Dr. Harvey" are the phrases used to describe him. At thirty-seven years old, his hair was black; his eyes small and black. He seems to have been restless, full of energy, rapid of utterance, given to gesture and to playing with the handle of a small dagger he wore. His handwriting was exceptionally illegible even for that time. From all we can gather, his temper was irritable; "choleric" is the word used of him again and again. If this was so, Harvey wrote very courteously to his most tiresome opponents, as Professor Huxley has remarked. Seeing that he lived to the age of seventy-nine, and came through the fatigues that he did, he must have had a fairly good constitution.

Harvey was very fond of coffee, a beverage in his day by no means universally taken; and on his own confession he occasionally drank freely of spirituous liquors. In later life he suffered from sciatica and gout, that disease of the intellectual hierarchy. His grandniece told Dr. Heberden in 1761 that her great ancestor, in his later years,