Page:The Harveian oration 1866.djvu/48

 "the beginning of the Rebellion; he being for the King "and with him at Oxon" (Aubrey's Letters and Lives). From this account we should infer that the papers that were lost were not on any of the five subjects above mentioned, but rather on Comparative Anatomy.

Besides, let us consider the time of the occurrence. The "beginning of the Rebellion" fixes the date probably in 1642. In that year Charles I. left London; in August he raised his standard at Nottingham, and the civil war commenced. In October of the same year was fought the battle of Edge-hill, at which Harvey was present. Soon after this he retired with the King to Oxford, where he remained until 1646, when he returned to London and began to live with his brothers. It is therefore certain that this loss of his papers at Whitehall could not have occurred subsequently to 1646.

Now the Observationes Medicinales are referred to, and their future publication promised, in works that were written by Harvey long subsequently to 1646. They are thus referred to in his second Exercise addressed to Riolan. Ex. gr. "De quibus omnibus, in observationibus meis medicinalibus, admiratione digna tradam" (Coll. Ed. p. 129, Willis' Ed. pages 129, 130), and "Inter Medicinales Observationes, et in pathologia, ea tradere potero, quæ nunquam hactenus a quovis observata comperio" (Coll. Ed. p. 141, Willis' Ed. p. 141). This Exercise was first published at Cambridge in 1649, and was in answer to part of a work of Riolan's which had been published in the same year. It is manifest, therefore, that the Observationes Medicinales could not have been lost at