Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/86

lxxxii Italy) he dictated to me what to see, what company to keep, what bookes to read, how to manage my studies—in short, he bid me go to the fountain head and read Aristotle, Cicero, Avicenna, and did call the Neoteriques st-breeches."

Harvey was not content merely to gather knowledge; he digested and arranged it under the guidance of the faculties which compare and reason. "He was always very contemplative," pursues Aubrey, "and was wont to frequent the leads of Cockaine-house, which his brother Eliab had bought, having there his several stations in regard to the sun and the wind, for the indulgence of his fancy. At the house at Combe, in Surrey," which, by the way, appears to have been purchased of Mr. Cockaine, as well as the mansion in the city, "he had caves made in the ground, in which he delighted in the summer time to meditate. He also loved darkness," telling Aubrey, "'that he could then best contemplate.' His thoughts working, would many times keep him from sleeping, in which case his way was to rise from his bed and walk about his chamber in his shirt, till he was pretty cool, and then return to his bed and sleep very comfortably." He treated the principal bodily ailment with which he was afflicted (gout) somewhat in the same manner. The fever of the mind being subdued by the application of cold air to the body at large, the fever in the blood, induced by gout, was abated by the use of cold water to the affected member: "He would then sitt with his legges bare, though it were frost, on the leads of Cockaine-house, putt them into a payle of water till he was almost dead with cold, and betake himself to his stove, and so 'twas gone."

Harvey, besides being physician to the king and household, held the same responsible situation in the families of many of the most distinguished among the nobles and men of eminence