Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VIII.djvu/517

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HARVEY 503 of ash tree (ornus), a saccharine fluid escapes, which, dried and hardened, is used in medicine as manna ; this hint from the insect has been taken advantage of by man, who, by making incisions in the trees, is able to obtain a large supply of this purgative substance. HARVEY, a S. central county of Kansas, re- cently formed, and not included in the census of 1870, intersected by the Little Arkansas river, and watered by affluents of Whitewater creek ; area, about 450 sq. m. The Arkansas touches the S. W. corner. The Atchison, To- peka, and Santa F6 railroad and Wichita branch traverse it. Capital, Newton. HARVEY, Sir George, a Scottish painter, born at St. Ninian's, near Stirling, in 1805. He was one of the founders of the royal Scottish acad- emy. His pictures represent scenes from Scot- tish history and domestic life, and particularly those relating to the trials and persecutions of the Covenanters. In some, however, the se- rious character is relieved by a vein of quaint humor characteristic of the artist's nationality. He has also painted landscapes with effect. Among his works are " Covenanters Preach- ing" (1830), " The Curlers" (1835), " The Past and Present" (1840), "A Highland Funeral" (1844), "John Bunyan and his Daughter sell- ing Laces at the Door of Bedford Jail " (1857), and "The Penny Bank" (1864). He was elected president of the Scottish royal acad- emy in 1864, and was knighted in 1867. He has published " Notes of the Early History of the Royal Scottish Academy " (1870). HARVEY, William, an English physician, dis- coverer of the circulation of the blood, born in Folkestone, Kent, April 1, 1578, died in London, June 3, 1657. He was the eldest of a family of nine children, and at 10 years of age was sent by his father to the grammar school in Canterbury, whence in 1593 he went to Caius college, Cambridge. Having taken his degree of B. A., he repaired about 1598 to the univer- sity of Padua, where he attended the lectures of Fabricius ab Aquapendente and other emi- nent professors of medical science, and in 1602 graduated as doctor of medicine. Returning to England, he settled in London, and in 1607 was admitted a fellow of the royal college of physicians. Two years later he was appointed physician to St. Bartholomew's hospital, a post which he filled uninterruptedly till 1644, and in 1615 became lecturer on anatomy and sur- gery in the college of physicians. It was in 1619, while he was discharging the duties of this latter office, that the discovery with which his name has since been associated is supposed to have been made, although, from his desire to thoroughly confirm and mature his opinions, the published treatise on the subject, entitled Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et San- guinis in Animalibus, and dedicated to Charles I., did not appear till 1628 (4to, Frankfort). Harvey, it is said, expressed himself indebted to his former master, Fabricius, for his dis- covery ; but beyond the inductive method of research which led to it, and which he ac- quired from the teachings of the Paduan pro- fessor, and the discovery by the latter of the valves in the veins, the merit is undoubtedly his own. It appears certain, however, that Cassalpinus, who died at Rome about the time that Harvey left Italy, distinctly stated in one of his works the system of the circu- lation of the blood. (See C^ESALPINUS.) For two years previous to the death of James L Harvey was the royal physician extraordina- ry, and in 1632 Charles I. appointed him his physician in ordinary. He was thenceforth intimately connected with the court, and fre- quently prosecuted his anatomical experiments in the presence of the king, whose fortunes he followed after the commencement of the revo- lution, and with whom he was present at the battle of Edgehill. He subsequently retired with the king to Oxford, where he was made warden of Merton college and received the de- gree of M. D., and where he remained until the surrender of the city to the parliamentary forces. Ever more interested in the advance- ment of science than in the mutations of polit- ical strife, he devoted himself while there to researches on generation, a subject which had engaged his attention for some years previous, and upon which he published in 1651, five years after his return to London, his second impor- tant work, Exercitationes de Generations Ani- malium. His adherence to the royal cause had meanwhile lost him his position as phy- sician to St. Bartholomew's hospital ; but he continued to discharge his functions as lecturer at the college of physicians until near the close of his life. In 1652 he received the rare honor of having his statue placed in the college hall,, with an inscription testifying to the value of his discoveries. He subsequently built an ad- dition to the college and endowed it with his paternal estate, one of the conditions of the grant being that an oration should be delivered annually in commemoration of the benefactors of the college, and an "exhortation to the members to study and search out the secrets of nature by way of experiment, and for the honor of the profession to continue mutually in love." Three years before his death he was elected president, but declined the office on account of his advanced age. For many years Harvey experienced the treatment with which all innovators or discoverers are familiar, and complained that his practice declined consid- erably after the publication of his treatise on the circulation of the blood, a result which he had indeed predicted. He was far, however, from being looked upon as an empiric; and notwithstanding the hostility of some eminent continental professors and of the older mem- bers of the profession generally, he enjoyed the intimacy of the king, and of Bacon, Hobbes, Cowley, and other persons of note in Eng- land, several of whom were his devoted parti- sans. He, moreover, lived to be considered as the first anatomist and physician of his time.,