Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/470

ment of the blood, and so brought health to the world and immortality to himself, who was the only one to free from false philosophy the origin and generation of animals, to whom the human race owes its acquirements of knowledge, to whom Medicine owes its very existence, chief Physician and friend of their Serene Highnesses James and Charles, Monarchs of the British Isles, a diligent and highly successful Professor of Anatomy and Surgery at the College of Medicine at London; for them he built a famous Library and endowed it and enriched it with his own patrimony. Finally after triumphal exertions in observation, healing and discovery, after various statues had been erected to him at home and abroad, when he had traversed the full circle of his life, a teacher of Medicine and of medical men, he died childless on June 3 in the year of grace 1657, in the eightieth year of his age, full of years and fame.

The Royal College of Physicians, of which he had been president in 1654, benefited greatly under Harvey's will, but it had already found him a noble benefactor during his life. In 1651 he had built a library and a museum for the college at Amen Corner; and, as acknowledgment, the Fellows erected a statue of him in their hall which was destroyed in the fire of London. Harvey assigned to the college his patrimonial estate of Burmarsh in Kent, a donation which provided the salary of the librarian and keeper of the museum. He also instituted an annual oration in praise of the benefactors of the college, and provided for an honorarium to the orator and for the expenses of an annual banquet. The Harveian oration has been delivered each year since that time; it is considered one of the greatest honors that can be paid to a Fellow to appoint him Harveian orator.

Curiously enough, there is no biography of Harvey that can be called authoritative. The only contemporary account of him, for it can not be called a biography, is by his friend, John Aubrey, the antiquary, the same Aubrey who has left us some facts about Shakespeare. This is an unsatisfactory, slight, gossiping account written by a medical layman. Quite the best life of Harvey is from the pen of Mr. D'Arcy Power, F.S.A., F.E.C.S., in the "Masters of Medicine" series. To it I have been indebted for many facts. Although, therefore we have no complete contemporary biography of the greatest epoch-maker in medicine, we can glean enough to show us in what esteem he was held by certain very different kinds of persons. Hobbes, of Malmesbury, placed him alongside Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler, and declared "he first gave the true science of the human body." In another book Hobbes wrote of Harvey, as "the only man I know that, conquering envy, hath established a new doctrine in his life time."

The highly acute and ingenious natural philosopher Robert Hooke, F.R.S., mentions Harvey's discoveries alongside those of Pecquet, Bartholinus, Willis and Glisson. The great Descartes in one of his letters writes of Harvey, thus:

As to the circulation of the blood, there he has his triumph, and the honor of first discovering it, for which medicine owes him much.

Thomas Bartholinus, of Copenhagen, said: