THE LIFE OF WILLIAM HARVEY, M.D.
William Harvey, the immortal discoverer of the Circulation of the Blood, was the eldest son of Thomas Harvey and Joan Halke, of Folkstone, in Kent, where he was born on the 1st of April, 1578.[1] Of the parents of Harvey, little is known. His father, in our printed accounts, is generally designated Gentleman,[2] and must have been in easy circumstances; inasmuch as he had a numerous family, consisting of seven sons and two daughters, all the males of which he felt himself competent to launch upon life in courses that imply the possession of money wealth. William, the first-born, adopted the profession of physic. Five of his brothers,—Thomas, Daniel, Eliab, Michael, and Matthew—were merchants, and not merchants in a small and niggardly way—non tenues et sordidi, as Dr. Lawrence has it in his Life of Harvey,[3] but of weight and substance—magni et copiosi, trading especially with Turkey or the Levant, then the main channel through which the wealth of the East flowed into Europe. The Harveys were undoubtedly men of consideration in the city of London, and several of them, in the end,
- ↑ The birthday in some of the lives is stated to be the 2d of April, for no better reason apparently than that All-fools' Day should not lose its character by giving birth to a great man. William Harvey, I believe, was born on the 1st of April.
- ↑ In the register of William Harvey's matriculation at Cambridge his father is styled Yeoman Cantianus—Kentish yeoman.
- ↑ Prefixed to the Latin edition of Harvey's Works published by the Royal College of Physicians, in two vols. 4to, 1766.
