Fathers of Biology

by Charles McRae

In 1604 he joined the College of Physicians, and three years later was elected a Fellow of that learned body. Two years afterwards he applied for the post of physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital; and his application being supported by letters of recommendation to the governor, from the king and from the president of the College of Physicians, he was duly elected to the office in the same year, as soon as a vacancy occurred.

In 1615, when thirty-seven years of age, Harvey was chosen to deliver the lectures on surgery and anatomy to the College of Physicians, and it is possible that at this time he gave an exposition of his views on the circulation. He continued to lecture on the same subject for many years afterwards, although he did not publish his views until 1628, when they appeared in the work "De Motu Cordis."

Some few years after his appointment as lecturer to the college, he was chosen one of the physicians extraordinary to King James I., and about five or six years after the accession of Charles I. he became physician in ordinary to that unfortunate monarch. The physiologist's investigations seem to have interested King Charles, for he had several exhibitions made of the punctum saliens in the embryo chick, and also witnessed dissections from time to time.

When, in 1630, the young Duke of Lennox made a journey on the Continent, Harvey was chosen to travel with him, and probably remained abroad about two years. During this time Harvey most likely visited Venice. Of this tour the doctor speaks in the following terms in a letter written at the time: "I can only complayne that by the waye we could scarce see a dogg, crow, kite, raven, or any bird or any thing to anatomise; only sum few miserable poeple the reliques of the war and the plauge, where famine had made anatomies before I came."

Six years after this, in April, 1636, he accompanied the Earl of Arundel in his embassy to the emperor. Having to visit the principal cities of Germany, he was thus afforded an opportunity of meeting the leading biologists of the time, and at Nuremberg he probably met Caspar Hoffmann, and made that public demonstration of the circulation of the blood which he had promised in his letter dated from that city, and which convinced every one present except Hoffmann himself. Hollar, the artist, informs us that Harvey's enthusiasm in his search for specimens often led him into danger, and caused grave anxiety to the Earl of Arundel. "For he would still be making of excursions into the woods, making observations of strange trees, plants, earths, etc., and sometimes like to be lost; so that my lord ambassador would be really angry with him, for there was not only danger of wild beasts, but of thieves."

Soon after his return to England, as court physician, his movements became seriously restricted by the fortunes of the king. Aubrey says, "When King Charles I., by reason of the tumults, left London, Harvey attended him, and was at the fight of Edgehill with him; and during the fight the Prince and the Duke of York were committed to his care. He told me that he withdrew with them under a hedge, and tooke out of his pockett a booke and read; but he had not read very long before a bullet of a great gun grazed on the ground neare him, which made him remove his station.... I first sawe him at Oxford, 1642, after Edgehill fight, but was then too young to be acquainted with so great a doctor. I remember he came severall times to our Coll. (Trin.) to George Bathurst, B.D., who had a hen to hatch egges in his chamber, which they dayly opened to see the progress and way of generation."

In 1645, Charles, after the execution of Archbishop Laud, took upon himself the functions of visitor of Merton College, and having removed Sir Nathaniel Brent from the office of warden for having joined "the Rebells now in armes against" him, he directed the Fellows to take the necessary steps for the election of a successor. This course consisted in giving in three names to the visitor, in order that one of the three (the one named first, probably) should be appointed. Harvey was so named by five out of the seven Fellows voting, and was accordingly duly elected. A couple of days after his admission he summoned the Fellows into the hall and made a speech to them, in which he pointed out that it was likely enough that some of his predecessors had sought the office in order to enrich themselves, but that his intentions were quite of another kind, wishing as he did to increase the wealth and prosperity of the college; and he finished by exhorting them to cherish mutual concord and amity. After the surrender of Oxford, July, 1646, Harvey retired from the court. He was in his sixty-ninth year, and doubtless found the hardships and inconveniences which the miserable war entailed far from conducive to health. The rest and seclusion to be had at the residence of one or other of his brothers offered him the much-needed opportunity of renewing his inquiries into the subject of generation, and it is of this time that Dr. Ent speaks in the preface to the published work on that subject which appeared in 1651. "Harassed with anxious and in the end not much availing cares, about Christmas last, I sought to rid my spirit of the cloud that oppressed it, by a visit to that great man, the chief honour and ornament of our college, Dr. William Harvey, then dwelling not far from the city. I found him, Democritus-like, busy with the study of natural things, his countenance cheerful, his mind serene, embracing all within its sphere. I forthwith saluted him, and asked if all were well with him. 'How can it,' said he, 'whilst the Commonwealth is full of distractions, and I myself am still in the open sea? And truly,' he continued, 'did I not find solace in my studies, and a balm for my spirit in the memory of my observations of former years, I should feel little desire for longer life. But so it has been, that this life of obscurity, this vacation from public business, which causes tedium and disgust to so many, has proved a sovereign remedy to me.'"

Harvey died in June, 1657. Aubrey, his contemporary, says, "On the morning of his death, about ten o'clock, he went to speake, and found he had the dead palsey in his tongue; then he sawe what was to become of him, he knew there was then no hopes of his recovery, so presently sends for his young nephews to come up to him, to whom he gives one his watch, to another another remembrance, etc.; made sign to Sambroke his Apothecary to lett him blood in the tongue, which did little or no good, and so he ended his dayes.... The palsey did give him an easie passeport.... He lies buried in a vault at Hempsted in Essex, which his brother Eliab Harvey built; he is lapt in lead, and on his brest, in great letters, 'Dr. William Harvey.' I was at his Funerall, and helpt to carry him into the vault."

The publication of Harvey's views on the movement of the blood excited great surprise and opposition. The theory of a complete circulation was at any rate novel, but novelty was far from being a recommendation in those days. According to Aubrey, the author was thought to be crackbrained, and lost much of his practice in consequence. He himself complains that contumelious epithets were levelled at the doctrine and its author. It was not until after many years had elapsed, and the facts had become familiar, that men were struck with the simplicity of the theory, and tried to prove that the idea was not new after all, and that it was to be found in Hippocrates, or in Galen, or in Servetus, or in Cæsalpinus—anywhere, in fact, except where alone it existed, namely, in the work, "De Motu Cordis et Sanguinis." No one seems to have denied, while Harvey lived, that he was the discoverer of the circulation of the blood; indeed, Hobbes of Malmesbury, his contemporary, said of him, "He is the only man, perhaps, that ever lived to see his own doctrine established in his lifetime."

In one important respect Harvey's account of the circulation was incomplete. He knew nothing of the vessels which we now speak of as capillaries. Writing to Paul Marquard Slegel, of Hamburg, in 1651, he says, "When I perceived that the blood is transferred from the veins into the arteries through the medium of the heart, by a grand mechanism and exquisite apparatus of valves, I judged that in like manner, wherever transudation does not take place through the pores of the flesh, the blood is returned from the arteries to the veins, not without some other admirable artifice" (non sine artificio quodam admirabili). It was this artificium admirabile of which Harvey was unable to give a description. On account of the minuteness of their structure, the capillaries were beyond his sight, aided as it was by a magnifying glass merely. He indeed demonstrated physiologically the existence of some such passages; but it remained for a later observer, with improved appliances, to verify the fact. This was done by Malpighi in 1661, who saw in the lung of a frog, which was so mounted in a frame as to be viewed by transmitted light, the network of capillaries which connect the last ramifications of the arteries with the radicles of the veins.