“During the fight,” says Aubrey, “the Prince and Duke of York were committed to his care. He told me that he withdrew with them under a hedge, and took out of his pocket a book and read. But he had not read very long before a bullet of a great gun grazed on the ground near him, which made him remove his station.” We cannot but admire the coolness and serenity of mind which could thus occupy itself with reading in the midst of carnage, having evidently no sort of belief in, or vocation for, the employment of force in the arbitrament between opposing opinions. Accompanying Charles to Oxford, he found congenial society, and was incorporated Doctor of Medicine on the 7th December, 1642. “I first saw him at Oxford,” says Aubrey, “1642, after Edgehill fight; but was then too young to be acquainted with so great a doctor. I remember he came several times to our college (Trinity) to George Bathurst, B.D., who had a hen to hatch eggs in his chamber, which they opened daily to see the progress and way of generation.”
Thus we see Harvey continuing engaged in that study of the mysteries of reproduction and development to which he devoted so many years and so many toils. He must have commenced his studies on this subject at least early in Charles’s reign.
In 1645, while the King and his physician still remained at Oxford, Sir Nathaniel Brent having quitted Merton College, of which he was Warden, and taken the Covenant, Harvey was appointed Warden in his place by virtue of a royal mandate. He had indeed lost more than his time in following the royal fortunes, and deserved any reward the King could bestow upon him. At the close of the sixty-eighth section of his treatise on Generation Harvey says, “Let gentle minds forgive me if, recalling the irreparable injuries I have suffered, I here give vent to a sigh. This is the cause of my sorrow: whilst in attendance on his Majesty during our late troubles and more than civil wars, not only with the permission but by the command of the Parliament, certain rapacious hands stripped not only my house of all its furniture, but what is subject of far greater regret with me, my enemies abstracted from my museum the fruits of many years of toil. Whence it has come to pass that many observations, particularly on the generation of insects, have perished, with detriment, I venture to say, to the republic of letters.”[10]
The Wardenship of Merton was not long Dr. Harvey’s, for when Oxford surrendered to the Parliamentary forces in July 1646, he quitted the university and returned to London, and Sir Nathaniel Brent was reinstated in his former position. Nothing has been ascertained of the reason for Harvey’s cessation of personal attendance on the King at this period, but it is certain that he took refuge in the homes of his brothers, each of whom, whether in the City, at Lambeth, at Roehampton, or at Combe, kept special apartments reserved for him. It is most pleasing, indeed, to note the great brotherly affection existing in this family. The earliest of them to die, Thomas Harvey, in 1622, has the following inscription on his monumental tablet. “As in a Sheaf of Arrows. Vis unita fortior. The Band of Love the Uniter of Brethren.” Thus, leaving his financial concerns in charge of his brother Eliab, William devoted himself, at the age of sixty-eight, more fully to his researches on Generation, which his friend Dr. Ent extracted from him at Christmas 1650.
Dr. Ent, addressing the President and Fellows of the College of Physicians, writes an introduction to this work, in which he gives us a pleasing view of Harvey in his retirement. He says: “Harassed with anxious, and in the end not much availing cares, about Christmas last, I sought to rid my spirit of the cloud which 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, ‘while 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.’” An extended conversation is recorded, in which Harvey discourses in his wisest vein on the value of the interrogation of nature in every possible way. Dr. Ent informed him that the learned world were eagerly looking for his further experiments. Harvey rejoined, “You know full well what a storm my former lucubrations raised. Much better is it oftentimes to grow wise at home and in private, than by publishing what you have amassed with infinite labour, to stir up tempests that may rob you of peace and quiet for the rest of your days.” He at last produced the treatise on generation of animals, and Dr. Ent urging him to publish it both in consideration of his own fame, and the public benefit, and offering to see it through the press, the author consented to its publication at once or at some future time. Dr. Ent was exultant, feeling, like another Jason, laden with the golden fleece. “Our Harvey,” he says, “rather seems as though discovery were natural to him, a thing of ease and of course, a matter of ordinary business; though he may nevertheless have expended infinite labour and study on his works. And we have evidence of his singular candour in this, that he never hostilely attacks any previous writer, but ever courteously sets down and comments upon the opinions of each; and indeed he is wont to say, that it is argument of an indifferent cause when it is contended for with violence and distemper, and that truth scarce wants an advocate.”
This great work, published in 1651, begins by describing the hen’s egg and its development, the doctrine being enunciated that all animals as well as plants are produced from ova. Incidentally, as well as subsequently, observations of great merit and value on reproduction in all kinds of animals are given, and it is clearly shown that instead of containing, from the first, excessively minute but complete animals, eggs at first include extremely simple structures, which by successive and gradual changes come to be like the adults from which they have sprung. It is true that Harvey, with Aristotle, believed that the germs of lower animals could arise out of non-living matter; but it is only in the most recent days that the most elaborate microscopical investigations seem finally to have disposed of this view. The doctrine that the simply constructed germ grows by feeding on non-living matter, converting it into living matter, and gradually transforming it into the form characterising the parent, was a great innovation in Harvey’s age, and it hung fire till Caspar Wolff, in 1759, securely established it. But this has remained till the present century to be made fruitful.
Throughout Harvey’s treatise it is evident how greatly the lack of powers such as those of the microscope crippled the entire investigation, although it is truly wonderful how much was accomplished without its aid. Incidental remarks show the acute mind everywhere tending towards sound procedure, as in tying the main artery of a tumour he wished to destroy; arriving on the brink of a discovery even when its full perception did not come, as when in regard to the lungs he says, “Air is given neither for the cooling nor the nutrition of animals,” contrary to the prevailing notion. But the absence of chemical knowledge in that age prevented his going farther.
His published works only represent a portion of Harvey’s life-work. We find allusions to his “Medical Observations” and “Medical Anatomy,” which, if written, were probably destroyed in the College of Physicians at the Great Fire. In one place Harvey states that in his medical anatomy he meant, “from the many dissections he had made of the bodies of persons worn out by serious and strange affections, to relate how and in what way the internal organs were changed in their situation, size, structure, figure, consistency, and other sensible qualities, from their natural forms and appearances, such as they are usually described by anatomists, and in what various and remarkable ways they were affected. For even as the dissection of healthy and well-constituted bodies contributes essentially to the advancement of philosophy and sound physiology, so does the inspection of diseased and cachectic subjects powerfully assist philosophical pathology.” Thus it appears that, had we possessed Harvey’s pathological observations, he would also have merited the title of founder of pathology.
About the time of the publication of the Treatise on Generation, Harvey’s work on the Heart and Circulation was gaining continued and widespread adhesion on the Continent. In Italy, Trullius, a Roman professor; in France, John Pecquet of Dieppe; in Leyden, Thomas Bartholin, were occupied in promulgating Harvey’s views. A notable convert was Plempius of Louvain, who, having given himself up to the refutation of Harvey, found himself compelled to retract when he himself made some experiments on living dogs.
Harvey was constantly solicitous for the welfare of the College of Physicians, before which he continued to deliver the Lumleian Lectures up to 1656. At an extraordinary meeting held on 4th July, 1651, Dr. Prujean, the President, read to the Fellows the following anonymous proposal: “If I can procure one that will build us a library, and a repository for simples and rarities, such a one as shall be suitable and honourable to the college, will you assent to have it done or no?” The offer was of course unanimously and gratefully accepted, but it does not appear at what period it transpired that Harvey was the munificent donor. However, on 22d December, 1652, the college decreed a statue to him, which was executed in his doctor’s cap and gown, inscribed “Viro monumentis suis immortali.” It was not, however, till the 2d of February, 1653-4, that the new building was opened, consisting, as Aubrey tells us, of a noble building of Roman architecture (of rustic work with Corinthian pilasters), comprising a great parlour, a kind of convocation-room for the Fellows to meet in below, and a library above. Harvey was present on the opening occasion, having provided a handsome entertainment, and formally handed over the title-deeds and entire interest in the building in a speech of the utmost benevolence and goodwill. He had contributed not merely the building, but also a considerable library, and many surgical instruments and objects of interest to the museum.