But to proceed with the history of the College and its relations to medical education. In 1581, Dr. Caldwell and Lord Lumley founded the Lumleian Lectures on Anatomy and Surgery, and the importance of this foundation will be appreciated when it is stated that Harvey was Lumleian lecturer from 1615 to 1656, and that it was in these lectures that the great fact of the circulation was first demonstrated. In 1587, we find the College renting a garden for forty marks a year, and engaging John Gerard, the author of the well-known “Herbal,” to keep it stocked for them with rare plants. Gerard himself had a garden in Holborn, where among other things he propagated the potato.
William Gilbert, who was president of the College in 1600, was the first really scientific Fellow. He was physician to Elizabeth and James I., and his great work on magnetism, “De Magnete Magneticisque Corporibus et de Magno Magnete Telluræ, Physiologia Nova,” commanded the admiration of Bacon and Galileo, and of many succeeding generations of scientists. It is a work worthy of being placed alongside of Harvey’s work on the Circulation, and the College of Physicians is honoured to have reckoned him among its presidents. The importance of Gilbert’s investigations to a great naval Power seems to have been recognised by Queen Elizabeth, who, to her great honour, assisted him with a pension. He died in 1603, aged sixty-three, and was buried at Colchester. He was the contemporary of Shakespeare and Bacon, and was one of those who helped to make the Elizabethan era the wonder of all subsequent generations.
The post-mortem examination made on the body of James I. is an interesting record of the state of pathology in 1625. It is recorded “that the head was found so full of brains that they could not keep them from spilling—a great mark of his infinite judgment; but his blood was wonderfully tainted with melancholy, and the corruption thereof was the supposed cause of his death.”
I have now to mention the man who, above all others, has tended by his work to make medicine a science, and who probably did much by his lectures at the College to disseminate a knowledge of anatomy and physiology. Harvey was the first English physiologist, and lectured for forty-one years at the Royal College of Physicians on anatomy and surgery. William Harvey (1578–1657) went to Padua in 1598, and studied under Fabricius, Minadous, and Casserius, and took his M.D. in 1602. He came to London in 1604, became F.R.C.P. in 1607, and succeeded Dr. Wilkinson at St. Bartholomew’s in 1609. He was Lumleian lecturer in 1615. He expounded, as is supposed, the doctrine of the circulation in 1616, and finally published his views in 1628. He was physician to James I. in 1618 (?). In 1638 he was appointed physician in ordinary to Charles I., and there is a curious order in the letter-book of the Lord Steward’s office for the settling a “diett of three dishes of meat and meale with all incidents thereunto belonging upon the said Dr. Harvey,” which daily “diett” was subsequently commuted for £200 a year. Harvey followed the fortunes of the King, and was at the Battle of Edgehill in 1642. Meanwhile his house in London was plundered of goods and anatomical records. He became warden of Merton College, Oxford, in 1645, from which post he was ousted by the Parliament in 1646. By the solicitation of Sir George Ent he was induced to publish his work on Generation in 1651. He gave a new library and museum to the College of Physicians in 1653, whereupon the Fellows placed his statue in their hall, and, in his absence, elected him president in 1654, which honour, however, he gracefully declined, and recommended the College to elect Dr. Prujean instead. He remained Lumleian lecturer until 1656, when he resigned, and presented the College with his patrimonial estate at Burmarsh, Kent. He died of the gout in 1657 in his eightieth year. In his will he says: “I give to the College of Physicians all my bookes and papers, and my best Persia long carpet, and my blue satin embroyedyed cushion, one pair of brass and irons, with fireshovell and tongues of brass, for the ornament of the meeting-room I have erected for the purpose. Item, I give my velvet gown to my loving friend Mr. Doctor Scarborough, desiring him and my loving friend Mr. Doctor Ent to looke over those scattered remnants of my poore librarieie, and what bookes, papers, or rare collections they shall think fit to present to the College, and the rest to be sold, and with the money buy better.” Thus, it will be seen that Harvey is not only the greatest ornament of the College, but also its greatest benefactor. He was the second in order of time of the great lights of science connected with the College, Gilbert being the first. His will is interesting from the choice of his executors, who were both Fellows of the Royal Society and leaders of science; and, secondly, by the mention of the velvet gown, which possibly is the one represented as worn by Sir C. Scarborough in the picture at Barbers’ Hall. I abstain from any mention of Harvey’s great discovery, because we all know it and appreciate it, and no words of mine could increase your admiration.
I may here mention that in 1614 the house in Knightrider Street had become too small for the business of the College, and accordingly new premises were taken on lease from the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s at Amen Corner, at the end of Paternoster Row. A botanical garden was planted and a theatre was built, and here it was that Harvey made the College a present of a great parlour and a museum, which he erected at his own cost. The garden extended from the Old Bailey to the Church of St. Martin, Ludgate, and included the site of the present Stationers’ Hall. The museum and library soon became enriched by many contributions, the greater part of which were, however, unhappily destroyed by the fire in 1666.
Dr. Goulston (F.R.C.P. 1611) founded by will the Gulstonian Lectures, to be read “between Michaelmas and Easter by one of the four youngest doctors of the College.” Sir Theodore Mayerne (F.R.C.P. 1616), was by birth a Swiss Protestant, and after serving as physician to Henry IV. of France, settled in London, where he became physician to James I. and his Queen, and subsequently to Charles I. He was the fashionable physician of his day, and was one of the first to use chemical medicines, which was looked upon as heretical by the strict Galenists, who used only “simples,” drawn from organic nature. He introduced calomel and blackwash, wrote the dedication to the first edition of the Pharmacopœia Londinensis (1618), accumulated great wealth, and died at Chelsea in 1655.
Sir Charles Scarborough succeeded Harvey as Lumleian lecturer, and was lecturer on anatomy to the Barber-Surgeons. He was physician to Charles II., James II., and William III., and was a great mathematician.
Baldwin Hamey, jun. (F.R.C.P. 1634), a devoted Royalist and Churchman, enjoyed a lucrative practice among amorous Parliamentary Puritans. He presented the lease of the College in Amen Corner to his colleagues (1651), contributed largely to its rebuilding after the fire, and left it a considerable landed estate near Ongar, in Essex.
Francis Glisson (F.R.C.P. 1635), Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge, was president of the College in 1667–8-9. He wrote a treatise on Rickets, was a serious anatomist, wrote a treatise on the Anatomy of the Liver, and has given us “Glisson’s Capsule” as a record of his industry and talent. He was one of the original members of the Royal Society, and one of the few of the Fellows of the College who stopped in London during the plague. He was a friend of Anthony Ashley, Earl of Shaftesbury. We are indebted to Dr. Glisson for positive additions to our knowledge of the human body, and he is to be regarded as the third in order of time of the scientific Fellows.
Thomas Wharton (F.R.C.P. 1650), Thomas Willis (F.R.C.P. 1664), and Richard Lower (F.R.C.P. 1675) were three earnest and distinguished anatomists, who added new facts to medicine, and whose names are still enshrined in our anatomical nomenclature.