CHAPTER VI
Harvey’s Later Years
The surrender of Oxford in 1645 marks the period of Harvey’s severance from the Court and of his practical retirement from public life. He was now 68; a martyr to gout, childless, and suffering under a series of heavy bereavements, he can have had but little heart to re-enter upon an active professional life in London. His twin brothers Matthew and Michael died in 1643. John, his second brother, died in 1645. His wife who was alive in this year, must have died shortly afterwards, or she would probably have accompanied him to Oxford. Such a series of shocks would act prejudicially upon his affectionate nature, and would still further unfit him to pursue the harassing cares of his profession. His mind, always philosophical and reflective rather than empirical, was now allowed to follow its bent to the uttermost, and his time was employed in putting into shape his treatise upon Development.
Harvey returned to London after the surrender of Oxford, and one of his first thoughts was to send to Charles Scarborough, who had continued with the Royal army, the message—“Prithee leave off thy gunning and stay here. I will bring thee into practice.” And well he kept his word, for on the 8th of October, 1649, Dr. Scarborough was elected by the Company of Barber Surgeons of London reader of the anatomical lectures. “He was the first,” says Wood, “that introduced geometrical and mechanical speculations into Anatomy, and applied them in all his learned conversation, as more particularly in his famous lectures upon the muscles of the human body for sixteen or seventeen years together in the public theatre at Surgeons’ Hall, which were read by him with infinite applause and admiration of all sorts of learned men in the great City. Afterwards he became a most learned and incomparable anatomist, a Fellow of the College of Physicians in 1650, principal physician to King Charles II. (from whom he received the honour of knighthood, August 15, 1669), and to His Royal Highness James, his brother, while Duke of York and when King, Physician to the Tower of London, and afterwards to King William III.” His friendship with Harvey, commenced at Oxford, continued unabated to the end of his patron’s life; and when on July 28, 1656, Harvey presented to the College of Physicians the title-deeds of his paternal estate in Kent and resigned his Lumleian lectureship, the office was transferred to Charles Scarborough. In his will, too, Harvey makes affectionate mention of his friend, and bequeaths to him his surgical instruments and his velvet gown, so that literally as well as metaphorically Harvey’s mantle fell upon Sir Charles Scarborough, and he nobly sustained the charge, great as it was.
The bond of friendship which had always marked the members of the Harvey family now comes into striking relief. The eldest brother, whose goods had been destroyed at Whitehall and scattered at Oxford, was a welcome guest for the rest of his life in the houses of his younger brothers. He appears to have lived chiefly at Cockaine House, which was probably situated in Broad Street, for it afterwards became the Excise Office. It was the town house of his brother Eliab, who also lived either at Roehampton or at Rolls Park. But sometimes Harvey spent a part of his time with Daniel in the suburban village of Lambeth, or at Combe, near Croydon in Surrey. Some curious details of his habits at this time have been handed down.
Aubrey says: “He was much and often troubled with the gout, and his way of cure was thus: He would sit with his legs bare, though it were frost, on the leads of Cockaine House, put them into a pail of water till he was almost dead with cold, then betake himself to his stove, and so ’twas gone.” “A method of treatment,” says Heberden, “which I neither recommend nor propose to others for imitation, although Harvey lived to his eightieth year, and died not so much from disease as from old age.” The first coffee-house was opened in London about the year 1652 by Bowman (a coachman to Mr. Hodges, a Turkey merchant, who put him upon it), but Harvey was wont to drink coffee, which he and his brother Eliab did before coffee-houses were in fashion in London. In his will he makes a special reservation of his “coffy-pot;” his niece, Mary West, and her daughter are to have all his plate except this precious utensil, which, with the residue of his fortune, he evidently desired should descend to his brother Eliab, as a memorial doubtless of the pleasure he had often enjoyed over its contents, for coffee was not yet a common drink. Another coffee-house in London was opened just after the Restoration. It was kept by an old sergeant of Monk’s army.
Among some papers at the College of Physicians relating to Harvey, which were collected by Dr. Macmichael, is one in the handwriting of Dr. Heberden, which runs as follows:—
“1761, May 29th.—Mrs. Harvey (great-niece to Dr. Harvey) told me that the Doctor lived at his brother’s at Roehampton the latter part of his life. That he used to walk out in a morning, combing his hair in the fields.
“That he was humoursome and would sit down exactly at the time he had appointed for dinner whether the company was come or not. That his salt-cellar was always filled with sugar which he used to eat instead of salt.
“That if the gout was very painful to him in the night he would rise and put his feet into cold water.”
This list of harmless little eccentricities is further enlarged by Aubrey, who says: “He was always very contemplative and was wont to frequent the leads of Cockaine House, which his brother Eliab had bought, having there his several stations in regard to the sun and the wind for the indulgence of his fancy; whilst at the house at Combe in Surrey, he had caves made in the ground in which he delighted in the summer-time to meditate.” He also loved darkness, telling Aubrey “that he could then best contemplate.” “His thoughts working would many times keep him from sleeping, in which case his way was to rise from his bed and walk about his chamber in his shirt till he was pretty cool and then return to his bed and sleep very comfortably.” He was ready at all times to communicate what he knew and to instruct any that were modest and respectful to him, and when Aubrey was starting for Italy “he dictated to me what to see, what company to keep, what books to read, and how to manage my studies—in short, he bid me go to the fountain head and read Aristotle, Cicero, and Avicenna, and did call the Neoteriques” by a foul name.