A solan goose was looked upon for many years as a delicacy. Pennant states that about the middle of the seventeenth century a young one was sold for 20d. He also quotes the following newspaper cutting:—“Solan Goose.—There is to be sold by John Walton, Jun., at his stand at the Poultry, Edinburgh, all lawful days in the week, wind and weather serving, good and fresh solan geese. Any who have occasion for the same, may have them at reasonable rates.—Aug. 5, 1768.”
[5] The outhouses, Sir James Paget tells us, were the Lock Hospitals belonging to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. There were two outhouses, one in Kent Street, Southwark, the other in Kingsland. They were founded originally as Lazar-houses for the use of lepers. The “Lock” in the Borough was used for women; the “Spital” in Kingsland for men. Each contained about thirty beds and was under the charge of a guider, guide or surgeon, who was appointed by the Governors of the Hospital, and received from them in Harvey’s time an annual stipend of four pounds a year and fourpence a day for the diet of each patient under their care.
[6] This and the two following regulations illustrate in a very remarkable manner the complete subjection in which the physicians held the surgeons in Harvey’s time and for many subsequent years. It was not until Abernethy was surgeon to the hospital, at the beginning of the century, that the surgeons were allowed to prescribe more than a black draught or blue pill for their patients until the prescription had been countersigned by one of the physicians.
[7] And no wonder, for it meant that their prescriptions were to be made public, whilst those of the Physician were kept secret [sec. 16], and at this time every practitioner had some secret remedy in which he put especial trust.
[8] The kindness of Dr. Norman Moore enables me to reproduce a facsimile of Harvey’s handwriting taken from his “muscular lecture.” The block appeared originally in the Lancet, vol. i., 1895, p. 136.
[9] Perhaps the Essay on the Circulation of the Blood addressed to Riolanus, published at Cambridge in 1649.
[10] The systole of the heart means its contraction: the diastole of the heart means its dilatation.
[11] Cardinal Nicholas de Cusa [Cusanus] is said to have counted the pulse by a clock about the middle of the sixteenth century, but Dr. Norman Moore points out to me that in reality he counted the water-clock, then in use, by the pulse. The number of pulse-beats was not measured by means of a watch until after the publication, in 1707, of Sir John Floyer’s book, “The Physician’s Pulse-watch, or an Essay to explain the old art of feeling the Pulse.” In the time of Harvey and long afterwards physicians contented themselves with estimating the character of the pulse, rather than its precise rate.
[12] Dr. Norman Moore suggests that this young nobleman was possibly Philip Herbert (d. 1669), son of Philip Herbert, the second son of Henry, Earl of Pembroke (d. 1648), created Earl of Montgomery 1605-1606, and Lord Chamberlain.