[12] Vide Records of Harvey from the Journals of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, pub. by James Paget, 8vo, London, 1846. Harvey, on his appointment to attend the Duke of Lennox, applied to have Dr. Smith chosen his substitute; but the governors proved recusant: “It was thought fit that they should have further knowledge and satisfaction of the sufficiency of the said Mr. Smith;” and they very shortly afterwards gave Dr. Andrews, first, the reversion of Harvey’s office, and by and by they formally appointed him Harvey’s deputy or substitute.
[13] Vide Mr. Paget’s publication already quoted, p. 13.
[14] Vide his procedure for the removal of a sarcocele, ‘On Generation,’ p. 254. “My Lady Howard had a cancer in her breast, which he did cut off and seared.” (Aubrey, Lives, p. 386.) He speaks of having been called to a young woman in labour in a state of coma (On Generation, p. 534); and in another place (Ib. p. 437) he says, in connexion with the subject of labour, ‘Haud inexpertus loquuor,’—I speak not without experience. Vide also p. 545, where he passes his fingers into the uterus and brings away “a mole of the size of a goose’s egg;” and p. 546, where he dilates the uterine orifice with an iron instrument, and uses a speculum, &c.
[15] The embassy left England the 7th of April, and returned about Christmas of the same year. Vide Crowne’s ‘True Relation,’ &c., 4to, London, 1637.
[16] Slegel (P. M.) De Sanguinis Motu Comment., 4to, Hamb. 1650, informs us in his Preface, that, whilst living with Hofmann in 1638, he had sedulously tried to bring him to admit the circulation; Slegel goes on to say, however, that it was in vain, and indeed that Harvey himself had failed to convince him: “Neque tantum valuit Harveus, vel coram (i. e. in his presence) cum salutaret Hofmannum in itinere Germanico, vel literis,” &c. The old man, nevertheless, seems not to have been altogether deaf to reason; Slegel had hopes of him at last had he but lived: “Nec dubito quin concessisset tandem in nostra castra.”
[17] Lives, &c., vol. ii, p. 379.
[18] The author of the life of Harvey in the ‘General Dictionary, Historical and Critical’ (folio, Lond. 1738), the original of all our other lives of Harvey, is certainly in error when he recognizes Harvey as the type of the Physician who takes part in the Dialogue of Hy. Neville’s Plato Redivivus, and assumes that he “relieved his abstruser studies by conversations in politics.” In a third edition of Neville’s work I find it stated that the physician who did so was Dr. Lower.
[19] Feb. 12, an. 164-3/4. “A motion this day made for Dr. Mieklethwayte to be recommended to the warden and masters of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, to be physician, in the place of Dr. Harvey, who hath withdrawn himself from his charge, and is retired to the party in arms against the Parliament.” (Journals of the House of Commons, iii, 397.)
[20] I find a kind of obloquy commonly thrown on the memory of Nathaniel Brent for what is styled his desertion of Charles; but he never deserted Charles; he never belonged to him. Brent, forsooth, had received knighthood at the royal hands in former years; but knighthoods were sometimes forced upon men in those days for the sake of the fees, and often as means of attaching men of mark and likelihood. The truth is that Brent, who was a profound lawyer and scholar, as well as a traveller, was greatly attached to Archbishop Abbott, who had patronized and advanced him through the whole course of his life. In the differences that took place between Abbott, in common with all moderate men, and Archbishop Laud, Brent naturally sided with his friend, led to do so, however, not by blind attachment only, but by natural constitution of mind, which appears to have abhorred the notion of a theocracy in the civil government of England, and to have been unfitted to comprehend the divinity that some conceive to inhere in despotism. Brent was, in fact, a man of such note, that Charles had tried to win him to his party many years before by various attentions and the free gift of knighthood; but this was in times when men were not required to take a side, when they stood naturally neutral. When the time came that it behoved him to show under what flag he meant to fight, Brent was not wanting to his natural bias and to independence. He therefore left Oxford when it was taken possession of by the royal forces, among other adherents of the popular cause, and was simply true to his principles, in nothing false to a patron or benefactor.
[21] “Prithee leave off thy gunning and stay here; I will bring thee into practice.” (Aubrey, Op. cit. p. 381.)