[31] Will no one erect a monument to Garth? He and his wife are buried under the communion-table in the chancel of Harrow church, with nothing but the following rude inscription to mark the spot:—
“In this Vault Lies ye Body of ye Lady Garth, Late Wife of Sir Samuel Garth, Kt. Who Dyed ye 14th of May, In ye year 1717.
Sir Samuel Garth, Obijt jane: the 18th, 1718.”
[32] This elegant villa had been recently purchased by the poet, with part of the money he had received for his translation of the Iliad; an enormous sum in those days, between five and six thousand pounds: but what was that in comparison with the hundred and twenty thousand pounds which the great popular author of the present time has received for the various works with which he has delighted and instructed the world?
[33] Now more than 300 years.
[34] In the British Museum there are two copies of Linacre’s translation of the fourteen books of Galen’s Methodus Medendi. They are in the finest possible condition, and are the presentation copies of Henry the Eighth and Cardinal Wolsey. The title of the King’s copy is illuminated with the royal arms; that of Wolsey’s is decorated with the Cardinal’s hat. On the binding of his Majesty’s are the royal arms and motto impressed; the dedication to the Cardinal is in manuscript: they are both on spotless vellum.
[35] Dr. Alexander Read gave, by will, £100 to ornament the Anatomical Theatre.
[36] Dr. Prujean.
[37] In March, 1823, the late Earl of Winchilsea presented to the College some anatomical preparations which belonged to his ancestor Dr. Harvey; for the niece of Harvey was married to the Lord Chancellor Nottingham, of whom the late Earl was the direct descendant, and possessed his property. At Burleigh on the Hill, where these curious preparations had been carefully kept, is a fine picture of the illustrious physician. Lord Winchilsea, in presenting them to the College of Physicians, expressed a hope that these specimens of the scientific researches of Harvey might be deemed worthy of their acceptance, and thought that they could nowhere be so well placed as in the hands of that learned body, of which he had been so distinguished a member. The preparations themselves consist of six tables or boards, upon which are spread the different nerves and blood-vessels, carefully dissected out of the body: in one of them the semi-lunar valves of the aorta are distinctly to be seen. When Harvey delivered his Lumleian Lectures, he may frequently have exhibited these preparations, and by their help explained some points of his new doctrine of the circulation of the blood. They were most probably made by Harvey himself; and he might have learned the art in Italy, for he studied at Padua in 1602. A few years afterwards, on his return to England, he was appointed anatomical and surgical lecturer to the College of Physicians, and in 1616, read a course of lectures there, of which the original manuscripts are preserved in the British Museum. In the College of Surgeons are some preparations similar to these of Harvey, which originally belonged to the Museum of the Royal Society, kept at Gresham College. They were the generous gift of John Evelyn, Esquire, who bought them at Padua, where he saw them, with great industry and exactness (according to the best method then used) taken out of the body of a man, and very curiously spread upon four large tables. They were the work of Fabritius Bartoletus, then Veslingius’s assistant there, and afterwards physician to the King of Poland. Vide Catalogue or Description of the natural and artificial Rarities belonging to the Royal Society, etc. By Nehemiah Grew, 1681.
Since the time of Harvey, the method of preserving different parts of the body has undergone many changes, and much improvement; and the history of the art would be a subject of curious investigation.