HIS PUBLIC CAREER. six 



Epitaphs may not always be authorities implicitly to be 

 relied on; but we unhesitatingly accept of everything to the 

 credit of William Harvey's mother as a portion of our faith. 



At ten years of age, Harvey was put to the grammar 

 school of Canterbury, having, doubtless, already imbibed the 

 rudiments of his English education at home under the eye of 

 his excellent mother. In the grammar school of Canterbury 

 he was, of course, initiated into a knowledge of the Latin and 

 Greek languages the routine practice then as now ; and 

 there he seems to have remained until he was about fifteen 

 years of age. At sixteen he was removed to Caius-Gonvil 

 College, Cambridge, 1 where he spent from three to four years 

 in the study of classics, dialectics, and physics, such discipline 

 being held peculiarly calculated to fit the mind of the future 

 physician for entering on the study of the difficult science of 

 medicine. At nineteen (1597) he took his degree of B.A. 

 aud quitted the University. Cambridge, in Harvey's time, was 

 a school of logic and divinity rather than of physic. Then, even 

 as at the present day, the student of physic obtained the principal 

 part of his medical education from another than his alma mater. 

 In the 16th and 17th centuries, France and Italy boasted 

 medical schools of higher repute than any in Europe ; and 

 to one or other of these must the young Englishman who 

 dedicated himself to physic repair, in order to furnish him- 

 self with the lore that was indispensable in his profession. 

 Harvey chose Italy ; and Padua, about the year 1598, number- 

 ing such men as Fabricius of Aquapendente, Julius Casserius, 

 and Jo. Thomas Minadous among its professors, Harvey's 

 preference of that school was well founded. There, then, it 

 was, under these and other able masters, that our Harvey 



1 " Gul. Harvey, Filius Thorase Harvey, Yeoman Cantianus, ex Oppido Folkston, 

 educatus in Ludo Literario Cantuar. ; natus annos 16, admissus pensionarius minor 

 in commeatum scholarium ultimo die Mai, 1593." (Regist. Coll. Caii Cautab. 1593.) 



