HIS PUBLIC CAREER. xxi 



bation having passed, he was duly admitted to the distinction 

 to which he aspired. 



We do not now lose sight of Harvey for any length of time : 

 for a number of years, in the beginning of his career, he was 

 probably occupied, like young physicians of the present day, 

 among the poor in circumstance and afflicted in body, taking vast 

 pains without prospect of pecuniary reward, but actuated by the 

 ennobling sense of lightening the sum of human misery, and 

 carried away, uncaring personal respects, by that ardent love of 

 his profession which distinguishes every true votary of the art 

 medical. Harvey, however, had not only zeal, talents, and 

 accomplishments ; he had, what was no less needful to success : 

 powerful friends, united brothers, with the will and the ability 

 to help him forward in the career he had chosen. 



In the beginning of 1609, he made suit for the reversion 

 of the office of physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, then 

 held by Dr. Wilkinson, and backing his suit by such powerful 

 missives as the king's letters recommendatory to the governors 

 of the house, and farther, producing testimonials of compe- 

 tency from Dr. Adkinson, President of the College of Physi- 

 cians, and others, his petition was granted, and he was 

 regularly chosen physician in future of St. Bartholomew's 

 Hospital. Dr. Wilkinson having died in the course of the 

 year, Harvey was first appointed to discharge the physician's 

 duties ad interim, and by and by he was formally elected to 

 the vacant office, 14th October, 1609. 



In his new position Harvey must have found ample scope 

 for acquiring tact and readiness in the practical details of his 

 profession; though St. Bartholomew's Hospital in his day 

 appears to have borne a nearer resemblance to the dispensary 

 of these times than to the hospital as we now understand the 

 term. Harvey was now in his thirty-second year, and, brought 

 before the public at so suitable an age, in an office of such 

 responsibility, he must soon have risen into eminence as a 



