xxii THE LIFE OF HARVEY. 



physician and come into practice. Harvey, indeed, appears 

 subsequently to have been physician to many of the most dis- 

 tinguished men of his age, among others to the Lord Chan- 

 cellor Bacon, to Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, &c. 



In the year 1615, Harvey, then in the thirty- seventh year of 

 his age, was happily chosen to deliver the lectures on anatomy 

 and surgery at the College of Physicians, founded by Dr. 

 Richard Caldwal, and it is generally allowed that in the very 

 first course he gave, which commenced in the month of April 

 of the following year, he presented a detailed exposition of 

 the views concerning the circulation of the blood, which have 

 made his name immortal. Long years had indeed been 

 labouring at the birth which then first saw the light ; civilized 

 Europe, ancient and modern, had been slowly contributing 

 and accumulating materials for its production; Harvey at 

 length appeared, and the idea took fashion in his mind and 

 emerged complete, like Pallas, perfect from the brain of 

 Jove. 



The circulation, it would seem, continued to form one of the 

 subjects in the lectures on anatomy, which Harvey went on de- 

 livering for many years afterwards at the College of Physicians ; 

 but it was not till ] 628 that he gave his views to the world at large 

 in his celebrated treatise on the 'Motion of the Heart andBlood/ 1 

 having already, as he tells us in his preface, for nine years 

 and more, gone on demonstrating the subject before his 

 learned auditory, illustrating it by new and additional argu- 

 ments, and freeing it from the objections raised by the skilful 

 among anatomists. 



Some few years after his appointment as their lecturer by 

 the College of Physicians, Harvey must have been chosen one 

 of the physicians extraordinary to the reigning sovereign, 

 James I. The fame of Harvey's new views of the motions 



1 Exercitatio-Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis, 4to, Francof. ad Moen., 1628. 



