xxiv THE LIFE OF HARVEY. 



generation. Whatever the defects in Charles's public and po- 

 litical character, he must always be admitted to have been a man 

 of elegant tastes, and of amiable temper and refined manners in 

 private. It was certainly worthy of the Prince who appreciated, 

 whilst he commanded, the talents of a Vandyke and a Rubens, 

 that he also prized and encouraged the less brilliant, but not 

 less useful genius of a Harvey. 



Harvey, as a physician, must now have been at the zenith of 

 his reputation; he was physician in ordinary to the king, and 

 we have seen him in the same position towards some of the 

 foremost men of the age. His general practice, too, must 

 have been extensive, and, if we look at the sum he is stated 

 to have left behind him in money, his emoluments large. But 

 he had not any lengthened harvest for all his early pains ; his 

 connexion with the court by and by came in the way of his 

 continuing to improve his position ; and then, grievous to re- 

 late, the appearance of the admirable Exercises on the Heart 

 and Blood gave a decided and severe check to his professional 

 prosperity. John Aubrey tells us he had "heard him 

 (Harvey) say, that after his book on the ' Circulation of the 

 Blood ' came out, he fell mightily in his practice ; 'twas 

 believed by the vulgar that he was crack-brained, and all the 

 physitians were against him." 1 Writing many years after- 

 wards, when the causes particularly indicated above had 

 conspired to make Harvey's practice less, Aubrey informs us 

 further, that "though all his profession would allow him to 

 be an excellent anatomist, I never heard any that admired 

 his therapeutique way. I knew several practitioners in this 

 town that would not have given threepence for one of his 

 bills (prescriptions), and [who said] that a man could hardly 

 tell by his bills what he did aim at/' 2 So has ft mostly been 

 with those who have added to the sum of human knowledge ! 



1 Aubrey, Lives of Eminent Persons, 8vo, London 1813 

 3 Ib., vol. ii, p. 383. 



