HIS PUBLIC CAREER. xxvii 



but the hand or instrument of the physician ; the dignitary 

 mostly applied to his famulus when he required a wen re- 

 moved, or a limb lopped, or a broken head plastered ; though 

 Harvey it seems did not feel himself degraded by taking up 

 the knife or practising midwifery. 1 Nevertheless, in these 

 latter days Royal Colleges of Physicians have been seen arro- 

 gating superiority over Royal Colleges of Surgeons, and Royal 

 Colleges both of Physicians and Surgeons combining to keep 

 the practitioner of obstetrics under. 



From the year 1633 Harvey appears to have devoted much 

 of his time to attendance upon the king and retainers of the 

 court, so that we have little or no particular information of 

 his movements for several years. We know, however, from 

 Aubrey, that he accompanied Thomas Howard, Earl of Arun- 

 del, whose physician he was, in his extraordinary embassy to 

 the emperor, in the year 1636. 2 In the course of this journey, 

 Harvey had an opportunity of visiting several of the principal 

 cities of Germany, and of making the acquaintance of many 

 of the leading medical men of the time. The place of date 

 of one of Harvey's letters, that namely to Caspar Hofmann, 

 from Nuremberg, in the month of May, 1636, has not been 

 noticed ; but his presence with the Earl of Arundel at once ac- 

 counts for it ', and we therefore see that Harvey's offer to 

 demonstrate to the distinguished professor of Nuremberg, the 

 anatomical particulars which made the circulation of the blood 

 a necessary conclusion was no vain boast, made at a distance, 



1 Vide his procedure for the removal of a sarcocele, ' On Generation,' p. 254. 

 " My Lady Howard had a cancer in her breast, which he did cut off and seared." 

 (Aubrey, Lives, p. 386.) He speaks of having been called to a young woman in 

 labour in a state of coma (On Generation, p. 534) ; and in another place (Ib. p. 437) 

 he says, in connexion with the subject of labour, < Haud inexpertus loquuor,' 

 I speak not without experience. Vide also p. 545, where he passes his fingers into 

 the uterus and brings away " a mole of the size of a goose's egg;" and p. 546, 

 where he dilates the uterine orifice with an iron instrument, and uses a speculum, &c. 



2 The embassy left England the 7th of April, and returned about Christmas of 

 the same year. Vide Crowne's ' True Relation,' &c., 4to, London, 1637. 



