Ixxxii THE LIFE OF HARVEY. 



Italy) he dictated to me what to see, what company to keep, 

 what bookes to read, how to manage my studies in short, he 

 bid me go to the fountain head and read Aristotle, Cicero, 

 Avicenna, and did call the Neoteriques s t-breeches." 1 



Harvey was not content merely to gather knowledge ; he 

 digested and arranged it under the guidance of the faculties 

 which compare and reason. " He was always very contem- 

 plative," pursues Aubrey, " and was wont to frequent the 

 leads of Cockaine-house, which his brother Eliab had bought, 

 having there his several stations in regard to the sun and the 

 wind, for the indulgence of his fancy. At the house at 

 Combe, in Surrey," which, by the way, appears to have been 

 purchased of Mr. Cockaine, as well as the mansion in the city, 

 " he had caves made in the ground, in which he delighted in 

 the summer time to meditate. He also loved darkness," telling 

 Aubrey, " ' that he could then best contemplate/ His thoughts 

 working, would many times keep him from sleeping, in which 

 case his way was to rise from his bed and walk about his 

 chamber in his shirt, till he was pretty cool, and then return 

 to his bed and sleep very comfortably." He treated the prin- 

 cipal bodily ailment with which he was afflicted (gout) some- 

 what in the same manner. The fever of the mind being 

 subdued by the application of cold air to the body at large, 

 the fever in the blood, induced by gout, was abated by the use of 

 cold water to the affected member : " He would then sitt with 

 his legges bare, though it were frost, on the leads of Cockaine- 

 house, putt them into a payle of water till he was almost 

 dead with cold, and betake himself to his stove, and so 'twas 

 gone." 2 



Harvey, besides being physician to the king and household, 

 held the same responsible situation in the families of many of 

 the most distinguished among the nobles and men of eminence 

 1 Aubrey, p. 383. 2 Ibid., p. 384. 



