90 THE ENGINES OF THE HUMAN BODY 



made three centuries ago by William Harvey. We are 

 to follow him from a May morning in 1593 when, as a 

 lad of 15, he set out from the King's School, Canterbury 

 — a school which still nestles in the shadow of the great 

 cathedral, — to become a student of Caius College, in 

 the University of Cambridge, until 1616 when, at the age 

 of .38, he gave his first anatomy lecture in the College 

 of Physicians — again under the shadow of a cathedral — 

 old St Paul's in London. The journey began when 

 Elizabeth was Queen and ended as King James became 

 seated on her throne. It was a proud time for England. 

 Shakespeare was pouring the boundless riches of his mind 

 In her lap, and her sons, while laying the foundations of 

 an Empire in the East and a Republic in the West, were 

 flooding her shores with a rising tide of commerce. 

 Indeed it was in this tide that Harvey was born ; his 

 father lived at Folkestone, and shared in the prosperity 

 of the port ; there Harvey was born on a highway to the 

 uncharted seas, with the career of a buccaneer open to 

 him. Fate turned his face in another direction and made 

 this quiet, modest Elizabethan gentleman a pioneer in a 

 realm towards which Englishmen of that time were not 

 drawn — the realm of Natural Knowledge. This new 

 kind of buccaneer was a lad of slight build and small 

 stature, with dark intelligent eyes, black hair, delicate 

 features, loving his pen rather than his sword ; and yet 

 when pushed to it could wield a mental rapier with 

 deadly effect. 



We thus make the acquaintance of William Harvey 

 as a lad of 1 5, on his way to become a student of Caius 

 College, Cambridge — one which attracted then, as it still 

 does, young Englishmen who wish to become physicians. 

 We need not spend time on his student career at Cam- 

 bridge, because the medical knowledge then taught in 

 England had to be imported — imported from the busy 

 flourishing universities in the north of Italy. It was then, 

 as it is now : young Englishmen in search of knowledge 

 wish to drink at the fountainhead, no matter what the 

 trouble or the expense may be. Hence at the close of the 



