William Harvey 295 



almost Harvey's alone. His other great work, " Exercita- 

 tiones de Generatione Animalium," is of secondary import- 

 ance. It shows marvellous powers of observation and very 

 laborious research; but although, to a great extent, it led 

 the way in embryology, it was shortly superseded by the work 

 of those who had the compound microscope at their command. 

 The poet, Cowley, a man of wide culture, wrote an " Ode 

 on Harvey," in which his achievement was contrasted with 

 a failing common to scientific men of his own time, and, 

 so far as we can see, of all time : 



" Harvey sought for Truth in Truth's own Book 

 The Creatures, which by God Himself was writ; 



And wisely thought 'twas fit, 

 Not to read Comments only upon it, 

 But on th' original itself to look. 

 Methinks in Arts great Circle, others stand 

 Lock't up together, Hand in Hand, 



Every one leads as he is led, 



The same bare path they tread, 

 A Dance like Fairies a Fantastick round, 

 But neither change their motion, nor their ground : 

 Had Harvey to this Road confin'd his wit, 

 His noble Circle of the Blood, had been untrodden yet." 



Harvey's death is recorded in a characteristic seventeenth 

 century sentence, taken from the unpublished pages of 

 Baldwin Harvey's " Bustorum Aliquot Reliquiae " : 



" Of William Harvey, the most fortunate anatomist, 

 the blood ceased to move on the third day of the Ides 

 of June, in the year 1657, the continuous movement of 

 which in all men, moreover, he had most truly asserted 



"Ev Tf Tpo\<a irdvTfs KCU fvl nacri rpo^oi l 



1 The writer is indebted for this quotation to Dr. Norman Moore's 

 " History of the Study of Medicine in the British Isles," Oxford, 

 1908. He may here add a short note on the " Tabulae Harveianse," 

 presented in 1823 by the Earl of Winchelsea to the Royal College of 

 Physicians. Sir Thomas Barlow, in his Harveian Oration of 1916, 

 threw much doubt on these " Tavole " having belonged to Harvey; 

 and Dr. Archibald Malloch, of the Canadian Army Medical Corps, 

 has, in his recently published lives of Sir John Finch and Sir Thomas 

 Baines, brought forward almost conclusive evidence that these 

 " Tavole " belonged to the former of these two gentlemen, and were 

 brought by him from Padua, where, with his friend, he had studied 

 medicine. 



