HARVEY, 'WILLIAM, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, was b. at Folk stone, in Kent, on April 1, 1578. His father was a yeoman; and five of his brothers were merchants of weight and substance, magni et copiosi, in the city of London, while the sixth sat as member of parliament for Hythe.
After six years' attendance at the grammar-school at Canterbury, Harvey, being then 10 years of age, was entered at Caius college, Cambridge. He took his first degree in arts in 1597, and having selected physic for his profession, left Cambridge about the year 1590, and proceeded to the university of Padua, then the most celebrated school of medicine in the world. having passed five years at that school in attendance on the lectures of Fahrieius de Aquapendente, .Tulius Casserins, and other eminent men, who then adorned that university, he obtained his diploma as doctor of medicine in 1602. die returned to England in the same year and after doctor's degree from his original Cambridge, settled in London as a physician. In 1609 he was appointed physician to St. Bartholomew's hospital, and in 1615 Lumleian lecturer at the college of physicians—an office then held for life; and it is generally supposed that in his first course of lectures (in the spring of 1016) he expounded those original and com plete views of the circulation of the blood with which his name is indelibly associated. It was not till the year 1628 that he gave his views to the world at large, in his celebrated treatise entitled Erereitatio Anatoniica de Motu, Gordis et Sanguinis (4to, Franc.), having then, as he states in the preface, for nine years or more gone on demonstrating the sub ject in his college lectures, illustrating it by new and additional arguments, and freeing it from the objections raised by the skillful amongst anatomists. Shortly after Harvey's election as Lumleian lecturer in 1617 or 1618), he was appointed physicia?-extraordinary to James I., and in the beginning of 1630 was engaged "to accompany the young duke of Lennox in his travels beyond seas." In 1632 lie was formally chosen physician to Charles I.; and in 1633 we find that his absence, "by reason of his attendance on the king's majesty," from St. Bartholomew's hospital was complained of, and that Dr. Andrews was appointed as his substitute, "but without prejudice to him in his yearly fee or in any other respect"—a procedure which shows the esteem in which Harvey was held. We learn from Aubrey that he accompanied Thomas Howard, earl of Arundel, in his embassy to the emperor in 1636; and during this journey lie publicly demon strated to Caspar Hofmann, the distinguished professor of Nuremberg, and one of the chief opponents of his views, the anatomical particulars which made the circulation of , the blood a necessary conclusion—a demonstration which, it is reported, was satisfactory t to all present save Hofmann himself, who still continued to urge futile objections.
attended the king in his various expeditions, and was present with him at the battle of Edgehill (Oct. 23, 1642). "During the fight," says Aubrey, "the prince and duke of York were committed to his care. He told me that lie withdrew with them under a hedge, and out of his pockett a booke, and read. But he had not read very long before a bullet of a great gun grazed on the ground neare him, which made him remove his station." He accompanied the king after the battle to Oxford, where, according to the same authority, "became several times to our college (Trinity), to George Bathurst, B. who had a hen to hatch eggs in his chamber, which they opened daily to see the progress and way of generation ;" and where the honorary degree of doctor of physic was conferred on him in the Dec. of that year. In 1645 he was, by the king's mandate, elected warden of Merton college; but on the surrender of Oxford to the parliament in July, 1646, lie left the university, and returned to London. Ile was now 68 years of age, and seems to have withdrawn himself from practice, and from all further partici pation in the fortunes of his royal master. During the remainder of his life, lie was usually the guest of one or other of his brothers, now men of wealth and high standing in the city; and it was at the country-house of one of them that Dr. Ent visited him at Christmas, 1650, and after "many difficulties" (sec Dr. Ent's epistle dedicatory, in Willis's translation of Harvey's works) obtained from him the MS. of his work on the generation of animals, which was published in the following year. under the title of Exereitutiones de Generations Animalium, quibus aceedunt quadant de Tartu, de Membranis ac Turnoribus Uteri, et de Conceptions, 4to.
From this period to the time of his death, the chief object which occupied his mind was the welfare and improvement of the college of physicians, to the buildings of which he erected a handsome addition at his own cost. In 1654 he was elected, in his absence, president of the college, but he declined the office, on account of his age and infirmities. In July, 1656, lie resigned his Lumleian lectureship, which he had held for more than forty years: and in taking leave of the college, presented to it his patrimonial estate at Burmarsu, in Kent, then valued at £56 per annum, He did not long survive, but, worn down by repeated attacks of gout. died at London, June 3, 1657, and was buried in a vault at Hempstead, in Essex. which his brother Elia had built.
A handsome edition of Harvey's works, in Latin, revised by Drs. Lawrence and Mark Akenside, was published college of physicians in 1766. The best edition, in English, is that of Dr. Willis, published by the Sydenham society in 1847.