His observations on the process of generation in ifammaZia were confined chiefly to the deer species, of which he was enabled to obtain numerous specimens by the liberality of Charles I., who allowed him to take them from the royal parks. He supposed conception to take place either Io the uterus or its horn. This view, as is now well known, Is incorrect. Ills description of the vessels and of the placenta is of considerable value.
Harvey noticed the late union of the lateral parts of the upper lip, and aligned it as a cause of the frequency of harelip. Ho claims to have been the first to discover the connection between the bronchi and the abdominal cells in birds, and to show that in all birds, serpents, oviparous reptiles, quadruped; and fishes, kidneys and ureters exist s fact unnoticed by Aii.totle and all succeeding writers. This account is, we apprehend, sufficient to show the extent and importance of the discoveries of Harvey in this branch of physiology, and to make us withhold our assent to the assertion of Sprengel (sect. 12, ch. 6), that the treatise ' be Genemtione' is unworthy of the discoverer of the circulation.
In 1623 Harvey was appointed physician extraordinary to James I., with a promise of succeeding on the first vacancy to the phyeicitmahip in ordinary, the duties of which ho actually performed. He was after wards physician to Charles I., and was in the habit of exhibiting to him and to the most enlightened persons of his court the motion of the heart atirthe other phenomena upon which his doctrines were founded. Duriug the civil war he travelled with the king, and while staying for a short time in Oxford was made by him master of Merton College, and received the degree of Doctor of Medicine. lie held the masterehip however for only a few months, when Brent, who had been expelled by the king for favouring the parliamentary cause, was replaced by that party, which bad now gained the asceodency. Soon after his house was pluudered and burned by the same party, and unfortunately several unpublished works, of which we have only notices in his other writings, were destroyed. The latter years of his life were
chiefly spent at his country-house at Lambeth, or at his brother's near Richmond. In 1654 he was elected President of the College of Physicians, but in consequence of his age and infirmities ho was induced to decline that honourable office. Ile testified his regard however for the society by presenting them with his library, and conveying over to them, during his lifetime, a farm which had been left him by his father. He died ou the 3rd of June 1657 in the eightieth year of his age, and was buried at Hempstead in Essex, where a monument was erected to his memory.
The best edition of Harvey's works, which wore written in correct and elegant Latin, is that published by the College of Physicians in 1 vol. 410 in 1766, with an engraving by Hall from the portrait by Cornelius Jensen, in the college library. They consist of the Baer cited° de M ttCordis et Sanguinis ;" Exercitationes dux Anntomices de Circulations Sanguinis, ad J. Itiolanum, FiL ;" Exercitationes de Generatione Animalitun ;" A.natomia Thomas Perri; and nine Letters to celebrated contemporaries on different anatomical subjects. Among the works destroyed were—' Observatiouee de usu Lieois ;" De Motu Local ;" Observationee Medicinalea '—' De Amore Libidine of Coitu Animalium ;" De Insectorum Genomtione ;" De Quantitate Sanguinis Singulis Cordis Pulsationibus Protrusa ; and Tracbstum Physlolo gicaim.' Two other manuscript works by him are preserved in the Library of the British Museum ; one,' De Musculis et Motu Animalium Loeali ; the other, De Anatorne Universali ; iu the latter of which, bearing date April 161d, the principal propositions of the doctrine of the circulation are contained.
(Life. prefixed to his works; Sprengel, Iliztory of Medicine.)