WILLIAM, the discoverer of the functions of the heart, and of the mode of circulation of the blood, was born at Folkestone, in Kent, on the 1st April 1578. He was the eldest of seven sons and two daughters. His father, a Kentish yeoman, must have been in some degree wealthy, as his sons were brought up to pursuits for the successful practice of which capital is necessary. Five of the younger brothers were Levant merchants of wealth and standing in the city of London. John, the second son, was attached to the court as king's footman, was one of the king's receivers for Lincolnshire, and sat in Parliament as member for Hythe; and William, the eldest, went to Cambridge to be educated for the practice of physic.

At the age of ten years Harvey went to the grammar-school at Canterbury, where he was doubtless initiated into a knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages. He remained there five or six years; and at the age of sixteen was entered a pensioner of Caius' College, Cambridge, the 31st May 1593. At nineteen he took his B.A. degree, and left Cambridge to study medicine at the University of Padua, then of wide celebrity as a medical school. Here he had the advantage of cultivating the medical sciences under the ablest masters of the day, inasmuch as amongst the eminent men there congregated were the celebrated Fabricius of Aquapendente, Julius Casserius, and J. T. Minadorus. To the first-mentioned Harvey doubtless owed his philosophic spirit of inquiry, and that inductive method of research which led him to the greatest discovery in physiology.

Having passed five years at Padua, Harvey, then aged twenty-four (1602), graduated as doctor of medicine, and received his academic authority to practise and to teach his science and art. In the same year he returned to England, and graduated again in his own University of Cambridge. His next step was to commence practice, and settle for life. To these ends he took up his residence in London, and married the daughter of Dr Lancelot Brown, a physician of the day. In both these steps he was probably guided by a wise discretion, feeling assured that a professional father-in-law, and five brothers, influential and esteemed city merchants, would be valuable aids to him in getting into practice. He was now in his twenty-sixth year.

Harvey's connection with the Royal College of Physicians of London seems to date from the earliest period of his professional career, for his name is on the roll of candidates for the fellowship of the college in 1604; and three years afterwards (1607) he was duly admitted a fellow of the college.

In the beginning of 1609, the health of Dr Wilkinson, physician to St Bartholomew's Hospital, beginning to fail, Harvey, being in his thirty-second year, sought the reversion of the office, as was then customary, and in support of his application brought forward testimonials of fitness from the president of the College of Physicians, Dr Adkinson, and "diverse others doctors of the auncientest" of the college, together with the king's letters commendatory. Harvey's application was granted, and Dr Wilkinson having died in the course of the year, he was formally elected to the vacant office (which he filled for thirty-four years), on the 14th October 1609. At the time of his election, the steward of the hospital was bound under an obligation to Harvey for a debt of £52, 10s., due to his brother John, at that time attached to the court, and had law proceedings taken against him for the recovery of the money.

From this time may be dated Harvey's rise to distinction. In 1615 he was appointed to deliver the course of lectures on anatomy and surgery at the College of Physicians founded by Dr Richard Caldwell, and in the month of April of the following year fulfilled the duties of his office. It is generally thought that in this first course he presented an exposition of his views of the circulation of the blood, and which continued to be one of the subjects of the lectures on anatomy which he delivered for several successive years at the college. It was not, however, until the year 1628 that he published, at Frankfort, in 4to, his Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus, dedicating it to the king.

About this time he must have become connected with the court more closely as physician-extraordinary to James I., an office he filled during the remainder of that monarch's reign. Five or six years after his death (1632) he was appointed physician to his successor, Charles I. Previously to this, 1630, he had been sent by the king to travel with the Duke of Lennox, at which time he resigned the office of treasurer to the Royal College of Physicians.

Charles I. gave his royal patronage to Harvey's scientific researches, as well as to his practical skill. He seems to have taken great interest in the former, for he had several demonstrations made before him by Harvey of the punctum saliens in the embryo chick and deer, and to have shared Harvey's anatomical researches on the does he placed at the disposal of the latter.

From this time Harvey's movements were closely connected with those of the court. In 1633 he accompanied Charles on his journey into Scotland, and in 1636 he went with Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, whose physician he was, on his embassy extraordinary to the Emperor of Germany. It was on this occasion that, in May of this year, he gave a public demonstration of the circulation at Nuremberg, to satisfy the doubts of the distinguished Professor of Nuremberg, Casper Hoffmann, but who, however, remained incredulous. In 1639 he accompanied Charles on his first hostile expedition into Scotland, and again in the following year. He was also present with his king at the battle of Edgehill. During the fight he had the prince and the Duke of York entrusted to his care, and he told Aubrey that he withdrew them under a hedge, and took a book out of his pocket to read; but he had not read very long before a bullet of a great gun grazed on the ground near him, and made him remove his station.

After the battle of Edgehill, Harvey went with the king to Oxford. Here he busied himself with his researches into generation; for Dr George Bathurst of Trinity College had a hen to hatch eggs in his chamber, which he and Harvey opened daily. He was received and entertained at Oxford with great distinction, and honoured with the degree of M.D. In 1645 he was made warden of Merton College, in place of Sir Nathaniel Brent, who had left his college to join the popular party. In the following year Oxford surrendered to the parliamentary forces, and Brent was reinstated. While Harvey was at Oxford a motion was made in the House of Commons, February 12, 1644, for the appointment of Dr Micklethwayte as his successor in the office of physician to St Bartholomew's Hospital, on the ground that Harvey had "withdrawn himself from his charge, and is retired to the party in arms against the Parliament." Harvey returned to London in 1646, after the surrender of Oxford, and seems to have followed the fortunes of his king no longer. He was now sixty-eight years old, and had little taste, doubtless, for the varied fortunes of civil broil. His wife was probably still alive, and to her repose would be grateful; and having no children he seems to have avoided the responsibilities of house-keeping by having his own apartments furnished with his own furniture at the houses of two of his surviving brothers, Eliab and Daniel. In 1649 (if Aubrey's statement is to be believed) he visited the Continent, travelling as far as Italy, accompanied by his friend, Dr Ent, an accomplished physician and scholar. In the beginning of 1651 he published his second great work—namely his *Exercitationes de Generatione Animalium*, 4to, London. The year after, when Harvey was looked upon by common consent as the most distinguished anatomist and physician of the age, the College of Physicians placed a statue of him in their hall, with the following inscription:

**GULIELMO HARVEIO**

*VIRO MONUMENTIS SUB IMMORTALI*

*HOC INSUPER COLLEGII MEDICORUM LONDONENSE POSUIT.*

*QUI ENIM SANGUINI MOTUM*

*UT ET ANIMALIBUS ORTUM DEDIT.*

*MERUIT ESSE STATOR PERPETUUS.*

About this time Harvey commenced a handsome addition to the college buildings, comprising a common hall and library, the latter of which he furnished with books. In 1654 he was elected to the chair of president of the College of Physicians, but declined to serve on the ground of his age and infirmities. He continued, however, to deliver his lectures till within a year or two of his death. He died on the 3rd June 1657, of paralysis, having completed the eightieth year of his age.

Harvey was a ripe and finished scholar, and an inductive philosopher of a class as high as his illustrious contemporary and patient, the Lord Chancellor Bacon. He was acquainted with all the men of letters and of science of his day—Hobbes, Boyle, Dryden, Cowley, &c.; and although the treatment he experienced by his contemporaries has often been quoted by empirics as an instance of the martyrdom which men of genius and of original views have to encounter, it does not appear that his views were met with any unusual hostility from the great body of the learned. It is true one or two foreign anatomists indulged in some foolish abuse; and, if we may believe Aubrey's tale, he "knew several practitioners in this town that would not have given three pence for one of his bills [prescriptions]; and that a man could hardly tell by his bills what he did aim at." But, in opposition to this gossip, we have it on record that Harvey was not only physician to the Court, but also had the confidence of many of the most distinguished among the nobles and men of eminence of the time. He lived to see his discoveries universally acknowledged, and to be deeply revered by his brethren.

His moral character was of the highest, and may be judged of by what he has himself enjoined on the College of Physicians. Having endowed it handsomely with his paternal estate, he left funds for a meeting and collation once a month, and for a general annual feast of all the fellows, at which should be delivered an oration in commemoration of the benefactors to the college, and "an exhortation to the members to study and search out the secrets of nature by way of experiment, and for the honour of the profession to continue mutually in love." The College of Physicians of London would have enjoyed a fairer fame, and British medicine a higher reputation, if that body had more faithfully followed the example and written precepts of their immortal benefactor. Harvey had refined feelings and a strong sense of duty. He returned not railing for railing when he encountered his depreciators in controversy. He was faithful to his sovereign, devoted to science, sedulous for the advancement of his profession, munificent to his college, kind and considerate to his relatives. The public voice of his day fully acknowledged his merits, and its verdict has never been questioned.

(HARWICH), a municipal and parliamentary burgh and seaport town of England, county of Essex, on the extremity of a tongue of land projecting into the estuary of the Stour and Orwell, 15 miles N.E. of Colchester. It consists of three principal streets, well paved and lighted with gas. The church of St Nicholas is a large brick edifice, in the perpendicular style, with stone buttresses and steeple, erected in 1821. There are also chapels for Independents, Wesleyan-Methodists, and Baptists; a grammar school; town-hall; gaol; theatre; assembly-rooms; baths; and custom-house. Shipbuilding and the fisheries are extensively carried on; and Roman cement is largely manufactured from a stone dredged at the mouth of the harbour. In summer it is much frequented for sea-bathing. The harbour is one of the best on the E. coast of England, being at once safe and capacious, and having water sufficient to float the largest ships of war. The entrance is, however, encumbered with rocks, and dangerous without a pilot. It is marked by two lighthouses, and is defended by a strongly-garrisoned fort and battery. It has been made a harbour of refuge. On 31st December 1854, the vessels registered as belonging to the port were—under 50 tons, 66, tonnage 1974; above 50 tons, 53, tonnage 5068. During that year 519 vessels of 37,069 tons entered, and 425 of 19,896 tons cleared, in the coasting trade; 1 vessel of 28 tons entered, and 11 of 535 tons cleared, in the colonial trade; and 70 vessels of 5869 tons entered, and 169 of 9494 tons cleared, in the foreign trade. Harwich is governed by a mayor, 4 aldermen, and 12 councillors, and returns 2 members to parliament. Pop. (1851) 4451.