officers. Hart laboriously compiled for his own information a large number of these services from military histories and other sources. Very meagre information was then afforded by the official army lists. Hart gradually added to his own interleaved copies until, while yet a subaltern, he had accumulated so large a mass of information as to suggest the publication of an army list of his own. Aided greatly by his wife in his literary labours, Hart, in February 1839, having obtained the approval of the military authorities, published the first edition of his ‘Quarterly Army List.’ It was at once favourably received by the queen and the Duke of Wellington, and other high authorities. Hart was allowed access to the official records of officers' services, and in 1840 published his first ‘Annual Army List,’ containing supplementary information of interest, in addition to the contents of the ‘Quarterly.’ He also projected a military biographical dictionary, specimen pages of which he issued, but never found time to carry out the work. From the first appearance of ‘Hart's Army List’ to the present day the annual and quarterly volumes have regularly appeared. The original form has never been altered, although the book has gone through two hundred editions.
Hart never allowed his literary avocations to interfere with his professional work, and was an admirable regimental officer. He rendered valuable services as a poor law inspector in Ireland during the famine of 1845–6. In 1856, when in temporary command of the depôt battalion at Templemore, by his masterly movements he suppressed a dangerous mutiny of the North Tipperary militia with very little bloodshed, and saved the town of Nenagh from pillage.
Hart married in 1833 Alicia, daughter of the Rev. Holt Okes, D.D., by whom he left a family, including three sons, who all served in the army: General A. Fitzroy Hart, C.B., 1st battalion East Surrey regiment (the present editor of ‘Hart's Army List’), Colonel Reginald Clare Hart, V.C., royal engineers, and Major Horatio Holt Hart, royal engineers. Hart died at Biarritz on 24 March 1878.
[Burke's Landed Gentry, 1886 ed.; Army Lists; Brit. Mus. Cat. Printed Books; information supplied by Colonel Hart, C.B., 1st East Surrey Regiment.]
HART, JAMES (fl. 1633), physician, was born probably between 1580 and 1590, and, though his pedigree cannot be traced, most likely in Northamptonshire. In 1607 and 1608, or perhaps longer, he studied in Paris, and travelled in other parts of France. He afterwards lived at Meissen in Saxony; in 1610 was travelling in Bohemia, and went probably later to Basle to complete his studies. Either at Basle or elsewhere on the continent he took the degree of M.D., and about 1612 settled as a physician probably from the first at Northampton, where he lived at least twenty or thirty years, and apparently succeeded in practice. He never belonged to the College of Physicians (though that body licensed his chief work in flattering terms) nor to the Company of Barber-Surgeons. He was a strong puritan, an appellation which he adopts more than once in his writings.
Hart's principal work, ‘Kλινική, or the Diet of the Diseased’ (London, 1633, folio), though little known, is of interest and value. This ‘fruit of twenty years' experience’ is an attempt, quite in harmony with the Hippocratic traditions, to prescribe the proper regimen and physical conditions in disease as well as in health, dealing with health, air, exercise, and the like, though not with drugs. It had scarcely any forerunner in medical literature since the classical times, and though the importance of such matters is now generally recognised, it has had till quite recently but few successors. Its general character is that of a learned compilation modified by common sense and experience. In copiousness of quotation it sometimes almost approaches Burton's ‘Anatomy of Melancholy;’ and the zeal displayed in refuting vulgar errors is worthy of Sir Thomas Browne himself. In rationality and freedom from the tyranny of therapeutic routine it is far in advance of most medical works of the time, and apart from its professional interest presents instructive pictures of the manners and customs of the seventeenth century. Hart's two other works (both dedicated to Charles I when Prince of Wales) are entitled: 1. ‘The Arraignment of Urines, by Peter Forrest, epitomised and translated by James Hart,’ London, 1623, 4to; and 2. ‘The Anatomie of Urines, or the second part of our Discourse on Urines,’ London, 1625, 4to. They expose the fallacies of diagnosis by means of an examination of urine at the hands of ignorant persons, and attack three kinds of trespassers on the medical domain, unlicensed quacks, meddlesome old women, and above all, prescribing divines. The British Museum copy of the first of these works has bound up with it a manuscript chapter, evidently in the handwriting of the author, which it is said ‘could by no means be got to be licensed;’ it also strongly denounces the ‘intrusion of parsons … upon the profession of phisicke.’
[Hart's Works; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
