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causes of so many slighter and more serious diseases, and of suggesting remedies for their cure, that the subject seems to demand a separate treatise. And it will be my business in my “Medical Observations” to lay before my readers matter upon all these topics which shall be worthy of the gravest consideration.’[1]
What would not such a book have been, written on such subjects by such a man! But it perished in those civil wars which yet were to Harvey nothing more than the most natural occasion for calling into practice the lessons of loyalty to his Sovereign and of love to his country which he had learnt in his childhood. So little could bitterness dwell in his memory, that in a letter written when eighty years of age to Nardi,[2] at Florence, he says, ‘I send you three books upon the subject you name;’ and not a word more does he add, though the subject was those very civil wars which had driven him from his home and his pursuits, which had slain his Sovereign and his friend, and had destroyed by the hands of a fanatical soldiery the fruit of years of labour.
