MODERN MEDICINE 3
Harvey lived through one period which
was favourable to intellectual progress, and
through another which was not. Born (1578)
under Elizabeth, ten years old at the time of
the Armada, he was a spectator of English
history until within fifteen months of the
death of Oliver Cromwell. At the death of
James I. Harvey was forty-seven years old;
his great discovery had been made and
expounded in this College, though not yet
given to the world. Thus his most important
work was done in a quiet time--a period not
brilliant historically, but one not unpropitious
to learning and research. The fetters of old
superstition had been loosened, and the influ-
ence of the Elizabethan age was still in the
air. It is worth noting that Harvey's long
life made him the contemporary of the four
greatest men whom England has produced.
No one will dispute that this pre-eminence
belongs to Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, and
Newton, each without rival in his own way.
Shakespeare died in 1616, the year in which
Harvey, then thirty-seven, began to lecture at
