but the hand or instrument of the physician; the dignitary mostly applied to his famulus when he required a wen removed, or a limb lopped, or a broken head plastered; though Harvey it seems did not feel himself degraded by taking up the knife or practising midwifery.[1] Nevertheless, in these latter days Royal Colleges of Physicians have been seen arrogating superiority over Royal Colleges of Surgeons, and Royal Colleges both of Physicians and Surgeons combining to keep the practitioner of obstetrics under.
From the year 1633 Harvey appears to have devoted much of his time to attendance upon the king and retainers of the court, so that we have little or no particular information of his movements for several years. We know, however, from Aubrey, that he accompanied Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, whose physician he was, in his extraordinary embassy to the emperor, in the year 1636.[2] In the course of this journey, Harvey had an opportunity of visiting several of the principal cities of Germany, and of making the acquaintance of many of the leading medical men of the time. The place of date of one of Harvey's letters, that namely to Caspar Hofmann, from Nuremberg, in the month of May, 1636, has not been noticed; but his presence with the Earl of Arundel at once accounts for it; and we therefore see that Harvey's offer to demonstrate to the distinguished professor of Nuremberg, the anatomical particulars which made the circulation of the blood a necessary conclusion was no vain boast, made at a distance,
- ↑ Vide his procedure for the removal of a sarcocele, 'On Generation,' p. 254. "My Lady Howard had a cancer in her breast, which he did cut off and seared." (Aubrey, Lives, p. 386.) He speaks of having been called to a young woman in labour in a state of coma (On Generation, p. 534); and in another place (Ib. p. 437) he says, in connexion with the subject of labour, 'Haud inexpertus loquuor,'—I speak not without experience. Vide also p. 545, where he passes his fingers into the uterus and brings away "a mole of the size of a goose's egg;" and p. 546, where he dilates the uterine orifice with an iron instrument, and uses a speculum, &c.
- ↑ The embassy left England the 7th of April, and returned about Christmas of the same year. Vide Crowne's 'True Relation,' &c., 4to, London, 1637.
