William Harvey. Sir D'Arcy Power
in the books of the College. It runs: “Gul. Harvey, Filius Thomae Harvey, Yeoman Cantianus, ex oppido Folkeston, educatus in Ludo Literario Cantuar. natus annos 16, admissus pensionarius minor in commeatum scholarium, ultimo die Mai 1593.” (William Harvey, the son of Thomas Harvey, a yeoman of Kent, of the town of Folkestone, educated at the Canterbury Grammar School, aged 16 years, was admitted a lesser pensioner at the scholars’ table on the last day of May, 1593.)
The choice of the college seems to show that Harvey was already destined by his father to follow the medical profession. His habits of minute observation, his fondness for dissection and his love of comparative anatomy had probably shown the bias of his mind from his earliest years. Thirty-six years before Harvey’s entry, Gonville Hall had been refounded as Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, by Dr. Caius, who was long its master. Caius, in addition to his knowledge of Greek, may be said to have introduced the study of practical anatomy into England. His influence obtained for the college the grant of a charter in the sixth year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a charter by which the Master and Fellows were allowed to take annually the bodies of two criminals condemned to death and executed in Cambridge or its Castle free of all charges, to be used for the purposes of dissection, with a view to the increase of the knowledge of medicine and to benefit the health of her Majesty’s lieges, without interference on the part of any of her officials. Unfortunately no record has been kept as to the use which the college made of this privilege, nor are there any means of ascertaining whether Harvey did more than follow the ordinary course pursued by students until he graduated as a Bachelor of Arts in 1597. His education, in all probability, had been wholly general thus far, consisting of a sound knowledge of Greek, a very thorough acquaintance with Latin, and some learning in dialectics and physics. He was now to begin his more strictly professional studies, and the year after he had taken his Arts degree at Cambridge found him travelling through France and Germany towards Italy, where he was to study the sciences more nearly akin to medicine, as well as medicine itself.
The great North Italian Universities of Bologna, Padua, Pisa, and Pavia, were then at the height of their renown as centres of mathematics, law, and medicine. Harvey chose to attach himself to Padua, and many reasons probably influenced him in his choice. The University was specially renowned for its anatomical school, rendered famous by the labours of Vesalius, the first and greatest of modern anatomists, and by the work of his successor, Fabricius, born at Aquapendente in 1537. Caius had lectured on Greek in Padua, and some connection between his college at Cambridge and his old University may still have been maintained, though it was now nearly a quarter of a century since his death. The fame of Fabricius and his school was no doubt the chief reason which led Harvey to Padua, but there was an additional reason which led his friends to concur cheerfully in his resolve. Padua was the University town of Venice, and the tolerance which it enjoyed under the protection of the great commercial republic rendered it a much safer place of residence for a Protestant than any of the German Universities, or even than its fellows in Italy. The matriculation registers which have recently been published show how large a number of its medical and law students were drawn from England and the other Protestant countries of Europe, and the English and Scotch “nation” existed in Padua as late as 1738, when the days of mediæval cosmopolitanism were elsewhere rapidly passing away.
The Universities of Europe have always been of two types, the one Magistral, like that of Paris, with which we are best acquainted, for Oxford and Cambridge are modelled on Paris, and the Masters of Arts form the ruling body; the other, the Student Universities, under the control of the undergraduates, of which Bologna was the mother. Hitherto Harvey had been a member of a Magistral University, now he became attached to a University of Students, for Padua was an offshoot of Bologna. Hitherto he had received a general education mainly directed by the Church, now he was to follow a special course of instruction mainly directed by the students themselves, for they had the power of electing their own teachers, and in these points lies the great difference between a University of Masters and a University of Students.
In 1592 there were at Padua two Universities, that of the jurists, and that of the humanists—the Universitas juristarum and the Universitas artistarum. The jurists’ University was the most important, both in numbers and in the rank of its students; the artistarum Universitas consisted of the faculties of divinity, medicine, and philosophy. It was the poorer, and in some points it was actually under the control of the jurists. In each university the students were enrolled according to their nationality into a series of “nations.” Each nation had the power of electing one, and in some cases two, representatives—conciliarii—who formed with the Rectors the executive of the University. The conciliarii, with the consent of one Rector, had the power of convening the congregation or supreme governing body of the University, which consisted of all the students except those poor men who lived “at other’s expense.”
Harvey went to Padua in 1598, but it appears to be impossible to recover any documentary evidence of his matriculation, though it would be interesting to do so, as up to the end of the sixteenth century each entry in the register is accompanied by a note of some physical peculiarity as a means of identifying the student. Thus:—
“D. Henricus Screopeus, Anglus, cum naevo in manu sinistrâ, die nonâ Junii, 1593.” [Mr. Henry Scrope, an Englishman, with a birthmark on his left hand (matriculated), 9 June, 1593.]
“Johannes Cookaeus, anglus, cum cicatrice in articullo medii digiti die dicta.” [John Cook, an Englishman, with a scar over the joint of his middle finger (matriculated) on the same day (9 June, 1593).] And at another time, “Josephus Listirus, anglus, cum parva cicatrice in palpebra dextera.” [Joseph Lister, an Englishman, with a little scar on his right eyebrow (matriculated on the 21st of November, 1598).]
Notwithstanding Harvey entered at Padua in 1598 no record of him has been found before the year 1600, although Professor Carlo Ferraris, the present Rector Magnificus and Dr. Girardi, the Librarian of the University, have, at my request, made a very thorough examination of the archives.
Dr. Andrich published in 1892 a very interesting account of the English and Scotch “nation” at Padua with a list of the various persons belonging to it. This register contains the entry, “D. Gulielmus Ameius, Anglus,” the first in the list of the English students in the Jurist University of Padua for the new century as it heads the year 1600–1601, and a similar entry occurs in 1601–1602. There are also entries about this person which show that at the usual time of election, that is to say, on the 1st of August in the years 1600, 1601, and 1602, he was elected a member of the council (conciliarius) of the English nation in the Jurist University of Padua. His predecessors, colleagues, and successors in the council usually held office for two years. He was therefore either elected earlier into the council, or he was resident in the university for a somewhat longer time than the majority of the students.
Prof. Ferraris and Dr. Girardi have carefully examined this entry for me, and they assure me that there is no doubt that in the original the word is Arveius and not Ameius and that it refers to William Harvey. They are confirmed in this idea by the discovery of his “Stemma” as a councillor of the English nation for the year 1600. Stemmata are certain tablets erected in the university cloisters and in the hall or “Aula Magna” (which is on the first floor) to commemorate the residence in Padua of many doctors, professors, and students. They are sometimes armorial and sometimes symbolical. In 1892 Professor George Darwin carried an address from the University of Cambridge to that of Padua on the occasion of the tercentenary celebration of the appointment of Galileo to a Professorship in Padua. Professor Darwin then made a careful examination of these monuments so far as they related to Cambridge men, but he was unable to find any memorial of Harvey. Professor Ferraris continued the search, and on the 20th of March, 1893, he wrote to Professor Darwin: “We have succeeded in our search for the arms of Harvey. We have discovered two in the courtyard in the lower cloister. The first is a good deal decayed and the inscription has disappeared; but the second is very well preserved and we have also discovered the inscription under a thin coating of whitewash which it was easy to remove.” The monuments, which are symbolical, though Harvey was a gentleman of coat armour, are situated over the capitals of the columns in the concavity of the roof, one being in the left cloister, the other in the cloister opposite to the great gate of the court of the palace.