, who had been a student at Padua for four years. He
belonged to the "Natio Anglica," of which he was Conciliarius, and
took his degree in 1602. Doubtless he had repeatedly seen Fabricius
demonstrate the valves of the veins, and he may indeed, as a senior
student, have helped in making the very dissections from which the
drawings were taken for Fabricius' work, "De Venarum Osteolis," 1603.
If one may judge from the character of the teacher's work the sort of
instruction the student receives, Harvey must have had splendid training
in anatomy. While he was at Padua, the great work of Fabricius, "De
Visione, Voce et Auditu" (1600) was published, then the "Tractatus de
Oculo Visusque Organo" (1601), and in the last year of his residence
Fabricius must have been busy with his studies on the valves of the
veins and with his embryology, which appeared in 1604. Late in life,
Harvey told Boyle that it was the position of the valves of the veins
that induced him to think of a circulation.

Harvey returned to England trained by the best anatomist of his day. In
London, he became attached to the College of Physicans, and taking his
degree at Cambridge, he began the practice of medicine. He was elected
a fellow of the college in 1607 and physician to St. Bartholomew's
Hospital in 1609. In 1615 he was appointed Lumleian lecturer to the
College of Physicians, and his duties were to hold certain "public
anatomies," as they were called, or lectures. We know little or nothing
of what Harvey had been doing other than his routine work in the care
of the patients at St. Bartholomew's. It was not until April, 1616, that
his lectures began. Chance has preserved to us the notes of this first
course; the MS. is now in the British Museum and was published in
facsimile by the college in 1886.(26)

(26) William Harvey: Prelectiones Anatomiae Universalis, London,
J. & A. Churchill, 1886.

The second day lecture, April 17, was concerned with a description of
the organs of the thorax, and after a discussion on the structure and
action of the heart come the lines:

W. H. constat per fabricam cordis sanguinem
per pulmones in Aortam perpetuo
transferri, as by two clacks of a
water bellows to rayse water
constat per ligaturam transitum sanguinis
ab arteriis ad venas
unde perpetuum sanguinis motum
in circulo fieri pulsu cordis.

The illustration will give one an idea of the extraordinarily crabbed