The Asclepiad Volume 1 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HAEVEY AFTER DEATH. re-interment of the remains of the illustrious William Harvey, the filial discoverer of the circulation of the blood, on the 17th of October last, was an event in the medical history of this country. On the 3rd day of June, 1657, about ten in the morning, Harvey, then in his eightieth year, found, on attempting to speak, that he had lost the power of utterance; that, in the language of the vulgar, he had the " dead palsy" in the tongue. He had not, however, lost his mental faculties. He made signs to Sambroke, his apothecary, to bleed him from a vein under the tongue. Knowing that his end was near, he sent for his nephews, to each of whom he gave some token of his remembrance, his watch to one, his signet ring to another. On the evening on which he was smitten he died, the palsy giving him an easy passport. He went down with the sun. The precise place is not known: it was probably in the city of London. From June 3rd to June 26th, a period of twenty- three days, was the time that elapsed between the death and the first burial of Harvey in the vault of theHarvey Chapel, then recently built by Eliab, the brother of our anatomist, at the church at Hempstead, in Essex. Hempstead is an ancient village, about seven miles south-east of Saffron Walden, near a river called the Pant. There are in the parish about 170 houses. Near by was Winchlow Hall, a long time the seat of the Harveys after William Harvey's death. Hempstead church was, until two years ago, a beautiful structure. On Saturday, January 28th, 1882, the splendid tower fell, and the place is still in ruins, but the Harvey chapel remains entire. There was for a long period of time a famous oak tree in the parish of Hempstead. It was known as the Hempstead oak, and was of enormous size. I remember ...