< Page:The Harveian oration 1866.djvu
This page needs to be proofread.

40

"the beginning of the Rebellion; he being for the King "and with him at Oxon" (Aubrey's Letters and Lives). Froni this account we should infer that the papers that were lost were not on any of the five subjects above mentioned, but rather on Comparative Anatomy. Besides, let us consider the time of the occurrence. The "beginning of the Eebellion" fixes the date probably in 1642. In that year Charles I. left London ; in August he raised his standard at Nottingham, and the civil war commenced. In October of the same year was fought the battle of Edge-hill, at which Harvey was present. Soon after this he retired with the King to Oxford, where he remained until 1646, when he returned to London and began to live with his brothers. It is therefore cer- tain that this loss of his papers at Whitehall could not have occurred subsequently to 1646. Now the Ohservationes Medicinales are referred to, and their future publication promised, in works that were written by Harvey long subsequently to 1646. They are thus referred to in his second Exercise addressed to Riolan. Ex. gr. " De quibus omnibus, in ohservationi- hus meis medicinalibus, admiralione digna tradani' (Coll. Ed. p. 129, Willis' Ed. pages 129, 130), and Inter Medi- cinales Observationes, et in pathologia, ea traders poterOy qucB nunquam haotenus a quovis observata comijerio " (Coll. Ed. p. 141, WilUs' Ed. p. 141). This Exercise was first l^ublished at Cambridge in 1649, and was in answer to part of a woi-k of Eiolan's which had been published in the same year. It is manifest, therefore, that the Observationes Medicinales could not have been lost at

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.