Charles Darwin wrote to a friend that to publish his theory of evolution by natural selection was ‘like confessing to a murder’.65 Harvey’s confession was no less dangerous. According to the dating evidence of his lecture notes, he first explained his theory in January 1618. This was eight years after Galileo, who had held the chair of mathematics at Padua at the time Harvey had studied there, had used a telescope to confirm Copernicus’ theory that the earth went round the sun, and just three years after the Catholic Inquisition had formally declared Copernicanism to be heretical. And it was only eighteen years after the philosopher and mystic Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome for suggesting, among other speculations, that the blood must go round the body as the planets go round the sun.
Harvey faced no such extreme reaction to his theory. In fact, there was barely any reaction at all, merely a respectful hush. This was partly because, though the lectures were in public, no one reported on them, and their content would not be published by Harvey himself for another decade. But, given the College’s commitment to Galen, and its harsh treatment of anyone who failed to follow his principles, some sort of expression of shock might have been expected from his colleagues. There was none. There is not a single mention of the idea in the College Annals for the period, merely lengthy discussions about the chaotic publication of the Pharmacopoeia, the discovery of yet more ‘impure’ medicines during searches of the apothecaries’ shops, and arrangements for the College’s annual feast.
This silence may have been because so few of the Fellows bothered to come to the lectures, or because so few understood them. More likely, it was because Harvey realized from the beginning the political as well as medical implications of his ideas. He did not at this stage spell them out, but they are evident in his discussions about the relative importance of the heart versus the brain.
Despite references to bellows and cisterns, Harvey was emphatic that the heart was no mere mechanical pump. He kept to the principle that it was the body’s most important organ, the ‘source of all heat’, that the ‘vital spirits are manufactured in the heart’, invigorating the blood to keep the body alive.66 However, when he came to his final lecture, the ‘banquet of the Brain’, he ran into difficulties sustaining this position. The cerebrum, he pronounced, was ‘the highest body in a very well-protected tower; hair, skin &c., as safeguards, so that nature [protects] no part more’. Having reached this conclusion, he paused for thought, as though realizing too late that he had compromised the primacy of the heart. This prompted the assertion that the brain was ‘not to be compared with the heart’. But he could not resist trying, provoking a Herculean struggle to reconcile the importance of one with the ingenuity of the other:
The empire of the heart extends more widely in those [creatures] in which [there is] no brain. Perhaps more worthy than the heart, but the heart is necessarily prior … All animals have one most perfect part; man [has] this, excelling all the rest; and through this the rest are dominated; it is dominated by the stars wherefore the head [is] the most divine, and to swear by the head; sacrosanct; to eat [the brain is] execrable.67
Why did he expend so much effort deliberating on this anatomically trivial rivalry? The reason partly revealed itself in some subsequent remarks about the relative sizes of organs in different animals. The human body, he noted, was like a ‘commonwealth’, with different organs being the different branches of state, each having its function, each having its divinely ordained place. ‘Politicians,’ he added, can acquire ‘many examples from our art’, in other words from anatomy. 68 And with this, he left the matter tantalizingly suspended.
As the body politic began to disintegrate, he would return to this issue. And he would argue that his revelations about the heart, far from overturning the existing order, reinforced it.
In times of Heathenism when men had found out any excellent Herb &c. they dedicated it to their gods, As the Bay-tree to Apollo, the Oak to Jupiter, the Vine to Bacchus, the Poplar to Hercules: These the Papists following as their Patriarchs, they dedicate them to their Saints, as our Ladies Thistle to the Blessed Virgin, St. Johns Wort to St. John, and another Wort to St. Peter, &c.
Our Physitians must imitate like Apes, (though they cannot come off half so cleverly) for they Blasphemously call Pansies, or Hartseas, an Herb of the Trinity, because it is of three colours: and a certain Ointment, an Ointment of the Apostles, because it consisteth of twelve Ingredients; Alas poor Fools, I am sorry for their folly, and grieved at their Blasphemy …
[Angelica] resists Poison, by defending and comforting the Heart, Blood, and Spirits, it doth the like against the Plague, and all Epidemical Diseases if the Root be taken in powder to the weight of half a dram at a time with some good Treacle in Cardus Water, and the party thereupon laid to sweat in his Bed. If Treacle be not at hand, take it alone in Cardus or Angelica Water.
The Stalks or Roots candied and eaten fasting are good Preservatives in time of Infection; and at other times to warm and comfort a cold Stomach. The Root also steeped in Vinegar, and a little of that Vinegar taken sometimes fasting, and the Root smelled unto is good for the same purpose …
According to Grieve, in early summer-time, peasants living around the lakelands of Pomerania and East Prussia, where Angelica grew plentifully, marched into the towns carrying the flower-stems chanting songs ‘so antiquated as to be unintelligible even to the singers themselves’, the relic of some pagan festival. According to Christian legend, the plant’s ability to cure the plague was revealed in a dream by an angel. Another explanation of the name of this plant is that it blooms on 8 May (Old Style), the day associated with an apparition of Michael the Archangel at Monte Gargano in Italy.
The candied stems are used as cake decorations.
In the spring 1625, King James, approaching his sixtieth birthday, ‘retired for fresh air and quietness to his manor at Theobald’s’, his country retreat in Hertfordshire, built by Elizabeth’s chief minister William Cecil. In March, he fell ill with a ‘tertian fever’, malaria, and was confined to a sickroom at the house, which later was formally dubbed his ‘Chamber of Sorrows’. As he lay there, he was attended by a busy swarm of courtiers, servants, and medics, bringing documents, linen, and medicines, taking messages, bedpans, and pulses.
Throughout, James’s team of physicians stood by, conferring. They included at least two loyal Scots doctors he had brought with him from Edinburgh when he succeeded to the