Lectures on the Whole of Anatomy: William Harvey; An Annotated Translation of Prelectiones Anatomiae Universalis

Abstract

Those who want to know more about William Harvey than the bare account of his life or his impersonal description of his great discovery in one of the translations of "De Motu Cordis" may look up Sir Geoffrey Keynes'<i>The Personality of William Harvey</i>(Cambridge University, 1949). But this is more of a brief iconography than anything else, so that they will have to go on to John Aubrey's<i>Brief Lives</i>for an informative, contemporary account by a layman, which, considering Aubrey's tendency to pass on gossip for truth, is surprisingly accurate (Keynes, G.:<i>Lancet</i>2:859, 1958). That is about all there is, since Harvey's embryological notes and his complete studies on the Generation of Insects were destroyed, with most of his belongings, when his house was sacked and fired by the Roundheads. But, in 1616 and for some 10 years after, he had given the Lumleian lectures on anatomy