By 1912, William Harvey had been dead for over 200 years but the life and work of an English physician maintained a persistent interest for historians and physicians since his death in 1657. Harvey had been a practicing physician during the period in England immediately succeeding the death of Queen Elizabeth I; the reigns of James I and his son Charles I were increasingly troubled, culminating in a coup d’etat led by Oliver Cromwell and the creation of an English Commonwealth in 1649 with no king at the head of the government.
Despite Harvey’s position as physician to King James, his most enduring medical legacy was the description of the circulatory system. With this work, Harvey established his place in medical history and became a figure of enduring interest. It was probably with this in mind that S. Weir Mitchell published his Some Recently Discovered Letters of William Harvey with Other Miscellanea in 1912 as part of the Transactions of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.
The Harvey family vault. The leaden case nearest the coffins contains William Harvey's body, according to Mitchell's caption.
Mitchell himself was a notable physician and writer, receiving his training and practicing as a physician in Philadelphia in the last half of the nineteenth century. He had already published works on Harvey, but followed those up with these Recently Discovered Letters because of what Mitchell seems to have felt would be enduring interest in Harvey, making even fragments of documents of value to the researcher.
The small volume is basically a single long essay on Harvey’s life and works, interspersed with the letters and other fragments in their proper context. Mitchell concludes with a bibliography of Harvey’s works available in medical libraries in the United States, Britain, and France. The volume is a wonderful reflection not only on the works of Harvey himself but also on the construction of a historical subject. Even fragments and scattered letters are of value when they come from someone like Harvey — perhaps even writings he didn’t feel were that valuable during his lifetime. Mitchell’s slim volume, then, can be viewed from a number of perspectives: not only is it of interest to Harvey scholars or potential biographers, but also to historians of medicine and historiographers interested in how history is written.
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I always find collections of letters so fascinating, and 1912 adds a whole second layer of historical interest.
Also: what a lovely engraving of the family vault! Clearly it’s waiting for the dead to arise …