82 THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
carbuncle which did not react to treatment until Isaiah the
prophet prescribed, saying, "Let them take a lump of figs,
and lay it for a plaister upon the boil, and he shall recover." All
such methods were not of course successful, and doctors were
often blamed for lack of knowledge and skill and were very
unpopular with their patients as a consequence, and dissolution
was attributed to their discredit. Adrian the Emperor,
A.D. 76-117, exclaimed incessantly when dying "that the crowd
"of physicians had killed him."
William Harvey.
The first exhibit in my little gallery is only an Essex doctor
by reason of his mortal remains having rested so long in our
County; indeed, I have used the territorial adjective rather
widely so as to include famous men whose connection with the
County, be it long or short, living or dead, was noteworthy
for one reason or another. So that this justifies me, were any
justification necessary, for the inclusion here of the Discoverer
of the Circulation of the Blood.
William Harvey was the eldest son of Thomas Harvey by his
second marriage with Joane Halke, and was bom at Folkestone
in Kent on 1 April, 1578, being one of a large family. He had
six brothers and two sisters. Thomas Harvey, his father, was
a shrewd business man, of more than ordinary intelligence, for
we learn from Fuller that "his sons, who revered, consulted and
"implicitly trusted him, made their father the treasurer of their
"wealth when they got great estates, who, being as skilful to
"purchase land as they to gain money, kept employed and
"improved their gainings to their great advantage, so that
"he survived to see the meanest of them of far greater estate
"than himself." The Harvey family's connection with Essex
began with Eliab, the sixth child of Thomas and Joane Harvey.
He was of Laurence Pountney Hill in the City of London and
was in business as a Turkey Merchant and a member of the
Grocers' Company. He amassed a great fortune which he
managed wisely, and purchased estates at Roehampton in,
Surrey, and Rolls Park at Chigwell in Essex. He it was who
built the Harvey Chapel with the outer vault below it in Hemps-
stead Church in the north of the county in which he himself, his
brother William, and many other members of his family, have
found a last resting place. In addition to safeguarding his own