The Mansion of Happiness by Jill Lepore Read Free Book Online

William Harvey thought about men and beasts and kings and courts and worlds new and old, he put into his work. So, too, his thoughts about men and women.
    Harvey, something of a misanthrope, kept a monkey. “He was wont to say that man was but a great mischievous baboon,” Aubrey wrote. Harvey also liked to say “that we Europaeans knew not how to order or governe our woemen, and that the Turkes were the only people used them wisely.” He thought a harem a good idea. He was not vaunted for his fidelity, Aubrey noted: “He kept a pretty young wench to wayte on him, which I guesse he made use
     of warmeth-sake as king David did.” Married for over forty years,he never had any children. His wife kept a parrot. More than that, about their marriage, is not known. 14
    At the time, theories about what caused childlessness abounded.
The Birth of Mankind
, a midwifery manual first published in English in 1550, explained that the best way to discover the problem, in a barren couple, was to have husband and wife urinate onto seeds of wheat, barley, and beans, seven of each, and then plant the seeds in separate pots, filled with soil, and water them, every day, with urine. Whoever’s seeds failed to sprout was thought to be
     the cause of the barrenness. 15 It’s for this kind of thing that doctors used to be called piss prophets.
    William Harvey was keenly interested in discovering the secrets of generation, but not by way ofpiss prophecy. He wanted to bring to this question deduction, reason, and experiment. He started by speculating.
    “A
Man
, was first a
Boy
,” he began. “Before he was a
Boy
, he was an
Infant;
and before an
Infant
, an
Embryo.
” So far, so good. “Now we must search farther,” he urged, venturing into the unknown. “What hee was in his Mothers Womb, before he was this
Embryo
, or
Foetus;
whether
three bubbles
? or some
rude
and
indigested lump
?
     or a
conception
, or
coagulation
of
mixed seed
? or whether any thing else?”
    FollowingAristotle and Fabricius, Harvey first sought the answer by cracking open hens’ eggs, which were “cheap merchandize,” and ready to hand. 16 He may have begun this work on first returning to England from Padua, even before he took up his study of the circulation of the blood. He regretted that he was unable to
     gather evidence about his own species, “for we are almost quite debarred of dissecting the humane
Uterus.
” Even barnyard animals were hard to come by: “to make any inquiry concerning this matter, in
Horses, Oxen, Goats
, and other Cattel, cannot be without a great deal of paines and expense.” Fortunately, King Charles liked to hunt. “Our late Sovereign King
Charls
, so soon as he became a Man, was wont for Recreation, and
     Health sake, to
hunt
almost every week, especially the
Buck
and
Doe.
” From the king’s gamekeeper, Harvey claimed his catch: does, in the rutting season. “I had a daily oportunity of dissecting them, and of making inspection and observation of all their
parts.
” Evidence suggests that Harvey’s very good friendThomas Hobbes attended at least one of these dissections. 17 (In his will, Harvey left Hobbes ten pounds, “to buy something to keepe in remembrance of mee.”) The king, too, found Harvey’s work fascinating and “was himself much delighted in this kind ofcuriosity, being many times pleased to be an eye-witness, and to assert my new inventions.” Even the queen took an interest. “I saw
     long since a foetus of the magnitude of a Pease-cod, cut out of the uterus of a Doe,” Harvey wrote. “I shewed this pretty Spectacle and Rarity of Nature to our late King and Queen. It did swim, trim and perfect, in such a kinde of White most transparent, and crystaline moysture (as if it had been treasured up in some most clear glassie receptable) about the bigness of a Pigeons egge.” Harvey had seen human fetuses, too, including one “wherein the
Embryo
, who was as long as the
naile
of the
little finger
, did