Note 8 — Chapter II · WILLIAM HARVEY AND THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.

That Harvey’s scientific ardour was in full operation during this journey we also learn from a remark of Hollar the artist, who accompanied the ambassador: “He would still be making of excursions into the wood, making observations of strange trees, plants, earths, &c., and sometimes like to be lost; so that my lord ambassador would be really angry with him, for there was not only danger of wild beasts, but of thieves.”

In a letter written on this journey, Harvey says: “By the way we could scarce see a dog, crow, kite, raven, or any bird, or anything to anatomize; only some few miserable people, the reliques of the war and the plague, whom famine had made anatomies before I came.”