An cerebrum rex [Whether the Brain is to be looked upon as King,]
Nervi Magistratus [The nerves as his ministers,]
Ramuli nervorum officiales [and the branches of the nerves as their subordinates,]
Musculi Cives, populus [whilst the muscles are the burgesses or the commonalty].
An Cerebrum, Master: Spina his mate. Nervi, Boteswayne. Musculi, Saylors.
"There are similar comparisons," says Sir George Paget, who analysed these lectures, and published an account of the manuscript, "of the brain with a military commander, the leader of an orchestra, an architect, and the prius motor, and of the nerves and muscles with the respective subordinate officers."
His treatise on the movement of the blood must have been passing through the press at the time he gave these lectures, and the subject of the circulation must therefore have been uppermost in his mind. He compares the heart to the other organs thus:--
Cor, imperator, Rex. [Whether the heart should not rather be considered as the Emperor or King,]
Cerebrum, Judex, Serjeant-Major, praepositi [whilst the brain is the judge, serjeant-major, or monitor].
Year by year Harvey continued to deliver the Lumleian lectures at the College of Physicians and to attend his patients at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. He soon obtained an important and fairly lucrative practice. On the 3rd of February, 1618, he was appointed Physician Extraordinary to James I. or in the language of the time, "The king, as a mark of his singular favour, granted him leave to consult with his ordinary physicians as to his Majesty's health," and at the same time he promised him the post of a Physician in Ordinary as soon as one should become vacant. This promise he was unable to fulfil, but it was redeemed by his son Charles I., who appointed Harvey a Physician in Ordinary in 1631 and remained his friend through life.
We can still obtain glimpses of Harvey's practice during the ten years which preceded the issue in 1628 of his "Anatomical Essay on the Movement of the Heart and Blood." Aubrey tells us that "he rode on horseback with a footcloth to visit his patients, his man still following on foot, as the fashion then was, which was very decent, now quite discontinued. The judges rode also with their footclothes to Westminster Hall, which ended at the death of Sir Robert Hyde, Lord Chief Justice. Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, would have revived it, but several of the judges being old and ill-horsemen would not agree to it." The footcloth was originally a mark of dignity, and it is still seen in its full splendour hanging over the backs of the horses in a state pageant and in a debased form on those drawing the hearse at a funeral.