Oxford and the Development of Physiology, with Notes on the Nuffield Institute for Medical Research

Abstract

As background for appreciating the development of fetal and newborn physiology, one might consider what undoubtedly are some of the earliest studies on the embryo and fetus that can be classed as scientific. William Harvey recorded that it was in the early 1630s, shortly following publication of his monumental Exercitatio anatomica de mortu cordis… (Harvey 1628) that, with the privilege and blessing of King James I (1566–1625; King from 1603 to death) and King Charles I (Charles Stuart; 1600–1649; King from 1625 to his death), and for both of whom Harvey served as personal physician, Harvey studied various aspects of generation in deer and other animals that resided at the King’s estate. In addition to providing deer and other animals from the Royal preserve, his royal patrons supported Harvey’s experiments. Of this patronage, Harvey wrote that daily he had an opportunity of dissecting and studying the reproductive and genital organs. He also credits the King with taking a great interest in his work, for instance, “… my Royal master (whose Physitian I was, and who was himself much delighted in this kind of curiosity, being many times pleased to be an eye-witness, and to assert my new inventions)” (Harvey 1653, p. 397). A Royalist, in anticipation of the civil war Harvey later accompanied King Charles to Scotland, and following the Battle of Edgehill (23 October 1642) the first major action of the Civil War, the Royal party settled and set up Court in Oxford. Within several months, Harvey was appointed warden of Merton College. Here, Harvey took advantage of the opportunity to resume studies of the development of hen’s egg that he had commenced earlier. He conducted these studies in the rooms of George Bathurst, an Anglican divine of Trinity College, who had a hen to hatch eggs in his chamber which they opened day after day, “That we may the better discover what the… incubation hath produced” (1653, p. 80). Relatively uninterrupted by the political upheavals that surrounded him, Harvey pursued his embryological studies. As an aside, it should be noted that during the civil war, the period of parliamentarian rule during the Interregnum, and continuing through the restoration, as a Royalist stronghold, Oxford was fiercely loyal to the Crown (Fig. 3.1).