[a] According to his own account (in Casus Medico-Chirurgicus) he learned Greek and Latin in the Low Countries, and on 31 May 1655 matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford, then under the rule of the energetic Dr. Conant, where he studied philosophy.

On 4 January 1657 he was entered at Leyden, where he studied medicine, anatomy, and botany, attending also the hospital practice of Professor van der Linden.

In 1678 he was called, in consultation with other physicians, to attend a nobleman (Charles, Lord Mohun, father of the more notorious duellist), who had received a wound in a duel, of which he ultimately died.

[d] Harvey, pleading that he was commanded by the King to write an account of the case, made it the occasion of virulent personal attacks, under feigned names, on the other physicians concerned.

[e] He was already in bad odour with the profession for some rather discreditable publications on Venereal diseases, and for a book of popular medicine,[f] which was displeasing to the apothecaries, because it revealed secrets of their trade.

His only service to medicine was that of ridiculing certain old-world preparations, theriaca, mithridatium, and others, traditionally preserved in the London Pharmacopœia, but omitted in the next century.

One of his works, a collection of random criticisms on medical practice, with an ironical title, The Art of Curing Diseases by Expectation, acquired some reputation on the continent, through the patronage of a far greater man, George Ernst Stahl, who published a Latin version with long notes of his own, imbued with a kindred scepticism, and in this form it provoked some controversy.

Late in life Harvey published a recantation of some of his earlier doctrines, under the title of The Vanities of Philosophy and Physick, a profession of general scepticism mingled with new hypotheses.