© 2001 by Oxford University Press
Williams Harvey's Weak Experiment: the Archaeology of an Anecdote
1 University of Cambridge, Cambridge
William Harvey's Weak Experiment: the archaeology of an anecdote' examines an anonymous seventeenth century manuscript, published in the Gentleman's Magazine in 1832, that recounts a story about Dr William Harvey. The manuscript describes how the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, during a sojourn in Newmarket with his patron King Charles I, disguised himself one day as a wizard and set off for a lone house on the borders of Newmarket Heath said to be the residence of the local witch. Harvey's disguise was successful and, upon being asked inside, he requested to meet the witch's ‘familiar’. After being introduced to her tame toad, Harvey sent the witch off with a shilling to buy some ale so that he could open up the belly of the toad with his scalpel, in order to prove that it was not a ‘familiar’ but just an ‘arrant natural toad’. This anecdote has achieved some modest fame as a neat parable of the early modern triumph of science over superstition. By identifying for the first time the manuscript's author and intended audience, placing the story and its teller into the context of Restoration intellectual life, and giving the whole manuscript a close reading, this paper attempts a revisionist account of the story' significance.