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and Paris.

At the last of these Universities he read the works of Vesalius, the celebrated Flemish anatomist, in company with Hobbes, who took great pleasure in forwarding his pregnant genius.

As sixty pounds could obviously have done little more than set him forward on his journey, it has been generally surmised, that he carried on some advantageous branch of traffic with his own country during his three years' residence abroad; for upon his return to England in 1646, he brought home with him ten pounds more than he carried out: a circumstance, which he has himself left wholly unaccounted for.

In 1647, he obtained a patent for an instrument which he had invented for double writing. This is described as being of small bulk and price, easily made, and extremely durable; and the art of using it could be learnt in an hour. But the additional fatigue occasioned to the hand by the increase of weight above that of a pen, rendered the project useless with respect to the chief advantage proposed by it, that of expedition: so that he derived little benefit from his exclusive privilege, except that it spread the reputation of his ingenuity, and brought him acquainted with all his learned contemporaries. By their advice he fixed his abode at Oxford, where he practised chemistry and physic with great success, and assisted Dr. Clayton, the Professor of Anatomy, in his dissections. The philosophical meetings, which preceded the institution of the Royal Society, were frequently held at his lodgings; and some

* Of the very rudiments of this most respectable society we have an account in Dr. Wallis' Memorials of his own Life, ad

of the leading men in the House of Commons had the honourable ambition of advancing the in

dressed to the Rev. Thomas Smith, D.D. of Magdalen College, Oxford. "About the year 1645, while I lived in London (at a time when, by our civil wars, academical studies were much interrupted in both our Universities) beside the conversation of divers eminent divines, as to matters theological, I had the opportunity of being acquainted with divers worthy persons inquisitive into natural philosophy and other parts of human learning, and particularly of what hath been called the New Philosophy' or Experimental Philosophy.'

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"We did by agreement, divers of us, meet weekly in London on a certain day, to treat and discourse of such affairs. Of which number were Dr. John Wilkins (afterward Bishop of Chester) Dr. Jonathan Goddard, Dr. George Ent, Dr. Glisson, Dr. Merret (Drs. in Physic) Mr. Samuel Foster, the Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College, Mr. Theodore Haak (a German of the Palatinate and then resident in London, who I think gave the first occasion, and first suggested those meetings) and many others.

"These meetings we held sometimes at Dr. Goddard's lodgings in Wood Street (or some convenient place near) on occasion of his keeping an operator in his house for grinding glasses for telescopes and microscopes, and sometime at a convenient place in Cheapside; sometime at Gresham College, or some place near adjoining.

"Our business was (precluding matters of theology and stateaffairs) to discourse and consider of philosophical inquiries, and such as related thereunto; as physic, anatomy, geometry, astronomy, navigation, statics, magnetics, chemics, mechanics, and natural experiments, with the state of these studies, as then cultivated at home and abroad. We there discoursed of the circu lation of the blood, the valves in the veins, the Vene Lactea, the lymphatic vessels, the Copernican hypothesis, the nature of comets and new stars, the satellites of Jupiter, the oval shape (as it then appeared) of Saturn, the spots in the Sun and it's turning on it's own axis, the inequalities and selenography of the Moon, the several phases of Venus and Mercury, the improvement of telescopes and grinding of glasses for that purpose, the weight of air, the possibility or impossibility of vacuities and

terests of a scholar and a man of genius. Accordingly, in 1649, a parliamentary recommendation was sent to Brazen Nose College to elect him to a fellowship vacated by ejectment, which was complied with, the University at the same time conferring upon him an honorary degree of M. D.: and in 1650,* he nature's abhorrence thereof, the Torricellian experiment in quicksilver, the descent of heavy bodies and the degrees of acceleration therein, and divers other things of like nature. Some of which were then but new discoveries, and others not so generally known or embraced as they now are, with other things appertaining to what hath been called the New Philo sophy;' which from the times of Galileo at Florence, and Sir Francis Bacon (Lord Verulam) in England, hath been much cultivated in Italy, France, Germany, and other parts abroad, as well as with us in England.

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"About the year 1648-9, some of our company being removed to Oxford (first Dr. Wilkins, then I, and soon afterward Dr. Goddard) our company divided. Those in London continued to meet there as before (and we with them, when we had occasion to be there); and those of us at Oxford with Dr. Ward, since Bishop of Salisbury, Dr. Ralph Bathurst, now President of Trinity College in Oxford, Dr. PETTY (since SIR WILLIAM PETTY), Dr. Willis, then an eminent physician in Oxford, and divers others, continued such meetings in Oxford, and brought those studies into fashion there: meeting first at Dr. Petty's lodgings in an apothecary's house, because of the convenience of inspecting drugs and the like, as there was occasion; and after his remove to Ireland (though not so constantly) at the lodgings of Dr. Wilkins, the Warden of Wadham College, and after his removal to Trinity College in Cambridge, at the lodgings of the Hon. Mr. Robert Boyle, then résident for divers years in Oxford.

"These meetings in London continued, and after the King's return in 1660 were increased with the accession of divers worthy and honourable persons; and were, afterward, incorporated by the name of the ROYAL SOCIETY, &c. and so continue to this day." (See Smith's Collection of MSS. in the Bodl. Libr.)

* In December of the same year, he was principally

was admitted a candidate of the College of Physicians in London.

In the beginning of the following year, upon the resignation of Dr. Clayton, he was elected Anatomy Professor; and he, likewise, succeeded Dr. Knight in the Professorship of Music in Gresham College. In 1652, he was appointed Physician to the army

concerned in restoring to life one Anne Green, who had been hanged at Oxford for the murther of her bastard child. Of this woman it is related, that she hung nearly half an hour ; during which time her friends, in order to put her out of pain, beat upon her breast, suspended themselves from her legs, and lifting her up pulled her down again with sudden and violent jerks: yet was she not deprived of life! After being placed in her coffin, she was observed to breathe, upon which a lusty fellow stamped with all his force on her breast and stomach. Her body was then consigned to the doctors, who finding some heat in it, proceeded (we are not told by what means) to recover her. She lived many years afterward, and bore several children. "If Hippolytus, revived only by poetic fancies (quaintly observes Fuller) was surnamed Virbius, because twice a man; why may not Mulierbia by as good proportion be applied to her, who since is married, and liveth in this country in good reputa tion?"

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Among many other epigrams on this subject, the following was written by Dr. Ralph Bathurst:

In Puellam sporov, à patibulo reviviscentem.
Quæ nuper medicos vespillonesque fefellit,
Et non unius victima mortis erat,

Quam benè Netricis titulum meruisse putanda est,
Cùm poterat stamen sic renovare suum?

'Thou more than mortal, that with many lives
Hast mock'd the sexton and the doctor's knives;
The name of Spinster thou may'st justly wed,
Since there's no halter stronger than thy thread'

For a longer account of Anne Green, see Morgan's Phoenix Britannicus.'

in Ireland; and discharged the same office to three successive Lord Lieutenants, Lambert, Fleetwood, and Henry Cromwell. These preferments, together with extensive practice in the city of Dublin, placed him in a state of affluence. His active genius, however, could not be confined to the science of physic. Being an excellent mathematician, he was completely master of the art of surveying; and having observed that after the Irish rebellion of 1641 the forfeited lands, which had been allotted to the soldiers for suppressing it, were very defectively measured, he forwarded such representations upon the subject to the Protector, that he obtained from him a contract in 1654 to make new admeasurements. By his extraordinary accuracy upon this occasion the true value of every estate, exceeding 601. per ann. was ascertained, and plans were, also, drawn by him of the whole territory.* His contract netted him upward of ten thousand pounds. Henry Cromwell, being appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in the course of that year, chose Dr. Petty to be his Secretary, in 1657 made him Clerk of the Council, and procured him to be returned in the English parliament, for the borough of West Looe in Cornwall. But here he met with a severe mortification, being impeached in March 1658, by Sir Hierom Sankey, for high crimes and misdemeanors in his survey and distribution of the Irish lands, a business for which he had justly expected universal applause.

From authentic records it appears that, in 1655, he had surveyed 2,800,000 acres of forfeited improveable land, part of which he had divided among the disbanded soldiers.

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