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REPORT OF THE MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH FOR 1957 7
Harvey went to live there about 1650 and it is likely that he spent
the remaining seven years of his life for the most part with his brother's
family in this house although he may, on occasions, have stayed
temporarily elsewhere. There is reason to think that during this time
he was by no means lacking in the intellectual companionship which
his great mind would have demanded and almost certainly Thomas
Hobbes, the well-known philosopher, writer and freethinker of that
period, was one of his companions.
No signs of the house are now to be seen but the grounds in which
it was situated remain although probably changed since Harvey's
day. However, one large lawn or small field flanked by trees can be
seen today much as it was in Harvey's time although, of course, the
trees (with the exception of some well-grown oaks) are not the trees
which Harvey saw. It is, one feels, a matter for great satisfaction
that with all the building which has been proceeding in Roehampton
over the past four or five years, these grounds where the great
physician and scientist spent the last years of his life in pleasant and
congenial retirement, should still be seen, in part at least, much as
they were in his day. They present almost a direct link with Harvey.