1649

Execution of Charles I, who had been handed over to Cromwell by the Scots in 1647 (Chauvois, 148). At Oxford, William Harvey befriended the royalist Charles Scarburgh. On moving to London, top royalist intellectuals gathered at his dinner table, forming the nucleus of what would become the Royal Society (granted a royal charter by King Charles II in 1662). Around Scarburgh’s table, they came to grips with the circulatory system as a mechanism they might be able to use for medical purposes: “It was here that the seeds of the first sustained research programme into blood transfusion were sown.” The young Christopher Wren “would become instrumental in early blood transfusion” (Craddock, 64-65).