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Sir George Ent was born at Sandwich, Kent, on 6 November 1604, the son of Josias Ent, a Belgium merchant whose religion had forced him to flee the Netherlands and settle in England. He was educated at a school in Rotterdam. In 1624 he entered at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, graduating BA in 1627, and MA in 1631. Ent then went to Padua University, at the time the most celebrated school of medicine. He studied there for five years, graduating MD in April 1636. As was the custom of the time, congratulatory poems addressed to him by his friends were published in Padua, entitled Laureae Apollinani, with Ent's coat of arms endorsed on the title page. He was incorporated MD at Oxford in November 1638.
In 1639 he was elected a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. Ent's major work was his Apologia pro Circuitione Sanguinis, contra Aemilium Parisanum (1641; 2nd edition 1683). The book defends William Harvey's doctrine of the circulation of the blood, and is a particular reply to a Venetian physician Aemylius Parisanus. It also gives a `rational account' of the operation of purgative medicines (Munk's Roll, 1878, p.226). Both editions were dedicated to Sir Theophilus Clinton, Earl of Lincoln, and were preceded by an address to Harvey. In 1642 Ent delivered the Goulstonian Lectures at the Royal College of Physicians. He was censor of the College for twenty-two years, between 1645 and 1669.
In 1651 Ent published Harvey's De Generatione Animalium, with a dedicatory letter to the celebrated anatomist. Ent had persuaded Harvey to give him the manuscript, which Harvey had up to that point delayed publishing as he felt he might have made further observations. Ent then published the work, with the author's permission. He dedicated the book to the president and fellows of the Royal College of Physicians. Ent was a close friend of Harvey's, and when Harvey died, in 1657, he left Ent five pounds with which to buy a ring. Their friendship was immortalised by the poet John Dryden, in his Epistle to Dr Charleton.
Ent was registrar of the Royal College of Physicians for fifteen years, 1655-70, and became an elect in 1657. In 1665 Ent delivered the anatomy lectures at the College. After the last lecture Charles II, who was present at the lecture, knighted Ent in the Harveian Museum, an unprecedented event. Ent was subsequently consiliarius, advisor to the president, from 1667-69, and again from 1676-86. Ent became president of the College from 1670-75, and served again in 1682 and 1684.
He was one of the original fellows of the Royal Society, and is named in the charter as one of the first council. A collection of Ent's works, Opera Omnia Medico-Physica, was published in Leiden in 1687. It has been said of him that he was `a man of very considerable scholarship speaking and writing Latin with ease and elegance' (Whitfield, [1981], p.51).
Ent had married Sarah, daughter of the physician Othowell Meverall, treasurer of the Royal College of Physicians, in February 1645-6. Ent died at his house in the parish of St Giles-in-the-Fields, on 13 October 1689, at the age of 84. He had resigned from his position as elect at the College just a few days before his death. He was buried in the church of St Lawrence Jewry, near the Guildhall of London.
Publications:
Apologia pro Circuitione Sanguinis, contra Aemilium Parisanum (London, 1641; 2nd ed. 1683)
De Generatione Animalium, William Harvey (London, 1651, published by Ent)
Animadversiones in Malachiae Thrustoni, MD, Diatribam de Respirationis usu Primario (London, 1672)
Opera Omnia Medico-Physica... Nunc Primum Junctim Edita... (Leiden, 1687)
A Collection for Improvement of Husbandry and Trade, Olof Rudbeck, Philip Stansfield, & Sir George Ent, ed. by John Houghton (London, 1692)