John Harvey (1564–1592) was an English astrologer and physician.
He was baptised at Saffron Walden, Essex, 13 February 1564, the son of John Harvey, master ropemaker, and younger brother of Gabriel Harvey and of Richard Harvey. He matriculated as a pensioner of Queens' College, Cambridge, in June 1578 (B.A. 1580 and M.A. 1584).
In 1587, the university granted him a licence to practise physic, and he became a practitioner at King's Lynn in Norfolk. The Oxford English Dictionary's earliest evidence for the word topical is from 1588, in his writings.[1] Robert Greene's contemptuous reference to Harvey and Harvey's father and two brothers in his ‘Quippe for an Upstart Courtier’ (1592) led to Gabriel Harvey's defence of his family in his ‘Foure Letters’ (1592). Gabriel describes John as ‘a proper toward man,’ ‘a skilful physician,’ and a M.D. of Cambridge, and mentions that he died, aged 29, shortly after returning to Lynn from Norwich in July 1592. He supplies a Latin epitaph. ‘John Harvey's Welcome to Robert Greene’ is the title of a sonnet included in Gabriel Harvey's ‘Foure Letters.’
Harvey published: