William
Harvey was
born in England in 1578. After earning a degree at Cambridge University
at the age of twenty, he journeyed to Italy to study medicine at the University
of Padua. Padua was the center for western European medical instruction
at that time. Harvey graduated with honors in 1602 and returned to England
where he earned yet another medical degree from Cambridge University.
He then settled down to begin practicing medicine. Harvey was fascinated
by the way blood flowed through the human body. Most people of the day
believed that food was converted into blood by the liver, then was consumed
as fuel by the body. Harvey knew this was untrue through his firsthand
observations of human and animal dissections.
In
1628 Harvey published An Anatomical Study of the Motion of the Heart
and of the Blood in Animals which explained how blood was pumped from
the heart throughout the body, then returned to the heart and recirculated.
The views this book expressed were very controversial and lost Harvey
many patients, but it became the basis for all modern research on the
heart and blood vessels.
A second ground-breaking book published by Harvey in 1651, Essays on the
Generation of Animals, is considered the basis for modern embryology.
Despite the uproar over each of Harvey's unconventional anatomical theories,
he was recognized as a medical leader in his day.
He was doctor to King Charles I of England and was appointed doctor of
physic at Oxford. At the time of his death in 1657, Harvey's medical and
scientific genius were celebrated throughout the European medical community.
Books by and about William Harvey:
On
the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
William
Harvey
Availability: dispatch within 4-6 weeks.
William
Harvey: Discoverer of How Blood Circulates
Lisa
Yount
Availability: dispatch within 4-6 weeks.
