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William Harvey
(1578)
Biography
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William Harvey (April 1, 1578 - June 3, 1657) was a doctor at St. Bartholomew's hospital in London (1609-43) and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. Born in Folkestone, Harvey studied at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, receiving a BA in 1597, and then he studied medicine at the prestigious University of Padua under Fabricus, graduating in 1602. He returned to England and married Elizabeth Brown, daughter of the court physician to Elizabeth I. He is remembered for his 1628 work Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus (An Anatomical Exercise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals), where, based on scientific methodology, he argued for the idea that blood was pumped around the body by the heart before returning to the heart and being recirculated in a closed system. This clashed with the accepted Galenic model which identified venous (dark red) and arterial (brighter and thinner) blood, each with distinct and separate functions. Growth and energy were derived from venous blood created in the liver from chyle. While arterial blood gave vitality by containing pneuma (air) and originated in the heart. Blood flowed from both creating organs to all parts of the body where it was consumed, no blood returned to the heart or liver. The heart did not pump blood around, the heart's motion sucked blood in during diastole and the blood moved by the pulsation of the arteries themselves. Galen believed that the arterial blood was created by venous blood passing from the left ventricle to the right by passing through 'pores' in the interventricular septum, air passed from the lungs via the pulmonary artery to the left side of the heart. As the arterial blood was created 'sooty' vapors were created and passed to the lungs also via the pulmonary artery to be exhaled.
Harvey's ideas were not accepted during his life-time. His work was attacked, notably by Jean Riolan in Opuscula anatomica (1649) which forced Harvey to defend himself in Exercitatio anatomica de circulatione sanguinis (also 1649) where he argued that Riolan's position was contrary to all observational evidence. Harvey was still regarded as a excellent doctor, he was personal physician to James I (1618-25) and Charles I (1625-47) and the Lumleian lecturer to the Royal College of Physicians (1615-56). Marcello Malpighi later proved that Harvey's ideas on anatomical structure were correct, Harvey had been unable to distinguish the capillary network and so could only theorize on how the transfer of blood from artery to vein occurred. Even so Harvey's work had little effect on general medical practice at the time - Blood letting, an idea based on the incorrect theories of Galen, continued to be a popular practice. Harvey's work did much to encourage others to investigate the questions raised by his research. He also wrote De Generatione (1651), a Aristotelian exposition on mammalian generation. [This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on William Harvey.]
 
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William Harvey
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