William Harvey

William Harvey (1 April 1578 – 3 June 1657) was an English physician. He made important discoveries about how our bodies work.

Harvey studied anatomy and physiology. These are the science of the structure and functions of living things.

Harvey was the first person to fully describe how blood moves through our bodies. He explained how blood travels through the lungs and the rest of the body in a loop. This process is called circulation. He also described how the heart pumps blood to the brain and all other parts of the body.

His work helped change the way doctors understand and treat health problems. Because of his discoveries, William Harvey is remembered as one of the greatest scientists in the history of medicine.

Family

William Harvey came from a large family. His father, Thomas Harvey, was an important person in the town of Folkestone. He even served as mayor in 1600. Thomas was calm, hardworking, and smart. William was the oldest of nine children, with seven boys and two girls.

William’s family had many important connections. One relative married into a famous noble family, and another was a well-known diplomat. Much later, one of his great nephews became a brave naval captain.

Biography

William Harvey was an English doctor who learned a lot about how our bodies work. He studied at the University of Padua in Italy.

Harvey worked at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London and talked about anatomy, the study of how bodies are built. He became a doctor for King James I and later for King Charles I. Harvey did not believe in magic or witchcraft and helped show that some people accused of being witches were not guilty.

Harvey discovered how blood moves in our body. He wrote a book about this in 1628. Even though some doctors did not agree with him at first, his ideas were important for medicine. Harvey lived during hard times, including wars, but kept working to help people learn about health. He passed away in 1657 and was buried in Hempstead, Essex.

De Motu Cordis

Main article: Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus

In 1628, William Harvey wrote a book in Frankfurt named Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus. In this book, he told how the heart works and how blood moves in our bodies. He explained the heart’s action and how blood travels in a circle.

Harvey studied many animals, like fish and birds, to learn more about hearts. He tied off blood vessels in animals and saw changes in their bodies. He also tied off a person’s arm to see how blood flow changed. He found that blood moves in one direction and that veins have tiny parts that help push blood toward the heart. His work proved that blood circulates, even though many people did not believe him at first. It took years for others to accept his ideas.

Views of the circulation of blood before Harvey

Before William Harvey shared his ideas, many people believed what a doctor named Galen had taught centuries earlier. Galen thought that blood moved between different parts of the heart through tiny, invisible holes. He also believed that the blood in the veins and the blood in the arteries were separate.

Some other thinkers had different ideas. An Arab scholar named Ibn al-Nafis suggested that blood traveled from the heart to the lungs, mixed with air, and then returned to the heart. Even before Harvey, others like Michael Servetus, Renaldus Columbus, and Andrea Cesalpino had ideas about how blood moves, but Harvey was the first to describe the whole process clearly. His work challenged many old beliefs.

On Animal Generation

William Harvey wrote a book called Exercitationes de generatione animalium (On Animal Generation) in 1651. He worked on it for many years and finished it thanks to his friend George Ent.

The book begins by describing how a hen’s egg develops. It talks about ideas from old thinkers like Aristotle and doctors who followed Galen. Harvey also wrote about how babies develop inside their mothers.

Harvey shared the idea that all living things come from eggs. This was different from the old belief that life could just appear from dirt or waste. He showed that even tiny creatures like worms have eggs. He also explained how a baby first forms in the egg.

Legacy

William Harvey’s work is still important today. Many places and groups are named after him. For example, there is the Harveian Society of Edinburgh, which started in 1782. Every year, this group has a special event to honor Harvey. There is also the Harveian Society of London and the Harvey Society in New York City. These groups have important talks about new discoveries in medicine. Some schools and hospitals are named after him too, like the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford, Kent. His work on how blood moves in our bodies still influences medical studies around the world.

Personality

William Harvey was a funny but very careful man. He often thought so much that he had trouble sleeping. A simple walk around the house helped him. Harvey liked quiet, dark places where he could think deeply. Sometimes he hid in caves. He loved drinking coffee and walked through the fields each morning with energy and excitement. To deal with his gout, Harvey had a special way: he would sit with his legs bare and put them in a pail of cold water until he felt almost frozen, then he would move to a stove to warm up, and the pain would go away.

Images

Here are some pictures of William Harvey:

• William Harvey
• Colour portrait
• William Harvey, after a painting by Cornelius Jansen
• William Harvey
• Bust of William Harvey at the Royal College of Physicians, London

Works

William Harvey wrote important books about how the heart and blood work in animals. One of his famous works is called "On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals". Another book, "The Circulation of the Blood and Other Writings", includes many of his ideas about how blood moves in the body.