William Harvey
William Harvey (1578-1657), English physician. Harvey was educated at Cambridge and Padua, where he was taught by Gaius Fabricius Luscinus and influenced by Galileo. He returned to England after obtaining his degree (1602), set up his practice and became court physician to James I and Charles I. His prime interest, however, was in medical research and he dissected many species of animals. By examining the heart and blood vessels,, he concluded that blood circulated around the body, from the heart to the arteries and veins and then back to the heart. He published his results in On the Motions of the Heart and Blood (1628). Harvey’s ideas were ridiculed at first, since they disproved the established views of Galen, but by the end of his life he had achieved the recognition that his work deserved.
“He was the first Englishman of whom we know enough to say that he was definitely what we now mean by a ‘scientific man’. He viewed the problems of life as we view them; he observed the facts as we observe them; he experimented as we experiment and he reasoned as we reason. Sir Wilmot Herrington on William Harvey, St Bartholomew’s Hospital Journal 1928”
