William Harvey (redirected from De Generatione)

Harvey, William 

Born Apr. 1, 1578, in Folkestone, Kent; died June 3, 1657, in London. English physician, physiologist, and embryologist.

Harvey continued his studies at Padua after graduating from Cambridge in 1597. In 1602 he received a diploma as doctor of medicine from the University of Padua. After his return to England (London) he was elected a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (1607). As chief physician and surgeon in the Hospital of St. Bartholomew, Harvey was the founder not only of the theory of blood circulation but also of all modern physiology and embryology. He was the first to prove experimentally that in the animal body an unchanging, relatively small amount of blood is in constant movement through a closed path as a result of pressure created by contractions of the heart. He described the respiratory (pulmonary) and systemic circulations. In 1628 he published An Anatomical Treatise on the Movement of the Heart and Blood in Animals, in which he set forth in final form his theory of circulation, a theory which ran counter to the doctrine that had prevailed since the times of the Roman physician Galen and which provoked fierce attacks on Harvey by scientists and churchmen. In 1651 he published his treatise On the Generation of Living Creatures, in which he summarized the results of his many years of research on embryonic development in invertebrates and vertebrates, including birds and mammals. According to Harvey, plants as well as animals begin their development from an egg.

WORKS

Anatomicheskoe issledovanie o dvizhenii serdtsa i krovi u zhivotnykh, 2nd ed. Moscow-Leningrad, 1948.

REFERENCES

Bykov, K. M. Uil’iam Garvei i otkrytie krovoobrashcheniia. Moscow, 1957.
Parin, V. V. “Osnovopolozhnik ucheniia o krovoobrashchenii: K trekhsotletiiu so dnia smerti Uil’iama Garveia.” Priroda, 1957, no. 12.