Harvey, William

Harvey, William, 1578–1657, English physician considered by many to have laid the foundation of modern medicine, b. Folkestone, studied at Cambridge, M.D. Univ. of Padua, 1602. Returning to London, he became a physician of St. Bartholomew's Hospital and a lecturer at the College of Physicians, and he was later appointed court physician. Harvey was first to demonstrate the function of the heart and the complete circulation of the blood, a feat especially remarkable because it was accomplished without the aid of a microscope. Acceptance of his theories was slow in coming, and it was not until 1827 that they were fully substantiated. He also contributed greatly to the advance of comparative anatomy and embryology. His famous Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus [On the Movement of the Heart and Blood in Animals] was published in 1628.

Bibliography

See the translation of his writings by K. J. Franklin (1963); biography by G. L. Keynes (1966); study by G. Whitteridge (1971).

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Harvey, William

(born April 1, 1578, Folkestone, Kent, Eng.—died June 3, 1657, London) English physician. He studied at Cambridge University and later at the University of Padua, then considered the best medical school in Europe. After receiving a medical diploma, he was appointed to St. Bartholemew's Hospital (1609). He became one of James I's physicians c. 1618 and continued as a king's physician for Charles I, whose personal friend he became. Harvey's elucidation of blood circulation overturned the work of Galen and advanced that of Andreas Vesalius and Hieronymus Fabricius. To reach his conclusions, Harvey depended on his own observations and reasoning, numerous animal dissections, autopsies, and clinical observations. His Anatomical Exercise Concerning the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals (1628) recorded his findings. It clarified the function of heart valves, proved that blood did not pass through the septum in the heart, explained the purpose of valves in the veins and of the pulmonary circulation, showed that blood is pumped from the atria into the ventricles and then into the rest of the circulatory system, and proved that the pulse reflected heart contractions.

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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.