Harvey

Biography of William Harvey

Dr. William Harvey was born in England in 1578 and died in 1657. Harvey studied medicine at the University of Padua after receiving his degree from Caius College in Cambridge. His fascination with the flow of blood through the body led to his ground-breaking work published in 1628, On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals. The information within this work flew in the face of prevailing Galenistic physiological beliefs that were unquestioned for nearly 1400 years.

Harvey actually performed experiments of how the blood is pumped. His studies showed that if Galen's theory of the body absorbing venous blood were true, humans would be extremely swollen and would be required to eat all of the time to replenish the depleted blood supply.

Some of the information above was extracted from Dr. Byron Newberry’s "William Harvey Outline" handout.