William Harvey

Born: 1578

University of Padua: 1598 – 1602
History - Medicine through time - 16th/17th Century


Harvey studied at Padua and then left to work in London as a doctor and then as a lecturer in anatomy at the Royal College of surgeons. From 1618 he was physician to James I and then Charles I. He was taught anatomy be Geronimo Fabricius who identified the valves in the veins and wrote about them in De Venarum Ostiolis (1603). He also designed the new anatomy theatre at Padua.

Before Harvey’s discoveries there were others that are important when discussing Harvey. In the 1543 edition of medicorum Pautinae profefforis, de humani corporis fabrica Libri feptum by Andreas Vesalius, Galen’s theory that heart passed through small holes in the Septum was accepted, however in the 1555 edition he went one step further and denied this. Vesalius’ successor at Padua, Realdo Colombo, showed that blood passed from one side of the body to the other via the lungs and wrote about it in De re Anatomica in 1559.

Harvey discovered that Galen’s theory that blood was recreated instant by instant and was not used again was wrong. He discovered this by looking at the hearts of cold blooded animals, and seeing that the blood as circulating far too quickly for it to be remade. He said that blood flowed out in the arteries and back in the veins, which explained his teacher’s findings of the valves. He wrote down his findings in ‘On the Motion of the Heart’ (1628) after first announcing them in public in 1616.

Harvey was helped by technology of his time. Galen was not around in a time where there were pumps such as the ones used to put out fires, whereas Harvey was. This would have meant that the idea of a pump in any situation would be more open to Harvey’s mind in any situation than Galen’s.