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.

Ambroise Paré (1510-1590)

History - Medicine through time - 16th Century
Paré was the the most famous surgeon of his time, having served four successive French kings. He developed and pioneered many new ways to treat war wounds, for example his new treatment of gunshot wounds. His combined works were published in 1575.

Paré was born to a barber-surgeon in 1510, in a small French village. He wanted to be a barber-surgeon too, even though this was considered to be quite a lowly profession.

He went to Paris to train in 1533 and became surgeon to the Hotel-Dieu in 1534, which was the only public hospital in Paris. He didn’t have enough money to take the tests to become a barber-surgeon so he joined the military. France was engaged in much civil and international war, which was advantageous for his practice. He developed a new way of treating gunshot wounds which was much kinder to the victim.

He published his Method of treating wounds in 1545 in French, because he couldn’t speak Latin. In ’52 he was appointed surgeon to Henri II of France and the first edition of his collected works was published in 1575. He was attacked by the Faculty of Physicians but had the king’s support so could go on publishing books. He published The Apology and Treatise of Ambroise Paré in 1585, which criticized those who had done so to him, saying that they hadn’t had any actual experience but merely read books and ‘chatter[ed] in a chair’.

He was the leader of one of the most important developments of the 16^th Century, which was the proper way to test a theory, which he did to eliminate the myth of the bezoar stone in 1575. He wanted the free flow of ideas and made all of his ideas public.

What a legend.