Studied medicine in
Cambridge and padua and then
worked as a doctor in London.
Wrote: "An Anatomical
Account of the Motion of
the Heart and Blood" in
1628, which described
how blood circulates
around the body.
Became royal doctor to king Charles 1
Died 1657
Proved that the heart acts as a pump, pumping blood around the body and did this by:
Dissecting live cold-blooded
animals so he could see the
movement of each muscle.
Dissecting human
bodies to build up
detailed knowledge
of the heart.
Proving that the body
has a one way
system for blood – he
tried pumping liquid
backwards through
the valves in veins but
could not do so.
Calculating that the amount of
blood going into the arteries
every hour was three times the
weight of a man. This showed
that the same blood was being
pumped around the body by the
heart.
Factors That Helped
Technology – Mechanical
water pumps in London may
have given him the idea about
the heart pumping blood.
Attitudes/enquiry – Harvey’s
discovery was the result of
careful dissection, observation
of detail and experiment.
Individual genius –
Harvey was very
thorough, spending
hours repeating
experiments and
going over details
Factors that hindered
Attitudes – Some doctors disagreed with Harvey
Religion – The church didn’t like him challenging
Galen and Hippocrates’ ideas and theories
Limitations
His work didn’t save lives and he had fewer
patients after he published his theory.
There was still a lot to learn about blood and the heart.
His discovery wasn’t accepted at first and many doctors said he was
wrong because he was contradicting Galen. It was fifty years later
when the University of Paris started to teach his work.