William Harvey was born in 1578 in Kent, England. He was the eldest of nine children and began his schooling at King’s College in Canterbury. He went on to study medicine at the University of Padua in Italy. It was here that Harvey formed an interest in anatomy. Upon his return to England he was appointed physician to St Bartholomew’s Hospital in 1609.
He conducted a series of dissections and through deduction and experimentation was able to provide the first accurate account of how the circulatory system in the human body worked.
Up till that time it was believed that there were two separate blood systems in the body, one using the veins and the other using the arteries. The influence of oxygen on blood was not understood. It was also believed that the blood was being produced in the liver and being consumed by the body.
Harvey was able to show that the blood was not being consumed by the body but merely circulating within it. He also showed that the heart was pumping oxygenated blood to all parts of the body through the arteries and receiving deoxygenated blood through the veins. He published his findings in his book, De Moto Cordis or the Motion of the Heart in 1628.
Unfortunately he had to face ridicule and censure as the medical fraternity was unwilling to believe his claims, which went against the established work of Galen and others at that time. As a result of this, Harvey retired from public life and spent his final years reading general literature and living a peaceful life. In the end however, he was justified in all his claims as even his worst critics had to admit that he was right.
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