william harvey

• • Harvey was an English doctor
  • he studied in Italy, where Vesalius carried out dissections and work on anatomy
  • he returned to England and became a physician
• • Harvey proved more of Galen's ideas wrong
  • he worked through experiments and observations and proved that veins only carry blood rather than a mixture of blood and air
  • Harvey discovered blood is not only made by the liver and is not used up as it moved around the body as Galen had taught
  • Harvey showed that blood circulates around the body
• • Harvey's main discovery was the circulation of blood through the heart pumping blood around the body
• • however, it took over 40 years for Harvey's ideas to be accepted by other doctors and in schools
  • this is because people were reluctant to accept new ideas
  • Harvey's work was based on physiology rather than the cause or treatment of illness, so people could not improve their own understanding of disease
• • in the longer term, Harvey's work was significant in the development of successful blood transfusions
  • when blood groups were discovered in 1901, it made blood transfusions possible