William harvey
Cards (15)
- William HarveyA key person in the history of Renaissance medicine
- William Harvey made hugely important discoveries about how blood circulates around the body
- William Harvey's discoveryThe Circulation of the Blood
- William Harvey
- Born in 1578
- Worked in London at the Royal College of Physicians
- Became Royal Physician to James I and Charles I
- Before Harvey
- People believed there were separate systems of blood vessels
- Nutrition-carrying blood was produced in the liver and flowed through veins
- Purified blood-giving blood was produced in the lungs and flowed through arteries
- This belief may have shown the continuing influence of Galen, who had suggested this kind of system about 1400 years earlier
- Harvey realised the previous theory was wrongFrom experiments, he knew too much blood was being pumped out of the heart for it to be continually formed and consumed
- Instead, Harvey thought that blood must circulate - it must go round and round the body
- New technology
- A new type of clock was invented around the time of Harvey's birth
- This new technology gave Harvey a precise and imagination for how the heart worked
- Harvey's research
- Changed how people understood anatomy
- Gave doctors a new map showing how the body worked
- Without this map, blood transfusions or complex surgery couldn't be attempted
- Harvey also showed that Vesalius had been right about how important dissection was
- Not everyone believed Harvey's theories - it took a long time before doctors used them in their treatments
- When people did attempt blood transfusions, they were rarely successful due to blood loss, shock, and because the wrong blood types were used
- Bloodletting, which was supposed to keep the Four Humours in balance, also continued to be performed, even though Harvey had shown the reasoning behind it to be wrong
- Harvey's discoveries were a major breakthrough in the development of medicine, although treatments and surgical techniques were still very basic