William Harvey

• William Harvey


  William Harvey is a key person in the history of Renaissance medicine. He made hugely important discoveries about how blood circulates around the body and his work helped to advance people's knowledge of anatomy
• William Harvey


  Discovered the Circulation of the Blood
• William Harvey was born

  1578
• William Harvey


  • Worked in London at the Royal College of Physicians
  • Became Royal Physician to James I and Charles I
• William Harvey's work


  • Studied both animals and humans
  • Observed living animal hearts in action
  • Findings would also apply to humans
• A new type of water pump was invented


  • Around the time of Harvey's birth
  • Gave Harvey a comparison and inspiration for how the heart worked
• Before Harvey


  • People thought there were two kinds of blood
  • They flowed through two completely separate systems of blood vessels
• Beliefs about blood before Harvey

  • Purple 'nutrition-carrying' blood was produced in the liver and then flowed up through veins to the rest of the body, where it was consumed (used up)
  • Bright red 'life-giving' blood was produced in the lungs and flowed through arteries to the body, where it was also consumed
• This may show the continuing influence of Galen, who had suggested this kind of system about 1400 years earlier
• Harvey was one of many British doctors who studied medicine at a university in Italy or France
• During the Renaissance, major new discoveries were being made at these European universities - the discoveries of Vesalius were made at Padua University
• British doctors who studied in Europe learnt the latest ideas in medicine and brought them back to Britain
• Harvey realised the theory was wrong

  • From experiments, he knew that too much blood was being pumped out of the heart for it to be continually formed and consumed
  • Instead he thought that blood must circulate - it must go round and round the body
• Harvey's research


  Major Breakthrough in Anatomy
• Harvey's ideas


  • 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 showed that Vesalius had been right about how important dissection was
• Harvey's work had a limited impact on diagnosis and treatment of disease


  • 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 - because of blood loss, shock, and because the wrong blood types were used (although people knew more about the body's anatomy because of Harvey, medical treatments and surgical techniques were still very basic)
  • Bloodletting, which was supposed to keep the Four Humours in balance, also continued to be performed, even though Harvey had showed the reasoning behind it to be wrong