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        William Harvey (1578-1657) seems to tell us even today, 'I as a medical scientist do not study nature because it is useful to do so. I study it because I take pleasure in it and I take pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If human body were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing and life would not be worth living. I mean the intimate beauty which comes from the harmonious order of its parts and which a pure intelligence can grasp'.
 

William Harvey (1578-1657)

There are some scientific phenomena with which we are so familiar, that it seems impossible that their truth could ever be doubted. It appears incredible that only a few centuries divide us from the great scientific discoveries of the principle of gravity, of solar motion and of the circulation of blood. When William Harvey (1578 - 1675) put forward his theory, or rather his observation, of the circulation of blood in the human body, he shattered the medical beliefs of a thousand years and opened a new era of medical science. When he published his book in Latin on blood circulation under the title of EXERCITATIO ANATOMICA de MOTA CORDIS et SANGUINIS in ANIMALIBUS in 1628, he overthrew the accepted doctrine of more than fifteen centuries. It proved that what men had thought about the movement of the blood in the human body was utterly wrong.         Of how many books can it be said that their publication directly affected the personal wellbeing of every person alive, or yet to be born? Of course there have been many books written which have altered the outlook of millions, changed social institutions, and even deflected the course of history, but of few can it be said that their contents concerned the health not only of contemporaries but of all posterity, that they put forward or expounded a crucial discovery vital to the whole of mankind. Yet such a claim may justly be made for this revolutionary book in the history of medicine authored by William Harvey. When he wrote it, only a few read it and not all believed it. Today still fewer people read it but none would dream of doubting or dismissing it!

        William Harvey was born at Folkestone in England on 1 April, 1578. His father was a prosperous merchant and William was sent to King's School, Canterbury, and afterwards to Cambridge University. In 1597 Harvey went to Padua in Italy to study advanced medicine. Padua at that time was considered the most famous school of medicine in the world.

        Harvey started his study of advanced medicine in exciting and even revolutionary times. The sixteenth century had drawn to a close, and a new century had opened. A profound change had occurred in scientific men's ways of looking at the world, in the relationship between the individual and universe. The great Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo had broken new trails for art. He and the fellow artists who followed him contemplated the world with its multifarious mobility. They were no longer concerned with, they no longer strove mainly to represent, only extant beings, to depict just what had happened ; they did not gaze at man's eye but at his VISION.

        As was in the field of art, so was it in the fiend of physics. Galileo Galilee had a telescope made for himself that he might scan the depths of the skies. He discovered the satellites of Jupiter; the Milky Way disclosed itself to be a numberless multitude of little stars. Physics became dynamics.

Like art and physics, the field of medicine was also affected in a significant way by the emerging scientific tendencies of the time. At the Padua School of Medicine, in the candle-lit lecture hall Harvey listened to Fabricius of Aquapendente, the great anatomist. From him he learnt something vital that was later to prove the starting point of his great discovery - the circulation of blood in a human body. Fabricius had found that the veins in the human body had valves, and while he imparted this information to his students, he was altogether unable to offer a suggestion as to the function of the organs. It remained for Harvey to realise and declare that the valves prevented the flow of blood in any direction except towards the heart.         After taking his Degree of Doctor of Medicine at Padua, Harvey returned to Cambridge University in 1602, where he took a similar degree, after which he set up his private practice in London. It was about this time that he fell in love with Elizabeth Browne, the daughter of Launcelot Browne, who had been physician to Queen Elizabeth I. Their marriage proved of great use to Harvey to gain initial entry to the Royal Court. In 1609, he was appointed physician at St Bartholomew's Hospital.         He obtained valuable clinical experience at St.Bartholomew Hospital. He was able to collect a mass of valuable data from the cases he attended and some of it made him ponder on what was soon to become the main idea in his mind - the phenomenon of blood in the human body. He conducted several experiments. He dissected everything he could lay his hands on - the bodies of men, animals, birds, frogs, snakes, rabbits, everything that may help him to solve his problem. The more he studied, the more certain he became that his colleagues' ideas of blood movement were wrong. Fabricius and Sylvius, great 16th century anatomists, had made minor discoveries about movement of blood but the main body of opinion had remained substantially unchanged. This was that the blood originated from the liver and was of two different kinds.

William Harvey demonstrating his discovery of the circulation of the blood to Charles I, King of England.

         One kind, it was held, came from the right ventricle of the heart and travelled through the body by way of the veins. The other came from the left ventricle and travelled to the body through the arteries. In the light of his researches, Harvey showed that the prevailing contemporary idea that blood travelled through the veins from the right ventricle was wrong. Harvey said there were not two kinds of blood in the human body. There was only one kind, the same in the veins as in the arteries. There was but one mass of blood that passed round and round, being driven on its journey by the heart, the body's motor. The blood was pumped from the heart, passed through the body in 'a kind of circle' and returned once more to the source. The bloodstream was a continuous circulation. These revolutionary ideas were presented by Harvey in his landmark book in 1628. It was immediately accepted in England though it took a longer time in the Continent for its acceptance.

        Harvey became Royal Physician to Charles I King of England from 1625-1649. The King showed great interest in his work and gave him the use of his parks at Windsor and Hampton Court to aid Harvey in his medical researches. Harvey dedicated his great book on circulation of blood to Charles I by declaring: 'The Monarch is to the kingdom, what the heart is to the human body'.

        Harvey was an anatomist. He wrote an anatomical monograph. But in his hands anatomy took on a new shape, became anatomia animate, became physiology. It became, moreover, physiology of a very different kind from any that had previously existed. Thenceforward, physiology was inseparably associated with anatomy and a physiological explanation became acceptable only if it was anatomically possible. There was one more problem in which Harvey was deeply involved. It was embryology another form of dynamic anatomy. Its theme, likewise, was movement, change. Harvey's embryological studies occupied him for many years. His book on embryology De generatione animalium was published in 1651. This work was enormously in advance of anything that had previously been written on the subject. The phrase 'Omne animal ex ovo' coined by Harvey, proved to be one of those winged words, which came to guide and fertilize subsequent research.

        In 1654, the Royal College of Physicians decided to confer upon William Harvey the highest honour in the profession, that of President of the College. Harvey declined the honour on account of his age. He declared his desire to serve Royal College of Physicians by erecting a new building and equipping it with a well-filled library, a museum and a conversation room.

        He passed away on 3 June 1657. He bequeathed his estate to the Royal College of Physicians, together with a fund for an annual lecture to be delivered at the College. In making this bequest Harvey urged the Fellows - to search out and study the secrets of nature by way of experiment, and also for the honour of the profession to continue mutual love and attention among themselves. The Harvey Oration is still delivered annually.

        In 1883 the Fellows of the College had the remains of the great investigator removed to a white marble sarcophagus in the Harvey Chapel erected in his native Hampstead Church in Essex. In it they placed a copy of the large edition of his work.

        Thus it can be seen that Harvey's whole life was actuated by one great motive—to perfect mankind's knowledge of the human body to enable us all to fight more successfully against disease and pain. His own discovery stands out as one of the greatest, made all the more glorious by the primitive circumstances in which he worked. Without even the most elementary devices now used in research, he was able to arrive at a truth that remains the greatest and most fundamental in the realm of physiology.