Gregory, Andrew (2001). Harvey's Heart, The Discovery of Blood Circulation. Cambridge, England: Icon Books. If you require a Glucose Tolerance Test (GTT) fasting blood test then please call 01303 854484 Monday - Friday between 10.30am and 12 midday to make an appointment. On arriving in the department take a seat and your name will be called. Notable family connections include Heneage Finch, 1st Earl of Nottingham, who married William's niece Elizabeth Harvey, and the diplomat Sir Daniel Harvey. His great nephew was the naval hero Eliab Harvey, captain of HMS Temeraire. [6] Biography [ edit ] Early life and the University of Padua [ edit ] Most serene King! The animal’s heart is the basis of its life, its chief member, the sun of its microcosm; on the heart all its activity depends, from the heart all its liveliness and strength arise. Equally is the king the basis of his kingdoms, the sun of his microcosm, the heart of the state; from him all power arises and all grace stems. Harvey attended Charles in Oxford during the Civil Wars and in Newcastle when the king was held in captivity. Harvey eventually returned to London, in 1647. Later life

Renowned physician and scientist William Harvey is best known for his accurate description of how blood circulates through the body. While his published work on the circulation of blood is considered the most important of his academic life, Harvey also made significant contributions to embryology with the publication of his book Stewart, D. (1946). "Harvey and the Battle of Edgehill". Canadian Medical Association Journal. 55 (4): 405. PMC 1583020. PMID 20323936. Harvey was seen as a "...humorous but extremely precise man...", [63] and that he was often so immersed in his own thoughts that he would often suffer from insomnia (cured with a simple walk through the house), and how he was always ready for an open and direct conversation. He also loved the darkness, for it is said that it was there where "...he could best contemplate", thus sometimes hiding out in caves. A heavy drinker of coffee, Harvey would walk out combing his hair every morning full of energy and enthusiastic spirit through the fields. We have also come to understand Harvey's somewhat unorthodox method of dealing with his gout, here cited completely: "...his [Harvey's] cure was thus: he would sit with his legs bare...put them into a pail of water till he was almost dead with cold, then betake himself to his stove, and so 'twas gone". [64] Images [ edit ] conducted himself so wonderfully well in the examination and had shown such skill, memory and learning that he had far surpassed even the great hopes which his examiners had formed of him." [8] The College of Physicians, marriage and Saint Bartholomew's Hospital [ edit ]

I found the task so truly arduous... that I was almost tempted to think... that the movement of the heart was only to be comprehended by God. For I could neither rightly perceive at first when the systole and when the diastole took place by reason of the rapidity of the movement..." [36]

Harvey understood these objections. Although an Aristotelian, he could not give a final cause of circulation and was driven to say that it had to be enough to show that a thing is, despite being unable to say what it is for. He had no convincing answer to the charge of destroying the basis of medical practice. Harvey's doctrine, because radical, was isolated; opponents such as Primrose could use all the authority and arguments of Galenic physiology and its vehicle, an Aristotelian natural philosophy, that reached and explained all the phenomena of the physical world. blood in the arteries and the veins is all of the same origin, not manufactured in different parts of the body Harvey graduated as a Bachelor of Arts from Caius in 1597. [7] He then travelled through France and Germany to Italy, where he entered the University of Padua, in 1599. His will distributed his material goods and wealth throughout his extended family and also left a substantial amount of money to the Royal College of Physicians.Details of Harvey's early education are sketchy; however, by 1588 he was attending the King's School, Canterbury. Here he learned his Latin, which was businesslike rather than elegant, and occasionally idiosyncratic. He went on to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, to which he was admitted on the last day of May 1593. The old Gonville Hall had been refounded by John Caius in 1567, who was its master on his death in 1573. Caius was a notable scholar who had studied medicine under Montanus and who had shared lodgings with the anatomist Vesalius; possibly his college was attractive to those with an eye on medicine as a career, for one of Caius's innovations was to procure the bodies of executed criminals for dissection. These anatomies were probably still performed in Harvey's day, although his tutor was not a medical man but George Estey, a clergyman who taught Hebrew. Regina Bailey. "William Harvey – Father of Cardiovascular Medicine". about.com. Archived from the original on 12 June 2011 . Retrieved 26 September 2010. The second significant consequence of Harvey's discovery and the importance of blood circulation was that "many 18th-century authors attributed to it alone all the properties formerly associated with the other humours" (Bynum, 45). It was not until the end of the 18th century that scientists began to take an interest in what exactly were the components of blood. Harvey, meanwhile, reserved his latter years for the study of embryos. Harvey's other major work was Exercitationes de generatione animalium ( On Animal Generation), published in 1651. He had been working on it for many years but might never have finished it without the encouragement of his friend George Ent. [1]