HARVEY, WILLIAM

born April 1, 1578, Folkestone, Kent, Eng. died June 3, 1657, London English physician and discoverer of the true nature of the circulation of the blood and of the function of the heart as a pump. From 1588 to 1593 Harvey attended the King's School attached to the cathedral at Canterbury, and he entered Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in 1593, receiving his B.A. degree in 1597. He then undertook the study of medicine at the University of Padua (Italy), receiving a doctorate in medicine in April 1602. Having returned to London, Harvey was admitted in 1607 as a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, and in 1609 he became assistant physician and then physician at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, a position he continued to hold until 1643. He was one of the doctors in attendance at the death of King James I in 1625, having been appointed physician extraordinary to the king about 1618. King Charles I appointed Harvey his personal physician and contributed to Harvey's research by placing the deer in the royal parks at his disposal. The exacting methods developed by Harvey set the pattern for scientific research for generations. Harvey's book on the circulation of the blood, Exercitatio anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus (Anatomical Exercises Concerning the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals), was published in 1628, and his Exercitationes de Generatione Animalium (Exercises Concerning the Generation of Animals) followed in 1651. At his death he left his entire research library to the College of Physicians. born April 1, 1578, Folkestone, Kent, Eng. died June 3, 1657, London English physician and discoverer of the true nature of the circulation of the blood and of the function of the heart as a pump. Functional knowledge of the heart and the circulation had remained almost at a standstill ever since the time of the Greco-Roman physician Galen1,400 years earlier. Harvey's courage, penetrating intelligence, and precise methods were to set the pattern for research in biology and other sciences for succeeding generations, so that he shares with William Gilbert, investigator of the magnet, the credit for initiating accurate experimental research throughout the world. Harvey's father, Thomas Harvey, was a prosperous businessman and a leading citizen of the small town of Folkestone. William, the eldest of nine children, was the only one to achieve special distinction in his career, but all his brothers were successful in business or at the royal court in London and among them amassed considerable wealth. Additional reading Sir Geoffrey Keynes, The Life of William Harvey (1966, reissued 1978), is a full and definitive biography based on examination of contemporary sources, documented and illustrated, with eight appendixes; his A Bibliography of the Writings of Dr. William Harvey, 15781657, 2nd ed. (1953), is an account of all Harvey's books and of where they may be found; and his The Portraiture of William Harvey (1949) is a catalog of pictures, genuine and spurious, with reproductions. John G. Curtis, Harvey's Views on the Use of the Circulation of the Blood (1915), is an early study of the position of Harvey's work in the history of the knowledge of human physiology. For texts, see Gweneth Whitteridge (ed.), The Anatomical Lectures: Prelectiones Anatomie Universalis, De Musculis (1964), a reliable transcription of Harvey's lecture notes, both in Latin and English, with a full discussion and interpretation, and Whitteridge (trans.), An Anatomical Disputation Concerning the Movement of the Heart and Blood in Living Creatures (1976, trans. from Latin); see also Whitteridge, William Harvey and the Circulation of the Blood (1970), an important study of the growth of Harvey's ideas. Arthur W. Meyer, An Analysis of the De Generatione Animalium of Harvey (1936), is a discussion of Harvey's second major publication, a work on animal reproduction and development; De Generatione Animalium is also treated in Elizabeth B. Gasking, Investigations into Generation, 16511828 (1967). Walter Pagel, William Harvey's Biological Ideas: Selected Aspects and Historical Background (1967), a well-documented historical analysis of Harvey's ideas on physiology and embryology, is continued in his New Light on William Harvey (1976). A good survey of Harvey's works is Kenneth D. Keele, William Harvey: The Man, the Physician, and the Scientist (1965). Later studies include Jerome J. Bylebyl (ed.), William Harvey and His Age: The Professional and Social Context of the Discovery of the Circulation (1979); and Robert G. Frank, Harvey and the Oxford Physiologists: A Study of Scientific Ideas (1980), an analysis based upon diaries, letters, notebooks, manuscripts, and published scientific works. Sir Geoffrey Langdon Keynes The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica