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William Harvey (1578-1657)
Introductory Note
William Harvey, whose epoch-making treatise announcing and demonstrating the
circulation of the blood is here printed, was born at Folkestone, Kent, England, April 1,
1578. He was educated at the King's School, Canterbury, and at Gonville and Caius College,
Cambridge; and studied medicine on the Continent, receiving the degree of M.D. from the
University of Padua. He took the same degree later at both the English universities. After
his return to England he became Fellow of the College of Physicians, physician to St.
Bartholomew's Hospital, and Lumleian lecturer at the College of Physicians. It was in this
last capacity that he delivered, in 1616, the lectures in which he first gave public
notice of his theories on the circulation of the blood. The notes of these lectures are
still preserved in the British Museum.
In 1618 Harvey was appointed physician extraordinary to James I, and he remained in
close professional relations to the royal family until the close of the Civil War, being
present at the battle of Edgehill. By mandate of Charles I, he was, for a short time,
Warden of Merton College, Oxford (1645-6), and, when he was too infirm to undertake the
duties, he was offered the Presidency of the College of Physicians. He died on June 3,
1657.
Harvey's famous "Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in
Animalibus" was published in Latin at Frankfort in 1628. The discovery was received
with great interest, and in his own country was accepted at once; on the Continent it won
favor more slowly. Before his death, however, the soundness of his views was acknowledged
by the medical profession throughout Europe, and "it remains to this day the greatest
of the discoveries of physiology, and its whole honor belongs to Harvey."
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