New Light On William Harvey

'This book is clearly an essential one-not only for the Harvey specialist, but also for all students of the Scientific Revolution.'

A Karger 'Publishing Highlights 1890-2015' title This 2nd, revised edition is still the reference work available in print and electronically on Paracelsus by the Paracelsus authority. Furthermore, it makes a very good read. See also Pagel's last book The Smiling Spleen on Paracelsianism as a historical phenomenon. '...a work in the brilliant tradition of biographical research ... even the casual reader will be impressed to learn that, four centuries ago, the man who had the courage to burn in public the writings of Avicenna, recognised pulmonary disease in miners as an occupational hazard, cretinism and goitre as endemic in certain areas, and chorea and hysteria as manifestations of disease, not demonic possession.' The Lancet

In 1628, the English physician William Harvey published his revolutionary theory of blood circulation. Offering a radical conception of the workings of the human body and the function of the heart, Harvey's theory overthrew centuries of anatomical and physiological orthodoxy and had profound consequences for the history of science. It also had an enormous impact on culture more generally, influencing economists, poets and political thinkers, for whom the theory triumphed not as empirical fact but as a remarkable philosophical idea. In the first major biographical study of Harvey in 50 years, Thomas Wright charts the meteoric rise of a yeoman's son to the elevated position of King Charles I's physician, taking the reader from farmlands of Kent to England's royal palaces, and paints a vivid portrait of an extraordinary mind formed at a fertile time in England's intellectual history. Set in late Renaissance London, the book features an illustrious cast of historical characters, from Francis Bacon and John Donne to Robert Fludd, whose corroboration of Harvey's ideas helped launch his circulation theory. After he published his discoveries, Harvey became famous throughout Europe, where he demonstrated his theory through public vivisections. Although his ideas met with vociferous opposition, they eventually triumphed and Harvey became renowned as the only man in the history of natural philosophy to live to see a revolutionary theory gain wide currency. But just as intellectual ideas could be toppled, so too could kings. When Charles I was overthrown during the Civil War of the 1640s, his loyal court physician fell also, and Harvey, an unrepentant Royalist, was banished from London under the English Republic. He died in the late 1650s, a gout-ridden, melancholy man, uncertain of his achievement. A victim of the political turmoil of the times, William Harvey was nevertheless the mainspring of vast historical changes in anatomy and physiology. Wright's biography skillfully repositions Harvey as a man who embodied the intellectual and cultural spirit of his age, and launched a revolution that would continue to run its course long after his death.

"Originally published, in a slightly different format, as Circulation: William Harvey's revolutionary idea, in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus, 2012"--T.p. verso.

This book presents a new interpretation of how and why the discovery of the circulation of the blood in animals was made. It has long been known that the English physician William Harvey (1578–1657) was a follower of Aristotle, but his most strikingly ‘modern’ and original discovery – of the circulation of the blood – resulted from Harvey following Aristotle’s ancient programme of investigation into animals. This is a new reading of the most important discovery ever made in anatomy by one man and produces not only a radical re-reading of Harvey as anatomist, but also of Aristotle and his investigations of animals.

As periodical of the International Academy of the History of Medicine, this Clio Medica volume contains 19 papers.

In the 17th century the English physician, William Harvey described for the first time the details of the human circulatory system. Harvey discovered that the heart was a muscle and that by contracting, pushed blood through the body. He worked out the whole pattern of the heartbeat. William Harvey's genius changed how people understood the workings of the human body. This marked on the greatest advances in the study of medicine.

During his medical career, Harvey focused much of his research on the mechanics of blood flow in the human body. Most physicians of the 17th-century considered lungs responsible for moving the blood throughout the body. Harvey's famous "Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus" commonly was published in Latin at Frankfurt in 1628. At that time, Harvey was 50 years old. The first English translation appeared two decades later. Observing the functioning of the heart in living animals, he was able to see that systole was the active phase of the heart's movement, pumping out the blood by its muscular contraction. Then he saw that the valves in the veins permit the blood to flow only in the direction of the heart and to prove that the blood circulated around the body and returned to the heart.