William Harvey And The Discovery Of The Circulation Of The Blood

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.

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William Harvey is the riveting story of a seventeenth-century man of medicine and the scientific revolution he sparked with his amazing discoveries about blood circulation within the body. Jole Shackelford traces Harvey's life from his early days in Folkstone, England, to his study of medicine in Padua through his rise to court physician to King James I and King Charles I, where he had the opportunity to conduct his research in human biology and physiology. Harvey's lecture notes show that he believed in the role of the heart in circulation of blood through a closed system as early as 1615. Yet he waited 13 years, until 1628, to publish his findings, when he felt more secure at introducing a concept counter to beliefs that had been held for hundreds of years. A revealing look at the changing social, religious, and political beliefs of the time, William Harvey documents how one man's originality helped introduce a new way of conducting scientific experiments that we still use today.

If the pulsations of the arteries fan and refrigerate the several parts of the body as the lungs do the heart, how comes it, as is commonly said, that the arteries carry the vital blood into the different parts, abundantly charged with vital spirits, which cherish the heat of these parts, sustain them when asleep, and recruit them when exhausted? and how should it happen that, if you tie the arteries, immediately the parts not only become torpid, and frigid, and look pale, but at length cease even to be nourished?-from the IntroductionThis seminal work of medical literature, first published in 1628, spells out in clear, lucid language how the human heart pumps blood around the body via its own exclusive circulatory route. What seems like an obvious concept to us today was in fact quite revolutionary at the time: Harvey's defiance of the medical "common knowledge" of his time laid the groundwork for all modern investigations of the circulatory system, and may be the most momentous discovery of 17th-century medicine.This important volume also includes a series of letters from Harvey to his medical colleagues in which he defends his then-astonishing theories, plus Harvey's "The Anatomy of Thomas Parr," a fascinating 1635 report on the dissection of the corpse of "a poor farmer of extremely advanced age."OF INTEREST TO: readers of scientific history, medical studentsBritish naturalist, anatomist, and doctor WILLIAM HARVEY (1578-1657) was educated at Cambridge, Canterbury, and Padua, and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1607. He served as court physician to both King James I and King Charles I.

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.

"An Anatomical Disquisition on the Motion of the Heart & Blood in Animals" by William Harvey (translated by Robert Willis). Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.