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Portrait of William Harvey

Science · Maths, astronomy, medicine & more

William Harvey

1578–1657 · English

Medicine — anatomy and physiology

William Harvey was the English physician who first fully described the circulation of the blood, showing that the heart pumps blood around the body in a closed circuit through arteries and veins. His 1628 book De Motu Cordis overturned the Galenic view that blood was continually made in the liver and consumed by the body. He was physician to James I and Charles I, and also did pioneering work on embryology.

How to spot them

  • ▸Circulation of the blood; the heart as a pump; De Motu Cordis (1628)
  • ▸Born in Folkestone, Kent; studied at Padua under Fabricius
  • ▸Physician to James I and Charles I; physician at St Bartholomew's Hospital
  • ▸The Harveian Oration at the Royal College of Physicians
  • ▸'Ex ovo omnia' (everything from an egg) in his work on generation

Key discoveries & works

De Motu Cordis (On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals) (1628)

Published in Frankfurt; demonstrated the circulation of the blood

First complete description of the systemic circulation of the blood (1628)

Blood leaves the heart in arteries and returns in veins, driven by the heart's pumping

De Generatione Animalium (1651)

Studies of embryology, including chick and deer embryos; frontispiece motto 'ex ovo omnia'

Founder of the Harveian Oration at the Royal College of Physicians (1656)

An annual lecture endowed shortly before his death, still delivered today

Key ideas

  • Blood circulates: the quantity pumped by the heart is far too great to be continually made afresh from food, so it must return to the heart
  • Venous valves ensure that blood in the veins flows only towards the heart
  • Quantitative reasoning and experiment (e.g. ligatures on the arm) used to overturn the ancient teaching of Galen

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born in Folkestone, Kent, in 1578; educated at King's School, Canterbury, and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
  • •Took his medical degree at the University of Padua, where he studied under Hieronymus Fabricius, who described the valves in veins
  • •Became physician at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, in 1609
  • •Served as physician to James I and then Charles I, and was with the King's party at the Battle of Edgehill (1642)
  • •His Lumleian lectures at the Royal College of Physicians (from 1616) first set out his ideas on circulation
  • •He could not explain how blood passed from arteries to veins; capillaries were later seen by Marcello Malpighi (1661)

Drill it — 7 cards

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Sources