Harvey was born in Folkestone, Kent on 1st April 1578. He was educated at King’s School, Canterbury, and was an extremely bright pupil, fluent in Latin and Greek by his early teens. This success gained him a scholarship to Caius College, Cambridge when he was just 15. Harvey read arts and philosophy, and after graduating went on to read medicine at Padua, the world’s leading medical faculty during the High Renaissance, graduating with honours in 1602.
Harvey returned to England and settled in London, establishing a practice in the City. In 1604 he married Elizabeth Browne, the daughter of the physician of James 1. In that year he became a Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians, subsequently becoming a Fellow in 1607. In 1609 he was appointed Physician to St Bartholomew’s Hospital, remaining on the staff for 35 years. He was never a prolific clinician - having married well and in due course succeeding his father-in-law as physician to the royal households of James I (1566-1625) and later Charles I (1600-1649), he became financially secure without requiring a large practice. He attended poor patients at Bart’s once weekly on an annual salary of £25, whilst his royal appointment earned him the considerable sum of £ 300, and he continued to conduct some private practice from home. In this way he was able to devote himself to his real interest of academic medicine. He served the Royal College of Physicians for 45 years, and his lectures and tutorials based around anatomical dissection for apprentice surgeons were particularly admired.
Harvey was one of the first doctors to apply rigorous scientific method to medical research. He became interested in the circulatory system, a topic on which surprisingly little had been written. Claudius Galen (130-201), the Greek physician, had recognised that the circulation system carried blood not air. Galen also noted the distinction between arteries and veins, although he believed that they represented two different systems. This slim volume of work was virtually all that existed on the subject until Harvey. He began with observing the action of the heart in small animals, many acquired from the royal gardens to which he had full access, and he also performed numerous dissections on executed criminals. He rightly concluded that blood is pumped rapidly and continuously by the heart, outward from the heart by arteries and back again via veins. This was a single system, and its unidirectional nature was maintained by the proper functioning of the heart valves. The only question Harvey was unable to answer was how the arteries and veins communicated. Maintaining the remarkable Italian connection, the final part of the riddle, which required the microscope, was solved with the discovery of capillaries by another of the giants of medicine, Marcello Malpighi (1628-94) in Bologna in 1661.
Harvey’s discovery was made around 1618, but he was an obsessed perfectionist who subjected his work to intense scrutiny before seeking publication. In 1628, aged 50, he eventually went public with his momentous 72-page thesis ‘Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus’ (Anatomical Exercise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals), usually abbreviated to ‘De Motu Cordis’. Written in Latin and published in Germany, it created a sensation in the medical community. Reaction was generally hostile, not least because so many vested interests rested on the earlier, mistaken doctrine. For example, the practise of bleeding as a cure would be discredited if Harvey was correct, and this was the basis of a fierce criticism published by the English physician John Primrose. In Paris, Jean Riolan, Dean of the Paris Medical Faculty and a distinguished anatomist, agreed with parts of the work but did not acknowledge that blood passed between the right and left side of the heart via the lungs. Harvey eventually replied publicly to Riolan, though not until 1649. There was, however, unequivocal support from influential colleagues such as Paul Schlegel in Hamburg and René Descartes in France, and in time Harvey’s work became fully accepted.
Human reproduction was the other area of medicine to which Harvey made a sizeable contribution. He was sceptical of the theory of spontaneous generation and proposed that all animals originally came from an egg. His experiments with chick embryos were the first to suggest epigenesis, the development of complex structures from initially homozygous material. This work was completed around 1638; however, never a man to be rushed, Harvey waited until 1651 to publish ‘Exercitationes de Generatione Animalium’ (On the Generation of Animals).
In contrast to his radical approach to science, Harvey was personally conservative, and a staunch Royalist. Predeceased by his wife, and childless (his one regret in an otherwise charmed life), he busied himself with the Royal College of Physicians after his post at Bart’s ceased, though he declined the College Presidency in 1654, as he was already 76 and disabled by gout.
William Harvey died from a stroke on 3rd June 1657 in Roehampton and was buried in Hempstead, Essex. The Harveian Oration, started during his lifetime in 1656, has been held at the Royal College of Physicians each year since, and Harveian Societies in London, Edinburgh and New York exist to promote excellence in academic medicine. In his native Kent, the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford honours the legacy of one of that county’s greatest sons.
Harvey was born in Folkestone, Kent on 1st April 1578. He was educated at King’s School, Canterbury, and was an extremely bright pupil, fluent in Latin and Greek by his early teens. This success gained him a scholarship to Caius College, Cambridge when he was just 15. Harvey read arts and philosophy, and after graduating went on to read medicine at Padua, the world’s leading medical faculty during the High Renaissance, graduating with honours in 1602.
Harvey returned to England and settled in London, establishing a practice in the City. In 1604 he married Elizabeth Browne, the daughter of the physician of James 1. In that year he became a Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians, subsequently becoming a Fellow in 1607. In 1609 he was appointed Physician to St Bartholomew’s Hospital, remaining on the staff for 35 years. He was never a prolific clinician - having married well and in due course succeeding his father-in-law as physician to the royal households of James I (1566-1625) and later Charles I (1600-1649), he became financially secure without requiring a large practice. He attended poor patients at Bart’s once weekly on an annual salary of £25, whilst his royal appointment earned him the considerable sum of £ 300, and he continued to conduct some private practice from home. In this way he was able to devote himself to his real interest of academic medicine. He served the Royal College of Physicians for 45 years, and his lectures and tutorials based around anatomical dissection for apprentice surgeons were particularly admired.
Harvey was one of the first doctors to apply rigorous scientific method to medical research. He became interested in the circulatory system, a topic on which surprisingly little had been written. Claudius Galen (130-201), the Greek physician, had recognised that the circulation system carried blood not air. Galen also noted the distinction between arteries and veins, although he believed that they represented two different systems. This slim volume of work was virtually all that existed on the subject until Harvey. He began with observing the action of the heart in small animals, many acquired from the royal gardens to which he had full access, and he also performed numerous dissections on executed criminals. He rightly concluded that blood is pumped rapidly and continuously by the heart, outward from the heart by arteries and back again via veins. This was a single system, and its unidirectional nature was maintained by the proper functioning of the heart valves. The only question Harvey was unable to answer was how the arteries and veins communicated. Maintaining the remarkable Italian connection, the final part of the riddle, which required the microscope, was solved with the discovery of capillaries by another of the giants of medicine, Marcello Malpighi (1628-94) in Bologna in 1661.
Harvey’s discovery was made around 1618, but he was an obsessed perfectionist who subjected his work to intense scrutiny before seeking publication. In 1628, aged 50, he eventually went public with his momentous 72-page thesis ‘Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus’ (Anatomical Exercise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals), usually abbreviated to ‘De Motu Cordis’. Written in Latin and published in Germany, it created a sensation in the medical community. Reaction was generally hostile, not least because so many vested interests rested on the earlier, mistaken doctrine. For example, the practise of bleeding as a cure would be discredited if Harvey was correct, and this was the basis of a fierce criticism published by the English physician John Primrose. In Paris, Jean Riolan, Dean of the Paris Medical Faculty and a distinguished anatomist, agreed with parts of the work but did not acknowledge that blood passed between the right and left side of the heart via the lungs. Harvey eventually replied publicly to Riolan, though not until 1649. There was, however, unequivocal support from influential colleagues such as Paul Schlegel in Hamburg and René Descartes in France, and in time Harvey’s work became fully accepted.
Human reproduction was the other area of medicine to which Harvey made a sizeable contribution. He was sceptical of the theory of spontaneous generation and proposed that all animals originally came from an egg. His experiments with chick embryos were the first to suggest epigenesis, the development of complex structures from initially homozygous material. This work was completed around 1638; however, never a man to be rushed, Harvey waited until 1651 to publish ‘Exercitationes de Generatione Animalium’ (On the Generation of Animals).
In contrast to his radical approach to science, Harvey was personally conservative, and a staunch Royalist. Predeceased by his wife, and childless (his one regret in an otherwise charmed life), he busied himself with the Royal College of Physicians after his post at Bart’s ceased, though he declined the College Presidency in 1654, as he was already 76 and disabled by gout.
William Harvey died from a stroke on 3rd June 1657 in Roehampton and was buried in Hempstead, Essex. The Harveian Oration, started during his lifetime in 1656, has been held at the Royal College of Physicians each year since, and Harveian Societies in London, Edinburgh and New York exist to promote excellence in academic medicine. In his native Kent, the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford honours the legacy of one of that county’s greatest sons.