Harvey, William

Harvey, William (1578-1657), doctor, b. Folkestone, Kent, England.

William Harvey's book, Essays On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals, has been called the most important book in the history of medicine. In it he proved that 'the movement of the blood is constantly in a circle, and is brought about by the beat of the heart.' This is something that no one before him had realized.

Harvey had worked on the problem for many years. He cut up the bodies of more than forty different kinds of animals and made many calculations. Then he stated that the heart was a pump. It pumped about seventy-two times a minute and sent equal to about 540 pounds (245 kg) of blood around the body of a person every hour. (Doctors now say that the heart beats seventy to eighty times a minute.)

Harvey was ,born in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and became doctor to two kings, James I and Charles I.