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Harvey, William

English physician who discovered that blood is circulated around the body by pulsations of the heart, a landmark in medical investigations. His work did much to pave the way for modern physiology.

Harvey was born in Folkestone, Kent, on 1 April 1578. He went to the King's School, Canterbury, and then attended Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge in 1593. He graduated with a BA in 1597 and extended his studies under Fabricius ab Aquapendente at the university medical school in Padua, Italy, gaining his medical degree in 1602. He returned to London, built up a successful practice, and in 1609 he was appointed physician to St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, and served as a professor there 1615–43. In 1618 he became Physician Extraordinary to James I, and then Royal Physician, a position he retained until the death of Charles I in 1649. He was elected president of the College of Physicians in 1654 but was too old to accept, and he died three years later in Roehampton on 3 June 1657.

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REFERENCES

  • Bylebyl, Jerome J. (ed.), William Harvey and His Age: The Professional and Social Context of the Discovery of the Circulation, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979.
  • Chauvois, Louis, William Harvey: His Life and Times, His Discoveries, His Methods, London: Hutchinson, and New York: , 1957.
  • Frank, Robert Gregg, Harvey and the Oxford Physiologists: A Study of Scientific Ideas and Social Interaction, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.
  • Franklin, Kenneth J., William Harvey, Englishman, 1578-1657, London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1961.
  • French, Roger, William Harvey's Natural Philosophy, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
See more references from Credo

From Credo

  • Keele, Kenneth D., William Harvey: The Man, the Physician, and the Scientist, London: Nelson, 1965.
  • Keynes, Geoffrey, The Personality of William Harvey, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1949.
  • Keynes, Geoffrey, The Life of William Harvey, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966.
  • Malloch, Archibald, William Harvey, New York: Hoeber, 1929.
  • Pagel, Walter, New Light on William Harvey, Basel and New York: Karger, 1976.
  • Pagel, Waiter, William Harvey's Biological Ideas: Selected Aspects and Historical Background, Basel and New York: Karger, 1967.
  • Power, D'Arcy, William Harvey,London: Fisher Unwin, 1897; New York: Longmans Green, 1898.
  • Whitteridge, Gweneth, William Harvey and the Circulation of the Blood, London: Macdonald, and New York: , 1971.
  • Wyatt, R.B. Hervey, William Harvey (1578-1657), London: Leonard Parsons, and Boston: Small Maynard, 1924.