Harvey William

Harvey, William (1578-1657), the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, was the eldest son of Thomas Harvey, of Folkestone. He was educated at the King's School, Canterbury, and at Caius College, Cambridge, after leaving which he went to study at Padua, where he also took the degree of M.D. In 1609 he was made physician at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, having previously become a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. In 1618 he became physician extraordinary to James I., and was afterwards physician in ordinary to that king and his successor. He was present at the battle of Edgehill. and went to Oxford with Charles I., by whose favour he was appointed in 1645 warden of Merton. After the capture of the city he returned to London, where he died of gout.

He was buried at Hempstead, Essex. It was in his Lumleian lectures of 1616 that Harvey first gave utterance to his thoughts on the circulation of the blood, but it was not till 1628 that his Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus was published at Frankfort. The discovery was accepted in England but opposed by several foreign physicians. By the time of Harvey's death it was, however, generally admitted. A translation from the Latin of his complete works was published by the Sydenham Society in 1847, and a new- edition appeared in 1881. Harvey was a man of great learning, being especially conversant with Aristotle. He presented a library to the College of Physicians, to whom he also left his estate of Burwash in Sussex. In 1654 he was elected president, but declined the honour on account of his advanced age.