William Harvey
1. Where and when was William Harvey born?
William Harvey was born in England, 1578.

2. Where and when did Harvey study medicine and what did he become interested in?
Harvey started to study medicine from 1598 to 1602 and he became very interested in anatomy.

3. What was his first job?
Harvey’s first job was as a doctor at St Bartholomew’s.

4. What was his second job?
Harvey’s second job was being a lecturer in anatomy the Royal College of Surgeons.

5. What other job did he have?
He was a physician to James I and Charles I.

6. Whose explanation of the heart was accepted at this time?
Galen’s explanation of the heart was accepted at this time.

7. Describe this explanation.
Galen said that blood as made in the liver, and got in the arteries through holes in the septum of the heart. He also said that blood was continually being made up to make up for the fact that it was used up by the body.

8. What ideas were important to Harvey?
The ideas that were important to Harvey were:
Careful observation
Dissection
Experiment in order to improve his knowledge of how the body worked

9. What idea did Harvey begin to work on in 1615?
In 1615, Harvey began to work on the idea that blood circulated around the body.

10. What new invention helped Harvey, and how?
The new invention that helped Harvey was the water pump as it gave Harvey the idea that the body possibly worked in a similar way to a water pump and pumped blood around the body.

11. Why did Harvey need to dissect things that were still alive?
So he could study the body as a living system.

12. Why did he use cold blooded animals like frogs?
He used cold blooded animals as they had a slow heart beat.

13. When did he then dissect dead criminals?
He then went on to dissect dead criminals to ensure that the human heart was the same as the live animals he dissected.

14. What did Harvey’s experiments show him, and how was this linked to the pulse?
Harvey’s experiments showed him that the heart was pumping out huge volumes of blood and simultaneously with each push; the pulse could be felt at the neck and wrist.

15. How did Harvey know Galen was wrong, and what alternative theory did he give?
The blood was being pumped out by the heart and he realised that there was such a large supply of blood that it could not be used up so an alternative theory that Harvey gave was that there was a finite amount of blood in the body and it was continuously circulating.

16. Describe the first experiment Harvey used to prove his theory
The first experiment that Harvey conducted was purposefully pumping liquids the wrong way past the valves in the veins and arteries and it flowed back through the veins of the heart and was recycled again.

17. Describe the second experiment Harvey used to prove his theory
The second experiment that Harvey conducted was bandaging the upper arm so that the veins showed up as nodules on the vein. If your finger is pushed along the vein from one valve to the next, away from the heart, the section of the vein will be emptied of blood until the finger was lifted.

18. When did Harvey publish his ideas, and what was his book called?
He published his ideas in 1928 and he done it through his book, On the Motion of the Heart.

19. Why did Harvey’s theory meet with opposition?
Harvey’s theory met with the opposition as it suggested that if there was a fixed amount of blood in the body, the there would be no need for the practice of blood letting.

20. How did this opposition affect Harvey’s career?
It affected Harvey’s career as he lost many patients as they believed his ideas were unusual.

21. How valuable was Harvey’s work to medical practice during the Renaissance? Explain your answer?
Harvey’s theory on a fixed amount of blood was not valuable to the medical practice in the Renaissance. Bloodletting was still continued in the Renaissance so it contradicted his theory. However, other theories such as blood circulation helped his work. But, this