Overview

William Harvey (1578-1657) is recognized as the man who discovered and published the first accurate description of the human circulatory system, based on his many years of experiments and observations as a scientist and physician. Harvey had accumulated a mass of irrefutable experimental evidence in support of his dramatic new view, knowing that a tremendous amount of criticism and disbelief would be mounted against his groundbreaking, revolutionary theory of the physiology of blood circulation. Although the majority of the physicians and scientists of his day refused to accept his research, Harvey's discovery and written description of the true functioning of the heart and circulatory system remains as one of the landmark medical textbooks and the foundation of modern physiology.

Background

Most physicians, scientists, and philosophers of seventeenth-century Europe were...