William Harvey and the Discovery of the Human Circulatory System
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 adherents of Galen's doctrine, which contained several significant errors regarding the movement of blood and the workings of the heart. These were actually quite ancient ideas and notions, still accepted more than 1,400 years after first being postulated by Galen (130?-200?), the Greek physician of Rome. Over time, the dogma of Galen became sacrosanct, even though most of his anatomical knowledge and physiological investigations were based on his studies of monkeys and pigs, because dissections of human bodies were typically not permitted.
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