William Harvey

William Harvey ( born April 1, 1578 Folkestone ( Kent, England); † June 3, 1657 in Hampstead ( Camden, England) ) was an English physician and anatomist, and with the discovery of blood circulation in the West, the pioneer of modern physiology.

Life

Background and education

William Harvey was born as the eldest of nine children of businessman Thomas Harvey and his wife Joan in Folkestone. He learned classical languages ​​in Canterbury and studied at the University of Cambridge. This He finished his studies in 1597 with a Bachelor of Arts. Subsequently he studied until 1602 medicine at the University of Padua in Italy, the most prestigious medical faculty of that time. There, the eminent surgeon and anatomist Hieronymus Fabricius had indeed discovered the venous valves, but have not yet understood their meaning, since, according to the then valid views of Galen, a circulation of the blood was not conceivable. Rather, it was for 14 centuries of opinion, the blood will continually produced in the liver and offset by contraction of the arteries in motion.

Later life

With these impressions, Harvey returned two years later returned to England. In London, he opened a practice and married Elizabeth Browne, daughter of the personal physician of Queen Elizabeth I. In 1607, Harvey Member of the Royal College of Physicians, 1608 summoned to the court of King James I, and after his death in 1625 also personal physician whose successor Charles I., with whom he was a friend and supported his research generous. In 1628 he published his 72seitiges work Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus or shortly De Motu Cordis ( Anatomical studies on the movements of the heart and of the blood), which helped him gain reputation throughout Europe, he other hand, harsh criticism of the followers of Galen brought, to which he responded in 1649 with the publication of his detailed answers. The great mystery how the blood come from the arteries into the veins, but was able to solve with his discovery of the capillaries after the invention of the microscope, the Italian anatomist Marcello Malpighi.

At the age of 79 years Harvey succumbed to the effects of a stroke.

Writings

Almost all of his manuscripts have perished either during the civil war or at the great fire in London ( 1666).

What differed William Harvey of its research-based contemporaries, was his clear distinction between hypotheses and facts. Results of his research, he accepted only when they have been confirmed in control experiments. He was thus the first to scientific methods in the field of biology and medicine introduced and can thus be regarded as the founder of modern medicine and physiology. His calculation of the pumping power of the heart is the first major application of mathematics to biology. Harveys new findings also opened the philosophical struggle between vitalist and mechanist, which runs up to the present time. Significant was his work at the Royal College of Physicians, where he held since 1615 lectures, sections and anatomical demonstrations led by his Theses on the bloodstream represented since about 1618 and thus put before the publication of his views of criticism.

With his 1651 published work Exercitationes de Generatione Animalium ( exercises on the generation of animals ) yielded Harvey significant contributions to embryology. He was the first to describe not only successive stages of development, but a dynamic approach took. In contradiction to the then generally accepted preformation he explained how the various organs from undifferentiated substance emerge ( epigenesis ). In the tradition of the Greek philosopher Aristotle, he took it to a formative principle, which he described as a " divine architect ". With these views he was in his time an outsider; the position taken by him epigenetic approach could be freed from the metaphysical accessories, prevail only in the early 19th century against the preformationism.

Others

According to him the Harvey Lecture is named.

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