William Harvey

William Harvey is best remembered as the first man who aptly described the circulation of blood in the bodythrough the functioning of the heart. An anatomist and a physician by profession, Harvey’s discovery was crucial and opened new avenues of study in blood circulation and distribution. His experimentation thwarted the incorrect belief that liver was the source of blood movement. He instead showed the world that the heart formed the centre of blood circulation and it was through it that arteries and veins circulated the blood to the body and the brain. He also established the fact that the regular contractions of the heart pumped the flow of blood around the whole body. The discovery was extraordinarily remarkable and sealed Harvey’s place in the history of medicine forever. Apart from doing significant medical research and experimentation, Harvey served as the royal physician to King James I and later King Charles I. Simultaneously, he also served various aristocrats and royals. In his lifetime, Harvey held the chair of a Lumleian lecturer and also served patients at St Bartholomew's Hospital. Towards the end of his life, Harvey came up with a masterpiece, ‘De Generatione Animalium’, which concentrated on embryology. The book highlighted the theory of ‘epigenesis’ which stated that the organism does not exist as a minute entity within the ovum but develops from it by a gradual building up of its parts. He was also the first to suggest that humans and mammals reproduced via fertilization of an egg by a sperm.