Circulating through the centuries, the name William Harvey is attached to several venerable institutions including the eponymous Research Institute, home to our Sonalee Laboratory. English physician William Harvey solved a millennia-long puzzle, the mechanics of blood circulation.
William Harvey was the first known physician to describe completely, and in detail, the systemic circulation and properties of blood being pumped to the brain and the rest of the body by the heart.
He was born in Folkestone on 1 April 1578, the son of a prosperous sheep farmer, and studied at Gonville Caius College of the University of Cambridge, graduating in 1597.
From 1600 to 1602, William Harvey studied medicine at the University of Padua in Italy, where, perhaps most significantly for his future research, the practice of vivisection was much more common than in England at the time. Harvey returned to England where, from 1609, he worked as a physician in Saint Bartholomew's Hospital in London. Harvey became so renowned he was appointed the physician to both King James I of England (r. 1603-1625) and Charles I of England (r. 1625-1649).
Harvey’s greatest achievement was to recognize that the blood flows rapidly around the human body, being pumped through a single system of arteries and veins, and to support this hypothesis with experiments and arguments. There had been suggestions, both within the European tradition (by 16th-century Spanish physician Servetus) and within the Islamic tradition (by 13th-century Muslim physician Ibn al-Nafīs) of a “lesser circulation,” whereby blood circulated from the heart to the lungs and back, without circulating around the whole body ....
A collection of links that tell the fascinating story of William Harvey:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Harvey/Key-discoveries-and-influences
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2776239/
https://www.aaas.org/taxonomy/term/10/circulatory-system-galen-harvey
