If you live in East Kent you may well be familiar with the name William Harvey. The hospital in Ashford is named after the most famous English medical scientist. In Folkestone there is a statue on the Leas and the William Harvey Grammar School, both celebrating the man who proved how blood flows around the body.

William Harvey was born in Folkestone, one of seven sons. He went to school in Canterbury and studied in Cambridge and Italy before becoming a doctor and a lecturer in London. His area of research was the circulation of the blood and the way the heart works. His book, ‘Concerning the motion of the heart and blood in animals’ was published in 1628.

What theory did Harvey put forward?
Harvey studied with several doctors in Italy whose work he developed so that he was able to prove:

How did Harvey convince people that he was right?
Harvey worked using scientific principles. He was not the first to suggest that blood was pumped through the heart but he was the first to prove his theory through a series of experiments. By dissecting living animals he was able to see the beating of the heart and the pumping of the blood. He also dissected human bodies so that he knew about their anatomy. One problem that had always challenged any theory about circulation was why did the blood not flow back into the heart between each pumping action ? The answer was discovered and explained through experiments that showed that the veins contained valves.

How important where the theories of Harvey?
Both the discoveries and the methods of Harvey were important. Harvey always did experiments to explain and illustrated what he discovered. This method led medical scientists away from theories that could not be proved by experiment, observation and measurement. Unfortunately Harvey could not show how the blood moved from the arteries to the veins because the capillaries are too small to be seen without a powerful microscope. Although Harvey was able to calculate how much blood there is in the human body his discoveries could do nothing to relieve the three main problems faced by patients and surgeons. He did not discover anything about the causes of infection, he could not transfuse blood from one person to another nor could he stop internal bleeding.
His discoveries were only the starting point for the work of researchers in the centuries that followed. Without the discoveries and the methods of Harvey, medical science would not have had the information it needed for modern investigative work.