Who was william harvey?
William Harvey was the man who discovered the circulation of blood. Born in Folkestone, Kent on 1 April 1578, he was educated at King’s College, Canterbury and then studied at Cambridge University. After a study trip to Italy he returned to England in 1602 to practice as a physician. His career was helped by the fact that he was married to Elizabeth Browne, the daughter of Elizabeth I’s physician. Harvey became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1609 and in 1618 became the physician to King James I and his son Charles when he became king. Both royals took a close interest in his research and encouraged his intellectual pursuits. Harvey was enthralled by the way blood flowed through the human body and the role that valves played in circulation. In 1628 he published his landmark theories in a book called ‘Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus’ (‘An Anatomical Study of the Motion of the Heart and of the Blood in Animals’). He explained how the heart p
