Dr Harvey*s Great Discovery.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 76, 30 March 1931, Page 6

Dr Harvey*s Great Discovery.

353 Years Ago.

By

Charles Conway.

QN APRIL 1, 1578, William Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, was born in the town of Folkestone, his father being a prosperous yeoman. After receiving his early education at Canterbury Grammar School, he entered Cambridge University, where he secured his B.A. degree at the age of 19, and a few months later he commenced his medical studies at Padua University, which was then the leading school of medicine in the world. He was granted his doctor’s diploma five years later, when he returned to England and settled in London, where he speedily established a flourishing practice, and in 1609 he was appointed physician to St Bartholomew’s Hospital. In 1615 he was chosen by the Royal College of Physicians to deliver the important Lumleian lectures on anatomy and surgery, and it was in one of these lectures that he first publicly expressed his views regarding the circulation of the blood, but it was not until 1628 that he published his famous treatise on the subject. The fact that the blood flowed from the heart to the extremities of the body had been known as far back as 350 8.C., when it was mentioned in the writings of Aristotle, and five centuries later Galen, the Greek physician, argued, from his discovery of valves in the pulmonary artery, that the blood was also returned to the heart. Later scientists demonstrated the circulation of the blood through the lungs, and in the 16th century Andreas Caesalpinus, the Italian philosopher, inferred. from the swelling of veins below a ligature, that the - blood flowed from the extremities of the body as well as towards them. Harvey actually demonstrated what his predecessors had only suspected, for their opinions on the subject had been based more on deduction than by any careful observation of facts. For the purpose of ascertaining the truth Harvey made numerous and accurate experiments on both dead and living animals, with the result that he was able to clearly prove that the blood is propelled from the heart through the arteries, and returns to it through the veins. In addition, his experiments threw a flood of light on the dilation and contraction of the heart, on the action of the lungs on the blood, and on many other important points. Harvey's discovery, however, was by no means a complete one, for he never saw the capillaries, nor did he suspect their existence, and he was, therefore, unable to show how the blood got into the veins. This discovery was made in 1668 by Anthony van Leeuwenhoek, the Dutch microscopist, who, examining the tail of a tadpflle with lua powerful short-focus lenses, was the first person to actually see blood in the capillaries, and to trace its flow through them from the arteries into the veins. Harvey enjoyed the friendship of both James I. and Charles I. and he present with the latter at the Battle of EdgehjW in 1642, afterwards accompanying the king to Oxford, where he commenced his investigations regarding generation, which in the publication of a book on t he »übject in 1651. In this treatise he described the organs of generation in the common fowl, the formation of the egg, and the changes it undergoes in the course of “jcubattoo. The great physician died fr<mx the effect* of a paralytic stroke on June 3, 1657, age of 79, and he was laid to ™5Ut HwP; stead in Essex, but two and a half antwjß later his remains were removed to thcHervey Chapel of the Royal College cJFJttgJJ cians, where they were placed in a spltticfad marble sarcophagus prepared for their fception. , . . , . .

(Copyrighted.)