National Anti-Vivisection Society (Great Britain) (1894). The Animal's defender and zoophilist, Volume 13. 20, Victoria Street, London, S.W.: The Victoria Street Society for the Protection of Animals from Vivisection. p.297. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: location ( link) On his return from Italy in 1602, Harvey established himself as a physician. His career was helped by his marriage to Elizabeth Browne, daughter of Elizabeth I's physician, in 1604. In 1607, he became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and, in 1609, was appointed physician to St Bartholomew's Hospital. In 1618, he became physician to Elizabeth's successor James I and to James' son Charles when he became king. Both James and Charles took a close interest in and encouraged Harvey's research. The second oldest of nine children, Harvey was born in Folkestone, England, on 1 April 1578 to Joan Halke and Thomas Harvey, a yeoman-farmer. At age ten, Harvey’s parents sent him to King’s Grammar School in Canterbury. In May 1593, he was admitted to Gonville and Caius College,

ANATOMICAL EXERCISES ON THE GENERATION OF ANIMALS ; TO WHICH ARE ADDED, ESSAYS ON PARTURITION ; ON THE MEMBRANES, AND FLUIDS OF THE UTERUS; AND ON CONCEPTION Harvey, observing the notion of the heart in living animals, was able to see that systole was the active phase of the heart's movement, pumping out the blood by its muscular contraction. Having perceived that the quantity of blood issuing from the heart in any given time was too much to be absorbed by the tissues, he was able to show that the valves in the veins permit the blood to flow only in the direction of the heart and to prove that the blood circulated around the body and returned to the heart. Fabricius, his teacher in Padua, had discovered the valves in the veins.Wilkinston, Ronald Sterne (1968). "The First Edition of Francisco de la Reyna's LIBRO DE ALBEYTERIA, 1547". Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. XXIII (2): 197–199. doi: 10.1093/jhmas/XXIII.2.197. ISSN 0022-5045.

Silverman, M. E. (2007). "De Motu Cordis: the Lumleian Lecture of 1616: an imagined playlet concerning the discovery of the circulation of the blood by William Harvey". Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. 100 (4): 199–204. doi: 10.1177/014107680710011419. PMC 1847732. PMID 17404345. Trueta, Josep (1948). "Michael Servetus and the Discovery of the Lesser Circulation". The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine. 21 (1): 1–15. ISSN 0044-0086. PMC 2598790. PMID 18103720.Harvey also emphasized the quantity of blood emerging from the forceful systole. He made a rough estimate of the amount of blood contained in the left ventricle of the relaxed—expanded—heart, and of the amount ejected as the ventricle contracted. However modest he made his estimate of the amount ejected at every beat, he soon saw, given a heart beating more than seventy times a minute, that in a whole day the total would be impossibly large. Impossible, that is, because Galenic theory held that the arterial blood from the heart was absorbed as necessary by the tissues; and that venous blood was supplied to the heart by the conversion of ingested food into blood in the liver. No amount of food could supply this amount of venous blood and the arterial blood was emerging from the heart in quantities too great to be absorbed by the tissues. Harvey had seven brothers and two sisters, and his father, Thomas Harvey, was a farmer and landowner. Harvey attended the King’s School in Canterbury, Kent, from 1588 to 1593 and went on to study arts and medicine at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, from 1593 to 1599. He continued his studies at the University of Padua, the leading European medical school at the time. He became a student of Italian anatomist and surgeon Hieronymous Fabricius, who had a considerable influence on Harvey. It is also likely that Harvey was taught by Italian philosopher Cesare Cremonini, a prominent follower of Aristotle. To enforce the right opinion by remarks drawn far and near, and to illustrate man by the structure of animals.

Harvey also established several of his own conclusions about theories of generation. First, he denounced spontaneous generation by claiming that even maggots and worms have some origin in eggs. This example is also associated with the establishment of the doctrine As in the College of Physicians, so in the world at large, reactions to the doctrines of the forceful systole and pulse were mixed. Almost no one accepted both in the way Harvey wanted them to. The two doctrines were generally separated, and accepted or rejected on their own. Yet when Harvey died some sort of consensus about the fact of circulation had been reached and produced the biggest change in medical theory since the Alexandrian discovery of the nervous system, about a thousand years earlier. Harvey understood these objections. Although an Aristotelian, he could not give a final cause of circulation and was driven to say that it had to be enough to show that a thing is, despite being unable to say what it is for. He had no convincing answer to the charge of destroying the basis of medical practice. Harvey's doctrine, because radical, was isolated; opponents such as Primrose could use all the authority and arguments of Galenic physiology and its vehicle, an Aristotelian natural philosophy, that reached and explained all the phenomena of the physical world. There's a reasonable basis to assume that it was Dr. Amatus who first discovered the "Blood circulation" phenomena". Archived from the original on 3 April 2013 . Retrieved 8 December 2012.Harvey was a committed royalist. He followed the king on the Scottish campaigns of 1639, 1640, and 1641, was with him from 1642 to 1646 during the English Civil Wars, and was even present at the Battle of Edgehill in 1642. His political views may be judged from the dedication to the king in his most important book, De Motu Cordis (1628; see below Discovery of circulation):

To us, free thinkers of the 21st century, it is astounding that these extravagant ideas were not challenged for one-and-a-half millennia. It would have been easy to test them experimentally, but no one dreamed of doing that for 1500 years—a great demonstration of the power of the principle of authority, which was the mindset that dominated the Middle Ages. Harvey was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians on 5 June 1607, which earned him the Post-nominal letters FRCP. [10] He then accepted a position at St Bartholomew's Hospital that he was to occupy for almost all the rest of his life. Succeeding Dr Wilkinson on 14 October 1609, he became the Physician in charge at StBartholomew's Hospital, which enjoined him, "in God's most holy name" to "endeavor yourself to do the best of your knowledge in the profession of physic to the poor then present, or any other of the poor at any time of the week which shall be sent home unto you by the Hospitaller... You shall not, for favor, lucre or gain, appoint or write anything for the poor but such good and wholesome things as you shall think with your best advice will do the poor good, without any affection or respect to be had to the apothecary. And you shall take no gift or reward... for your counsel... This you will promise to do as you shall answer before God... " [11]Munk, William (1878). The Roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London, Vol. I (2nded.). London. pp.124–146. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher ( link) Harvey focused much of his research on the mechanics of blood flow in the human body. Most physicians of the time felt that the lungs were responsible for moving the blood around throughout the body. Harvey's famous "Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus", commonly referred to as "de Motu Cordis" was published in Latin at Frankfurt in 1628, when Harvey was 50 years old. The first English translation did not appear until two decades later. Blood tests are now by appointment only for all patients. Unfortunately, we are no longer able to offer a walk-in service. Having returned to England in 1632. Harvey accompanied King Charles I wherever he went as ' Physician in Ordinary'. In particular, Charles's hunting expeditions gave Harvey access to many deer carcasses; it was upon them that Harvey made many observations and developed his theories. Harvey returned to Italy in October 1636, dining at the English College, Rome, as a guest of the Jesuits there. It is possible he met Galileo in Florence en route. [28]