English Names
William Harvey
Original Names
William Harvey
Other Names
None
Date, Country, and City of Birth
April 1, 1578, Folkestone, England
Date, Country, and City of Death
June 3, 1657, Roehampton, England
History of Life
William Harvey was the first of seven sons and two daughters of Joan and Thomas Harvey. Harvey’s father was an international trader who became prosperous. Five of his brothers became foreign traders mostly with the East. Harvey never showed interest in commerce, but his family was wealthy enough to support the talented older son and brother in his medical interests throughout his life. At the age of 10, Harvey began his formal education at the King’s School in Canterbury, a school where the students were only allowed to communicate among themselves in Greek or Latin. At the age of 16, Harvey continued his education at Gonville and Caius College of Cambridge. At the time, two bodies of executed criminals were dissected every year for instruction in anatomy. In...
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References and Further Reading
Frank, R. G. (1980). Harvey and the Oxford physiologists: Scientific ideas and social interaction. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Nuland, S. (1988). Doctors: The biography of medicine (1st ed.). New York: Knopf.
Porter, R. (1997). The greatest benefit to mankind: A medical history of humanity (1st ed.). New York: W.W. Norton. 831p.
Silva, J. M. (2009). From the discovery of the circulation of the blood to the first steps in hemorheology: Part 1. Revista Portuguesa de Cardiologia, 28, 1245–1268.
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da Silva, V.D. (2017). Harvey, William (1578–1657). In: van den Tweel, J.G. (eds) Pioneers in Pathology. Encyclopedia of Pathology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41995-4_543
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41995-4_543
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