William Harvey

William Harvey was born on 1 April 1578 in England and trained as a physician at a time when the prevailing theory held that blood was continuously produced and consumed by the body. He was the first to describe completely and in detail how blood circulates: pumped by the heart through the lungs and then out to the brain and body in a closed loop, then back again. Earlier writers like Realdo Colombo, Michael Servetus, and Jacques Dubois had sketched pieces of the idea, but Harvey mapped the whole system with methodical precision. His work rewrote anatomy and physiology. He died on 3 June 1657,…