William Harvey

William Harvey (April 1, 1578 – June 3, 1657) was an English medical doctor, who is credited with being the first to correctly describe, in exact detail, the properties of blood being pumped around the body by the heart. This developed the ideas of René Descartes who in his Description of the Human Body said that the arteries and veins were pipes which carried nourishment around the body. Although Spanish physician Michael Servetus discovered circulation a quarter century before Harvey was born, all but three copies of his manuscript Christianismi Restitutio were destroyed and as a result, the secrets of circulation were lost until Harvey rediscovered them nearly a century later. Harvey travelled widely in the course of his researches, especially to Italy, where he stayed at the Venerable English College in Rome.