Harvey (WILLIAM an English physician)

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

WILLIAM, an English physician; born in Folkestone, Kent, 1, 1578. He took his degree arts at Caius College, Cambridge, in 1597 and after five years' study at Padua, he obtained his diploma as doctor medicine in 1602. receiving his doctor's degree from his original university, Cambridge, he settled in London as a physician. In 1609 he was appointed physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and in 1615 Lumleian Lecturer at the College of Physicians an office then held for life; and it is generally supposed that in his first course of supp lectures (in the spring of 1616) he expounded those original and complete views of the circulation of the blood with which his name is indelibly associated. It was not till the year 1628 that he gave his views to the world at large, in his celebrated treatise entitled, "Anatomical Study of the Movement of the Heart and the Blood." He was appointed successively physician to James I. and Charles I. Harvey's first step was to prove that the arteries contained not air but blood. He attended the king in his various expeditions, and was present with him at the battle of Edgehill (Oct. 23, 1642). On the surrender of Oxford to the Parliament July, 1646, he left the university and returned to London. In 1654 he was elected president of the College of Physicians, but he declined the office on account of his age and infirmities. In July, 1656, he resigned his Lumleian lectureship (held for more than 40 years); and in taking leave of the college presented to it his little patrimonial estate at Burmarsh, in Kent. He died at Hampstead, June 3, 1657.