William Harvey was also an intense and dedicated observer of birds during his free time: several long and detailed passages of citations could be written delineating his observations in such places as the "Pile of Boulders" (a small island in Lancashire) and 'Bass Rock' (island off the East Coast of Scotland). William Harvey William Harvey (1 April 1578 – 3 June 1657) was an English physician who made seminal contributions in anatomy and physiology. He was the first known physician to describe completely, and in detail, the systemic circulation and properties of blood being pumped to the brain and body by the
Medicine in the medieval Islamic world blood is pumped to the rest of the body. According to Galen in the 2nd century, blood reached the left ventricle through invisible passages in the septum. By some means, Ibn al-Nafis, a 13th-century Syrian physician, found the previous statement on blood flow from the right ventricle to the left to be false. Ibn al-Nafis discovered that the ventricular septum was impenetrable, lacking any type of invisible passages, showing Galen's assumptions to be false. Ibn al-Nafis discovered that the blood in the right ventricle of the heart is instead carried to the left by way of the lungs. This discovery