William Harvey 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 heart, though earlier writers, such as Realdo Colombo, Michael Servetus, and Jacques Dubois, had provided precursors of the theory. In 1973, the William Harvey Hospital was constructed in the town of Ashford, a few miles from his birthplace of Folkestone. William's father, Thomas Harvey, was a jurat of Folkestone
Pulmonary circulation precise role of the lungs. The next addition to the human understanding of pulmonary circulation came with the Ancient Greeks. The physician Alcmaeon (520 - 450 BCE) proposed that the brain, not the heart, was the connection point for all of the vessels in the body. He believed that the function of these vessels was to bring the spirit (pneuma) and air to the brain. Empedocles (492 - 432 BCE), a philosopher, proposed a series of pipes impermeable to blood but continuous with blood vessels which carried the pneuma throughout the body. He proposed that this spirit was internalized with