Key discoveries and influences of William Harvey

Discovery of circulation

Harvey’s key work was Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus (Anatomical Exercise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals), published in 1628, with an English version in 1653. Harvey’s greatest achievement was to recognize that the blood flows rapidly around the human body, being pumped through a single system of arteries and veins, and to support this hypothesis with experiments and arguments. There had been suggestions, both within the European tradition (by 16th-century Spanish physician Servetus) and within the Islamic tradition (by 13th-century Muslim physician Ibn al-Nafīs) of a “lesser circulation,” whereby blood circulated from the heart to the lungs and back, without circulating around the whole body.

Prior to Harvey, it was believed there were two separate blood systems in the body. One carried purple, “nutritive” blood and used the veins to distribute nutrition from the liver to the rest of the body. The other carried scarlet, “vivyfying” (or “vital”) blood and used the arteries to distribute a life-giving principle from the lungs. Today these blood systems are understood as deoxygenated blood and oxygenated blood. However, at the time, the influence of oxygen on blood was not understood. Furthermore, blood was not thought to circulate around the body—it was believed to be consumed by the body at the same rate that it was produced. The capillaries, small vessels linking the arteries and veins, were unknown at the time, and their existence was not confirmed until later in the 17th century, after Harvey, when the microscope had been invented.

Harvey claimed he was led to his discovery of the circulation by consideration of the venous valves. It was known that there were small flaps inside the veins that allowed free passage of blood in one direction but strongly inhibited the flow of blood in the opposite direction. It was thought that these flaps prevented pooling of the blood under the influence of gravity, but Harvey was able to show that all these flaps are cardiocentrically oriented. For example, he showed that in the jugular vein of the neck they face downward, inhibiting blood flow away from the heart, instead of upward, inhibiting pooling due to gravity.

Harvey’s main experiment concerned the amount of blood flowing through the heart. He made estimates of the volume of the ventricles, how efficient they were in expelling blood, and the number of beats per minute made by the heart. He was able to show, even with conservative estimates, that more blood passed through the heart than could possibly be accounted for based on the then current understanding of blood flow. Harvey’s values indicated the heart pumped 0.5–1 litre of blood per minute (modern values are about 4 litres per minute at rest and 25 litres per minute during exercise). The human body contains about 5 litres of blood. The body simply could not produce or consume that amount of blood so rapidly; therefore, the blood had to circulate.

It is also important that Harvey investigated the nature of the heartbeat. Prior to Harvey, it was thought that the active phase of the heartbeat, when the muscles contract, was when the heart increased its internal volume. So the active motion of the heart was to draw blood into itself. Harvey observed the heart beating in many animals—particularly in cold-blooded animals and in animals near death, because their heartbeats were slow. He concluded that the active phase of the heartbeat, when the muscles contract, is when the heart decreases its internal volume and that blood is expelled with considerable force from the heart.

It is tempting to view Harvey, with his quantitative experiment and his model of the heart as a pump, as someone who supported or was inspired by the new mathematical and mechanical ideas of the 17th century, which played significant roles in the scientific revolution of the time. However, there is a need for considerable caution here. Harvey did quantify blood flow, but his quantification is very approximate, and he deliberately used underestimates to further his case. This is very different from the precise quantification leading to the mathematical laws of someone like Galileo. It was important that Harvey saw the heart as a pump, but he saw it as an organic pump, rather than as a mechanical pump. He also interpreted the blood as having an irreducible life force of its own. Harvey was deeply and bitterly opposed to the mechanical philosophy of French mathematician and philosopher René Descartes as well as to any purely mechanical conception of the human body.

Harvey’s theory of circulation was opposed by conservative physicians, but it was well established by the time of his death. It is likely that Harvey actually made his discovery of the circulation about 1618–19. Such a major shift in thinking about the body needed to be very well supported by experiment and argument to avoid immediate ridicule and dismissal; hence the delay before the publication of his central work. In 1649 Harvey published Exercitationes Duae Anatomicae de Circulatione Sanguinis, ad Joannem Riolanem, Filium, Parisiensem (Two Anatomical Exercises on the Circulation of the Blood) in response to criticism of the circulation theory by French anatomist Jean Riolan.