WILLIAM HARVEY, M.D.: MODERN OR 

 ANCIENT SCIENTIST? 



WILLIAM HARVEY was born in England in 1578 

 and died in 1657. He received his grammar school 

 education at the famous King's School in Canter- 

 bury. In 1593 he entered Caius College, Cambridge, and re- 

 ceived his B. A. degree in 1597. In this period, it was not 

 unusual for English Protestants interested in a scientific edu- 

 cation to seek it in a continental Catholic university. Harvey 

 chose the Universitas Juristarum, the more influential of the 

 two universities which constituted the University of Padua in 

 Italy and which had been attended by Thomas Linacre and 

 John Caius, and where, incidently, the Dominican priests were 

 associated with University functions. 



Competency in the traditional studies of the day was char- 

 acteristic of William Harvey's intellectual development. The 

 degree of Doctor of Physic was awarded to Harvey in 1602 

 with the unusual testimonial that " he had conducted himself 

 so wonderfully well in the examination, and had shown such 

 skill, memory, and learning that he had far surpassed even the 

 great hopes which his examiners had formed of him. They 

 decided therefore that he was skilled, expert, and most effici- 

 ently qualified both in arts and medicine, and to this they put 

 their hands, unanimously, willingly, with complete agreement, 

 and unhesitatingly." ^ 



In 1616 he gave his first Lumleian lectures in surgery at the 

 Royal College of Physicians in London. The manuscript notes 

 of his first course of lectures, the Prelectiones, are preserved and 

 have been reproduced in facsimile and transcript." In these 

 lectures he first enunciates the circulation of the blood. 



^ D'Arcy Powers, William Harvey (London, 1897), pp. 26-27. 

 ' William Harvey, Prelectiones Anatomiae Universalis (London: J. & A. 

 Churchill, 1886). 



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