INTRODUCTORY NOTE 



WILLIAM HARVEY, whose epoch-making treatise announcing and 

 demonstrating the circulation of the blood is here printed, was 

 born at Folkestone, Kent, England, April i, 1578. He was edu- 

 cated at the King's School, Canterbury, and at Gonville and Caius 

 College, Cambridge; and studied medicine on the Continent, re- 

 ceiving the degree of M. D. from the University of Padua. He 

 took the same degree later at both the English universities. After 

 his return to England he became Fellow of the College of Phy- 

 sicians, physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and Lumleian 

 lecturer at the College of Physicians. It was in this last capacity 

 that he delivered, in 1616, the lectures in which he first gave 

 public notice of his theories on the circulation of the blood. The 

 notes of these lectures are still preserved in the British Museum. 



In 1618 Harvey was appointed physician extraordinary to 

 James /, and he remained in close professional relations to the 

 royal family until the close of the Civil War, being present at 

 the battle of Edgehill. By mandate of Charles I, he was, for a 

 short time, Warden of Merton College, Oxford (1645-6}, and, 

 when he was too infirm to undertake the duties, he was offered 

 the Presidency of the College of Physicians. He died on June 3, 



Harvey's famous "Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et 

 Sanguinis in Animalibus " was published in Latin at Frankfort in 

 1628. The discovery was received with great interest, and in 

 his own country was accepted at once ; on the Continent it won 

 favor more slowly. Before his death, however, the soundness of 

 his views was acknowledged by the medical profession through- 

 out Europe, and "it remains to this day the greatest of the 

 discoveries of physiology, and its whole honor belongs to Harvey." 



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