16 Human Circulatory System

He began a series of animal experiments in which he tied off a single artery or vein to
see what happened. Sometimes he clamped an artery and later released it to see where this
surge of blood would go. He did the same with veins, clamping a vein and then releasing it.
Sometimes he clamped both vein and artery and then released one at a time. These experiments proved that arteries and veins were connected into a single circulatory system and
that blood always flowed from arteries to veins.
Harvey turned to the heart itself and soon realized that the heart acted as a muscle and
pushed blood out to lungs and out into arteries. Following blood as it flowed through various animals, Harvey saw that blood was not consumed, but circulated over and over again
through the system, carrying air and nourishment to the body.
By 1625 Harvey had discovered an almost complete picture of the circulatory system.
He faced two problems. First, he couldnt figure out how blood got from an artery across to
a vein, even though his experiments proved that it did. (Harvey had no microscope and so
couldnt see blood vessels as small as capillaries. By 1670three years after Harveys
deathItalian Marcello Malpighi had discovered capillaries with a microscope, thus completing Harveys circulatory system.)
The second problem Harvey faced was his fear of mob reactions, Church condemnation when he said that the heart was just a muscular pump and not the house of the soul and
consciousness, and the press (scribes). He was afraid hed lose his job with the king. In 1628
Harvey found a small German publisher to publish a thin (72-page) summary of his work
and discoveries. He published it in Latin (the language of science), hoping no one in England would read it.
News of Harveys book raced across Europe and made him instantly notorious. He lost
many patients, who were shocked by his claims. But Harveys science was careful and accurate. By 1650 Harveys book had become the accepted textbook on the circulatory
system.
Fun Facts: Americans donate over 16 million pints of blood each year.
Thats enough blood to fill a swimming pool 20 feet wide, 8 feet deep,
and one-third of a mile long!

More to Explore
Curtis, R. Great Lives: Medicine. New York: Charles Scribners Sons Books for
Young Readers, 1993.
Harvey, William. On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals. Whitefish, MT:
Kessinger Publishing, 2005.
Power, DArcy. William Harvey: Master of Medicine. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger,
2005.
Shackleford, Joel. William Harvey and the Mechanics of the Heart. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2003.
Wyatt, Hervey. William Harvey: 1578 to 1657. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 2005.
Yount, Lisa. William Harvey: Discoverer of How Blood Circulates. Berkeley Heights,
NJ: Enslow, 1998.

Air Pressure
Year of Discovery: 1640
What Is It? Air (the atmosphere) has weight and presses down on us.
Who Discovered It? Evangelista Torricelli

Why Is This One of the 100 Greatest?

It is a simple, seemingly obvious notion: air has weight; the atmosphere presses down
on us with a real force. However, humans dont feel that weight. You arent aware of it because it has always been part of your world. The same was true for early scientists, who
never thought to consider the weight of air and atmosphere.
Evangelista Torricellis discovery began the serious study of weather and the atmosphere. It launched our understanding of the atmosphere. This discovery helped lay the
foundation for Newton and others to develop an understanding of gravity.
This same revelation also led Torricelli to discover the concept of a vacuum and to invent the barometerthe most basic, fundamental instrument of weather study.

How Was It Discovered?

On a clear October day in 1640, Galileo conducted a suction-pump experiment at a
public well just off the market plaza in Florence, Italy. The famed Italian scientist lowered a
long tube into the wells murky water. From the well, Galileos tube draped up over a
wooden cross-beam three meters above the wells wall, and then down to a hand-powered
pump held by two assistants: Evangelista Torricelli, the 32-year-old the son of a wealthy
merchant and an aspiring scientist, and Giovanni Baliani, another Italian physicist.
Torricelli and Baliani pumped the pumps wooden handlebar, slowly sucking air out
of Galileos tube, pulling water higher into the tube. They pumped until the tube flattened
like a run-over drinking straw. But no matter how hard they worked, water would not rise
more than 9.7 meters above the wells water level. It was the same in every test.
Galileo proposed thatsomehowthe weight of the water column made it collapse
back to that height.
In 1643, Torricelli returned to the suction pump mystery. If Galileo was correct, a
heavier liquid should reach the same critical weight and collapse at a lower height. Liquid
mercury weighted 13.5 times as much as water. Thus, a column of mercury should never
rise any higher than 1/13.5 the height of a water column, or about 30 inches.

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