Human Circulatory System

Year of Dis cov ery: 1628

What Is It? The first com plete un der stand ing of how ar ter ies, veins, heart, and lungs func tion to form a sin gle, com plete cir cu la tory sys tem. Who Discov ered It? Wil liam Harvey

Why Is This One of the 100 Great est?

The hu man cir cu la tory sys tem rep re sents the vir tual def i ni tion of life. No sys tem is more crit i cal to our ex is tence. Yet only 400 years ago, no one un der stood our cir cu la tory sys tem. Many se ri ously thought that the thump ing in side the chest was the voice of the con science try ing to be heard. Most thought that blood was cre ated in the liver and con sumed by the mus cles. Some still thought that ar ter ies were filled with air. Wil liam Harvey dis cov ered the ac tual func tion of the ma jor el e ments of the cir cu la tory sys tem (heart, lungs, ar ter ies, and veins) and cre ated the first com plete and ac cu rate pic ture of hu man blood cir cu la tion. Harvey was also the first to use the sci en tific method for bi o log i cal stud ies. Ev ery sci en tist since has fol lowed his ex am ple. Harveys 1628 book rep re sents the beginning of modern physiology.

How Was It Dis cov ered?

Through the six teenth cen tury, doc tors re lied on the 1,500-year-old writ ings of the Greek phy si cian Galen, who said that food was con verted into blood in the liver and was then con sumed by the body for fuel. Most agreed that the blood that flowed through ar ter ies had no con nec tion with the blood that flowed through veins. Wil liam Harvey was born in 1578 in Eng land and re ceived med i cal train ing at Ox ford. He was in vited to study at Padua Uni ver sity in It aly, the ac knowl edged med i cal cen ter of Europe. When Harvey re turned to Eng land in 1602, he mar ried the daugh ter of Queen Eliz a beths doc tor, was ap pointed a phy si cian in the court of King James I, and was then ap pointed per sonal phy si cian to King Charles I in 1618. While serv ing the Eng lish kings, Harvey fo cused his stud ies on veins and ar ter ies. He con ducted ex ten sive ex per i ments with an i mals and hu man corpses. Dur ing these dis sec tions, he dis cov ered the se ries of flap valves that ex ist through out the veins. He was not the first to find these valves, but he was the first to note that they al ways di rected blood flow to ward the heart. Blood flowed in veins only from the arms, legs, and head back to the heart.

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He be gan a se ries of an i mal ex per i ments in which he tied off a sin gle ar tery or vein to see what hap pened. Some times he clamped an ar tery and later re leased it to see where this surge of blood would go. He did the same with veins, clamp ing a vein and then re leas ing it. Some times he clamped both vein and ar tery and then re leased one at a time. These ex per i ments proved that ar ter ies and veins were con nected into a sin gle cir cu la tory sys tem and that blood al ways flowed from arteries to veins. Harvey turned to the heart it self and soon re al ized that the heart acted as a mus cle and pushed blood out to lungs and out into ar ter ies. Fol low ing blood as it flowed through var i ous an i mals, Harvey saw that blood was not con sumed, but cir cu lated over and over again through the sys tem, car ry ing air and nour ish ment to the body. By 1625 Harvey had dis cov ered an al most com plete pic ture of the cir cu la tory sys tem. He faced two prob lems. First, he could nt fig ure out how blood got from an ar tery across to a vein, even though his ex per i ments proved that it did. (Harvey had no mi cro scope and so could nt see blood ves sels as small as cap il lar ies. By 1670three years af ter Harveys deathItal ian Marcello Malpighi had dis cov ered cap il lar ies with a mi cro scope, thus com plet ing Harveys circulatory system.) The sec ond prob lem Harvey faced was his fear of mob re ac tions, Church con dem na tion when he said that the heart was just a mus cu lar pump and not the house of the soul and

con scious ness, and the press (scribes). He was afraid hed lose his job with the king. In 1628 Harvey found a small Ger man pub lisher to pub lish a thin (72-page) sum mary of his work and dis cov er ies. He pub lished it in Latin (the lan guage of sci ence), hop ing no one in Eng land would read it. News of Harveys book raced across Eu rope and made him in stantly no to ri ous. He lost many pa tients, who were shocked by his claims. But Harveys sci ence was care ful and ac cu rate. By 1650 Harveys book had be come the ac cepted text book on the cir cu la tory system. Fun Facts: Amer i cans do nate over 16 mil lion pints of blood each year. Thats enough blood to fill a swim ming pool 20 feet wide, 8 feet deep, and one-third of a mile long!