Blood Circulation
ALTERNATIVE NAME/S: circulatory system
DETAILS: The idea that blood flows in a circular path through the body, propelled by the beating of the heart, was first announced by English physician William Harvey* in 1616.
What Harvey developed, after a series of experiments and dissections of animals and people, was “a theory of the circulation of the blood in which all the blood in the body is pumped around the body rapidly and continuously by the force of the heart, outward from the heart through the arteries, and returned to the heart through the veins . . . all the blood constitutes one system, not two, and the two types of blood vessel, the arteries and the veins, are parts of one blood transport system, and not two.”
It was not until Malpighi (1628-1694) used a microscope and actually saw the capillaries that connect the arteries and the veins that the final proof was found that Harvey was correct.
ONELINER: Blood circulation transports oxygen and nutrients to the tissues, and waste materials
OTHER CONNECTIONS: None
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Cunningham, Andrew. "William Harvey." The Dictionary of Seventeenth-Century British Philosophers. Thoemmes Press, 2000. http://www.thoemmes.com/404.asp?404;http://www.thoemmes.com/encyclopedia/harvey.htm Accessed March 21, 2004.
Phillips, Roger E., Jr. "The Heart and the Circulatory System." Access Excellence@the national health museum. http://www.accessexcellence.org/AE/AEC/CC/heart_background.html Accessed March 21, 2004.
Multimedia
AUDIO/VISUAL:
An illustration depicting one of William Harvey's experiments in his On the Circulation of the Blood (1628). http://www.princeton.edu/~his291/Harvey.html~ Accessed March 17, 2004.