Leading Contributors

William Harvey

Up untill 1628, Greek physicians believed that the liver circulated blood throughout the body. They thought that the heart circulated "vital spirts". A greek physician Galen thought that the blood moved back and forth and the organs consumed it as fuel. Finally in 1628 William Harvey revealed to the world what the heart really did. He told how it was the heart that pumped blood through the body, not the liver. William Harvey used animals to make his initial discoveries. He conducted the "Anatomical Study of the Motion of the Heart and of the Blood in Animals" and initially it wasn't taken seriously.

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