Talk:William Harvey
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[edit] questions
Historical questions, worth finding some comment on: Did Harvey rediscover, know about and extend, plagiarize, or simply verify and promote the work of Ibn Nafis? And why was it ignored in the first place, when Ibn Sina and Rhazes were well known and respected? Was this because the Europeans preferred quoting Galen to acknowledging a seemingly-unimportant detail about the human body had been discovered during their "Dark Ages" by "heathens"? Like, it was a case where the difference in attitude to knowledge between Islam and Christianity had been so obvious, and the information was not diagnostically indispensible like that of Avicenna or Rhazes, so... they hid it... Harvey's experience suggests that the bias against this particular theory was strong, so it may not have been a bias against Muslim knowledge.... Okay, this was answered 30 years later.
Perhaps due credit should be given to Mateo Realdo Colombo who, indeed, gave a accurate and complete description of the pulmonary circulation AND was quoted by Harvey as a source for his own theories.\---- i think that in some way it should be clarified that the work of Ibn Nafis was not known in the West until the 20th Century. at the time that Harvey was writing D.M.C, the "ancient" medical texts available were not the same as owhat we have at our disposal today. Recall that most of the literature that we attribute to Galen was not available until the 20th Century either, although we still accept that "Galenism" was the main body of knowledge back then.
another point: despite the efforts of modern physiologists, scientists, and vivisectionists (yikes!), W. Harvey wrote a 'philosophical treatise'. He did not use "scientific" methods, i am pretty sure that in D.M.C he describes his method specifically as "that of the anatomists". We should avoid associating Harvey with "science" as we understand it. He had intended to prove that the heart was the organ associated with the life-force (as aristotle believed) and not the brain (as Galen and Plato held).
[edit] Quote from Hobbes
Basically states Harvey is the only man to have his theories accepted during his lifetime. Not the contrary, which was previously stated on the page. Basically the circulatory model of the cardiovascular system was accepted completely within 30 years.
-Other interesting factoids that I frankly don't have time to write up are are about his involvement in the royalist side of the english revolution, the destruction of the original De Motu Cordis and apparently interesting descriptions of him in Thomas Aubrey's "Brief Times"
[edit] Disambiguation Needed
William Harvey is also a notable CIA agent in the 1950s and 1960s.
- Wow! Now that's longevity! studerby 04:41, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Harvey's motto
sorry, i got nuttin
[edit] Philosophy
A section on the Aristotlean views of Harvey, and how they related to Galenism should be included to demonstrate the duality of the argument for the progressive status of the discovery of circulation at this place and time (being of the New Science or of the Ancient Philosophy). Lita4sm 10:03, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] William Harvey Hospital
There is indeed a hospital in Ashford called the William Harvey Hospital, but the comment doesn't really sit very well where it is, nor is the rest of the comment correct - Folkestone HAS a hospital (the Royal Victoria Hospital - http://www.ekht.nhs.uk/home-page/our-hospitals/royal-victoria-hospital/) and even if it didn't, the Buckland Hospital (http://www.ekht.nhs.uk/home-page/our-hospitals/buckland-hospital/) is nearer. That's not really relevant though - is anyone able to make more of a point about the William Harvey Hospital and maybe some detail on whether it's simply named after him or there's more to it than that?
There is also a block in Chelmsford Anglia Ruskin uniersity named after William Harvey where they train nurses with brilliant technology and dummies that talk.
[edit] Harvey and Descartes
Where is the evidence that Harvey developed the ideas of Descartes?
It is the other way round. Harvey's On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals was written in 1628, and was published years after he began expounding the theory. According to Wikipedia, The Description of the Human Body was written in the 1640s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Description_of_the_Human_Body
Also, Descartes cites William Harvey in Part 5 of the Discourse on Method, as 'an English doctor' whom he borrows proof from. Descartes even borrows Harvey's mistake (that the function of the heart is to heat the blood).dummy dum dum<3
[edit] Harvey's medical degree
Although Harvey studied at the medical school in Padua, didn't he actually get his MD from the College of Physicians in Venice? NRPanikker 20:33, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
- Actually he didn't. I must have been thinking of someone else. About twenty years ago the Royal College of Physicians of London reproduced (as a Christmas card) the first two pages of William Harvey's Latin diploma of "Doctor of Arts and Medicine" awarded by the University of Padua on 25th April 1602. NRPanikker (talk) 01:58, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
