William Harvey, an English physician born in 1578, revolutionized medical science with his detailed analysis of the circulatory system. His seminal work, “De Motu Cordis” (1628), introduced the then-radical theory that blood circulates continuously around the body, pumped by the heart through arteries and veins. This challenged the centuries-old misconceptions based on Galenic physiology, which posited that blood was produced by the liver and consumed by tissues. Harvey’s meticulous observations and experiments, including measuring the amount of blood passing through the heart, provided irrefutable evidence supporting his theory of circulation. His findings laid the groundwork for modern physiology and cardiology, illustrating the importance of empirical evidence and experimentation in medicine. Despite initial resistance from the medical community of his time, Harvey’s theories eventually transformed the understanding of human anatomy and physiology, establishing him as one of the most influential figures in the history of medical science.

William Harvey Quotes

1. “I profess to learn and to teach anatomy not from books but from dissections, not from the tenets of Philosophers but from the fabric of Nature.”
— William Harvey

2. “All we know is still infinitely less than all that remains unknown.”
— William Harvey

3. “Nature is a volume of which God is the author.”
— William Harvey

4. “Memory cannot exist without endurance of the things perceived, and the thing perceived cannot remain where it has never been.”
— William Harvey

5. “Only by understanding the wisdom of natural foods and their effects on the body, shall we attain mastery of disease and pain, which shall enable us to relieve the burden of mankind.”
— William Harvey

6. “The heart is the household divinity which, discharging its function, nourishes, cherishes, quickens the whole body, and is indeed the foundation of life, the source of all action.”
— William Harvey

7. “Doctrine once sown strikes deep its root, and respect for antiquity influences all men.”
— William Harvey

8. “As art is a habit with reference to things to be done, so is science a habit in respect to things to be known.”
— William Harvey

9. “Moderate labor of the body conduces to the preservation of health, and cares many initial diseases.”
— William Harvey

10. “Civilization is only a series of victories against nature.”
— William Harvey

11. “The heart of animals is the foundation of their life, the sovereign of everything within them, the sun of their microcosm, that upon which all growth depends, from which all power proceeds.”
— William Harvey

12. “There is no perfect knowledge which can be entitled ours, that is innate; none but what has been obtained from experience, or derived in some way from our senses.”
— William Harvey

13. “I avow myself the partisan of truth alone.”
— William Harvey

14. “I have often wondered and even laughed at those who fancied that everything had been so consummately and absolutely investigated by an Aristotle or a Galen or some other mighty name, that nothing could by any possibility be added to their knowledge.”
— William Harvey

15. “I appeal to your own eyes as my witness and judge.”
— William Harvey

16. “For the concept of a circuit of the blood does not destroy, but rather advances traditional medicine.”
— William Harvey

17. “Good God! how should the mitral valves prevent the regurgitation of air and not of blood?”
— William Harvey

18. “It is, however, an argument of no weight to say that natural bodies are first generated or compounded out of those things into which they are at the last broken down or dissolved.”
— William Harvey