The Works of William Harvey
SYNOPSIS
William Harvey was a distinguished physician of the seventeenth century. Harvey was educated by some of the great scientists of his time and was highly knowledgeable of the scientist theories preceding his time. Harvey was greatly intrigued by the views of the ancient Aristotle and developed a number of his own ideas based on Aristotle’s theories. It was from Aristotle’s theory of the primacy of blood that allowed Harvey to make breakthroughs about circulation and generation of animals. His advancements greatly enhanced the study of anatomy. Harvey also revolutionized the means by which science was performed through the use of innovative, investigational techniques. William Harvey became a well-known name in science because he made profound accomplishments that changed the way scientists performed and the way people viewed the human body.
William Harvey was born on April 1, 1578, in Folkestone, England. At the age of sixteen, Harvey enrolled in Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge where he obtained a bachelor's degree in 1597. He went on to study medicine under Hieronymus Fabricius at the University of Padua in Italy. Fabricius was involved in the study of blood flow in the body, which motivated Harvey to research this branch as well. After moving to England, William Harvey was appointed as a personal physician to King Charles (Britannica). Within his study of blood, Harvey was able to form the theory of the circulation of blood through the body, which he published in ‘On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals', in 1628. The book brought Harvey fame and made him a respected name in science. During his experiments, William Harvey became skeptical of pr...
... middle of paper ...
.../school.eb.com/ebi/article?tocId=9274787>.
- Gasking, Elizabeth. Investigations into Generation. Baltimore: The John Hopkins
Press, 1967.
- Lubitz, Steven. “Early Reactions to Harvey's Circulation Theory: The Impact on
Medicine.” Mount Sinai Journal of Medicine 71 Issue 4 (2004): 274.
- Pagel, Walter. “William Harvey and the Purpose of Circulation.” Iris 42 I (1951):
478-87.
- Pinto-Correia, Clara. The Ovary of Eve: Egg and Sperm and Preformation. Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1997.
- Short, R.V. “Where Do Babies Come From?” Nature 403 Issue 6771 (2000): 705.
- White, John. “William Harvey and the Primacy of Blood.” Annuals of Science 43 III
(1986): 273-255.
- Wilson, Leonard. “The Transformation of Ancient Concepts of Respiration in the
Seventeenth Century.” Iris 52 II (1960): 161-172.
Gabriel Fallopius was one of the most noteworthy and respected Italian anatomists of the sixteenth century. He was known for many things during his lifetime. Although, to this day, he is well known for many of the great discoveries he encountered. During his lifetime in the 16th century, many people didn’t know much about the inside of today’s reproductive system, how they looked like, or what they were. Gabriel Fallopius inspired so many of his students to continue researching in the medical field who later became famous medical professionals.
William Carlos Williams was not the first writer to explore the theme of scientific discovery and practise in literature, but he was one of the first American writers to do so in a positive manner. Works of European gothic literature had cemented the archetype of the mad scientist with figures such as Dr Frankenstein and Dr Moreau; while the birth and subsequent success of Science Fiction in the U.S with the short stories of Edgar Allen Poe show us that the American people also had anxieties regarding the potential of science. It seems expected that Williams, a man who spent most of his professional life practising as a Doctor, would be instrumental in breaking this taboo. In this essay, I shall be examining the way in which Williams and those who followed him chose to depict the scientific world, and how the practices of that world influence the style and structure of their work.
The only surgeon was one who combined the occasional exercise of that noble art with the daily and habitual flourish of a razor. To such a professional body Roger Chillingworth was a brilliant inquisitor. He soon manifested his familiarity with the ponderous and imposing machinery of antique physique; in which every remedy contained in multitude a far fetched and heterogeneous ingredients […] He had gained much knowledge of the properties of native herbs and roots(Hawthorne 108-109).
Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist who was born in Shrewsbury, England on February 12, 1809. He was the second youngest of six children. Before Charles Darwin, there were many scientists throughout his family. His father, Dr. Robert Darwin, was a medical doctor, and his grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, was a well-known botanist. Darwin’s mother, Susannah Darwin, died when he was only eight years old. Darwin was a child that came from wealth and privilege and who loved to explore nature. In October 1825 at age sixteen, Darwin enrolled at Edinburgh University with his brother Erasmus. Two years later, Charles became a student at Christ’s College in Cambridge. His father wanted him to become a medical doctor, as he was, but since the sight of blood made Darwin nauseous, he refused. His father also proposed that he become a priest, but since Charles was far more interested in natural history, he had other ideas in mind (Dao, 2009)
In the time when he was studying medicine, he made a very important science discovery that started his career. One day at church service on Sunday he looked up at a lamp and the lamp was swinging on a long cord back and forth. Its swing was very regular and he used his own pulse to measure the sing. He noticed even as the swing grew shorter the amount of time for a single was the same. Later he went home and conducted many experiments with different lengths and weights. Then he concluded that the string length affected the swing. Soon he created the pendulum and used the same principle to make a pulsilogia which is a device that measures your pulse (Hightower 17-20).
Francis Bacon helped to pioneer the new science steering people away from Aristotelian teachings. He helped to bring the scientific method to a place of learning from observation and experimentation. He felt that science should be judged by the usefulness of the results (Greenwood, 2009). Bacon projected that many great things might come out of this empirical approach, but what has ensued in the centuries that followed, Bacon and others might not have predicted.
16(41), pp. 3. Retrieved on November 12, 2003 from EBSCO database (Masterfile) on the World Wide Web: http://www.ebsco.com.
Christopher Hamlin, “Edwin Chadwick, ‘Mutton Medicine’, and the Fever Question,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 70 (1996): 233-265.
ed. Vol. 2. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1995. 973-974. Yaeger, Bert D. The
New York: Pearson; Longman Publishing, 2007. 1212-1280. Print. The. Gioia, Dana, and X.J. Kennedy.
... middle of paper ... ... Web. 19 Apr. 2014.
Ed. Jay P. Pederson, Ph.D. 4th ed. of the book. New York: St. James Press, 1996. Goldfarb, Sheldon.
Hippocrates, often called the “father of medicine” was one of the earliest contributors to modern science. He was called the father of medicine because through his medical school, he separated medical knowledge and practice from myth and superstition basing them instead of fact, observation, and clinical ...
In 1674 a man called Antony van Leeuwenhoek made a simple but useful microscope using only one lens to look at other tiny objects such as insects, yeast and to examine blood cells. Antony van Leeuwenhoek back round, to others, he would have been seen as an unpromising candidate to become a scientist of his time, due to him having no fortune, higher education or university degrees, but with his endless curiosity and an open mind he successfully came to make some of the most important findings in biology history, discovering bacteria, protists, sperm cells and many mor...