William Harvey was an English medical doctor, who is credited with being the first to correctly describe, in exact detail, the properties of blood being pumped around the body by the heart. This developed the ideas of René Descartes who in his "Description of the Human Body" said that the arteries and veins were pipes which carried nourishment around the body. Wikipedia
Building on Vesalian anatomy and developing a new physiology, Harveys revolutionary work convinced later investigators that medical science had to be put on a new footing. www.williamharvey.org/wm_harvey.htm
The definitive Wikipedia entry for William Harvey. Wikipedia is the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Harvey
