Inspiration to Live Your Magic: 75 Inspiring Biographies

William Harvey
Although brilliant William Harvey became the doctor of choice for 
the wealthy, the nobility, and even the King of England, he never 
stopped giving free treatments to the poor.
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It may seem hard to believe, but until William Harvey came along, even the best doctors 
in Europe didn’t know that your heart pumps blood around your body. The common 
wisdom was that blood was created by your liver, and the heart pumped air and heat 
through your body, along with just some of your blood!
So, you can imagine the uproar in 1628 when William Harvey published a book that 
explained exactly how the entire circulatory system worked, from your heart to arteries 
and veins. He was completely right, but his work contradicted the belief that had been 
around for hundreds of years. Many other doctors refused to believe Dr. Harvey, and said 
his theories were crazy.
William Harvey was a brilliant physician who had astonished his professors at medical 
school. Almost straight out of university, he was hired as chief physician at St. 
Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, where he provided medical treatment to the poor for 
free.
Harvey’s reputation grew rapidly, and he was chosen to deliver an ongoing series of 
public lectures to explain anatomy and medicine to the general public. Soon, wealthy 
people, including members of the nobility, were asking him to be their doctor. He even 
wound up becoming the personal physician to the King of England!

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But when he published his now-famous book on the heart and blood circulation, it looked 
as if William Harvey might lose everything.
However, Dr. Harvey’s critics hadn’t counted on his brilliance and tenacity. He proved 
his theories time and again with experiments that showed how the circulation system 
worked, and with calculations that proved the impossibility of the theory about blood 
originating in the liver.
In the end, no one could argue with the powerful evidence; William Harvey had clearly 
made a huge advance in medical science. Not only did people finally understand how the 
heart really worked, they also were inspired to copy his style of provable, repeatable 
experiments.
While Dr. Harvey went on to great fame and fortune as the physician of kings and other 
rich clients, and as the man who opened the eyes of the world to the wonders of the heart, 
he never stopped working for the poor. Until he was an old man, he served at St. 
Bartholomew’s Hospital every week, giving free health care to people who could not 
afford to pay a doctor.
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