William Harvey, who was born in 1578 in Folkestone, England, was always curious. As a boy he asked questions about everything he saw: the ships in the English Channel, the waves, the sea gulls.

By the time Harvey was graduated from Cambridge at nineteen, he was determined to become a doctor, and he went to study at the University of Padua in Italy, then the world center of medical education.

When he had earned his medical degree, Harvey went into private practice in London and later became a lecturer in anatomy and surgery at the College of Physicians. He continued to ask questions, but now he had to seek the answers in his own tireless observations and experiments. The answers he found about the circulation of the blood did not agree with the beliefs held in those days, and Harvey knew it was dangerous to express ideas that were at odds with the old and trusted theories. Even the brilliant Galileo had been persecuted for proclaiming new truths about the universe.

Nevertheless Dr. Harvey resolved to write a book on what he had learned about the heart and its role in the circulation of the blood. As Harvey had expected, he soon became the center of a storm of controversy. Other doctors called him crack-brained, and many of his private patients left him. But he found a loyal friend and strong supporter in King Charles I, who made Harvey his personal physician. Eventually the truth of the great doctor's findings was recognized, and by the time he died in 1657, he was an honored and respected man.

"Observe carefully," Dr. Harvey would say to his students. "Consult your own senses. Don't just accept what I say. Rely on what you find yourself. Wise men learn from the fabric of nature itself, not from the decrees of other men." This was the philosophy that guided William Harvey throughout his life and gave the world one of the most important medical discoveries of all times.

From the dust jacket