Authors: Ralf H Adams
Publish Date: 2003/09/12
Volume: 314, Issue: 1, Pages: 3-4
Abstract
In his groundbreaking publication An anatomical study of the heart and blood in animals in 1628 the English physician and anatomist William Harvey explained how blood is pumped by the heart into the body through arteries and then returns through veins to the heart for recirculation What may appear as selfevident and basic textbook knowledge today was highly controversial at the time and clashed with the beliefs of contemporary physicians that the heart would suck in blood from the veins while the arteries expanded like bellows or that blood would be converted into spirits and consumed by the body as some sort of fuel Harveys pioneering work put an end to many centuries of confusion over the real nature of blood and heart and became the foundation of all modern research on the cardiovascular system Since then the steady expansion of knowledge and technical possibilities has allowed the uncovering of many morphological and physiological details that contribute to the normal
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