Harvey demonstrates blood circulation

William Harvey's De Motu Cordis used calculation — the volume of blood pumped demanded recirculation — to prove the heart is a pump.

Why it matters

Medicine's first great quantitative argument: not a new instrument, a new way of reasoning. The body became a mechanism that experiment could interrogate.

People

William Harvey

Threads

This event sits on Medicine.

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Sources

• Encyclopædia Britannica — William Harvey