Harvey outlined all the details of how the heart and circulatory system work, in more or less the terms we understand today. When I was a schoolboy, this was always presented as one of those eureka moments that changed the world. In fact, in Harvey’s day the theory was almost universally ridiculed and rejected. Nearly all Harvey’s peers thought him “crack-brained,” in the words of the diarist John Aubrey. Harvey was abandoned by most of his clients and died a bitter man. Harvey didn’t understand respiration, so couldn’t explain what purpose blood served or why it circulated—two pretty glaring
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