Harvey in the sluice: from hydraulic engineering to human physiology

Abstract

The most important discovery in the history of medicine, the blood's circulation, owed to the most valued invention after the wheel in the history of engineering, the pound lock. The celebrated anatomist William Harvey compared the venous membranes to sluice gates, as a model for the prevention of the blood's reflux. With empirical method he observed hydraulic engineering in London, where he practiced medicine, and Padua, where he studied medicine. He actually experienced his cardiovascular model while a medical student by traveling through the exemplary sluice gate, the Porte Contarine lock. This prototype, together with the first pound lock constructed on the Thames, while he composed De motu cordis et sanguinis, provided him the decisive model for the function of the venous membranes to obstruct reflux of the blood. Thus he probed forward through them to the heart as the source of a circulatory blood flow.

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