Exhibition launch & lecture: Ceaseless motion: William Harvey's experiments in circulation

Join the Royal College of Physicians for the public launch of a special exhibition on the life, work and legacy of William Harvey, the anatomist and doctor who put the heart at the centre of human existence. 

Be among the first to see fascinating new displays about the physician who upended almost 2,000 years of medical convention to identify that blood circulated from the heart, rather than being 'concocted' in the liver.
Hear an intriguing lecture from Harvey expert, Professor Andrew Cunningham, on how a man now regarded as imporant to medicine as Newton is to physics and Darwin to biology, was orginally fearful of his own discoveries.  

William Harvey (1578–1657), perhaps the most famous member of the Royal College of Physicians, possessed an insatiable curiosity about the inner workings of all living creatures. Living through an extraordinary age of scientific revolution, he made one of the greatest contributions to the advancement of learning, with a discovery that would reshape how we view life itself: the circulation of blood from the heart. 
Working at his London home, Harvey conducted countless experiments and observed the beating hearts of innumerable animals, from invisible shrimps to domestic dogs, eels to crows, and even wasps. As an anatomist, he had access to the bodies of hanged men for the purpose of dissections, carried out in the anatomy theatre at the former Royal College of Physicians, in the shadow of old St Paul's Cathedral. 

With antique copies of works by the long-established medical authorities of Harvey’s time and exceptionally rare personal artefacts from the great man himself taken from the College's own astonishing collections, alongside loans from the Hunterian Museum and National Portrait Gallery, ‘Ceaseless motion: William Harvey’s experiments in circulation’ dissects Harvey’s work, its reception by contemporaries and his enormous influence. 

Andrew Cunningham; historian, lecturer and author, was for many years Wellcome Trust Lecturer in the History of Medicine at Cambridge University. He wrote and presented the 30 part BBC Radio 4 series'The making of modern medicine'. His most recent book is 'The anatomist anatomis'd: an experimental discipline in Enlightenment Europe'.

Programme

Thursday 18 January:

6.15 - 6.30pm Arrival and registration 
6.30 - 7.30pm public lecture with Professor Andrew Cunningham.
7.30 - 9pm Exhibition viewing and pay bar