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Blood Voyage: Discovering Harvey's Heartbeat in Old London
by My Book Hub Team
An illustrated educational book for ages 9-12. Read the first pages free, then join to read it all.
What your child will learn
Explain how William Harvey showed that blood circulates continuously around the body through the heart, arteries and veins.
Genre: educational
For ages 9-12
A peek inside
In a busy nineteenth-century London operating theatre, gas lamps cast a warm glow over polished instruments and wooden benches. Young Dr Elias Wren stands beside a patient who is resting after a careful operation. Two curious children wait nearby, eyes wide with interest. Dr Wren smiles kindly, his neat dark hair tidy above a waistcoat and rolled sleeves. "Today we will not only mend wounds," he says gently. "We will follow a voyage that blood takes every moment of our lives. Long ago a brilliant doctor named William Harvey discovered something astonishing. He showed that blood does not simply appear and vanish. It travels in a continuous circle through the heart, the arteries and the veins. Come closer and I will show you how he proved it."
Dr Wren holds up a small model of the body so the children can see. "Before William Harvey lived, most learned people followed ideas from an ancient doctor called Galen. They believed the liver made blood from food, and that blood slowly seeped outward to feed the body until it was used up. They thought the heart and lungs only mixed air into the blood, and that two kinds of blood barely mixed. Arteries and veins seemed almost separate. Nobody imagined a full circle. Blood was thought to ebb and flow rather like the tide. That old picture left many mysteries unsolved. How could the body make so much new blood every day? Harvey refused to accept the puzzle without proof. He watched carefully, measured carefully, and asked bold questions that changed medicine forever."
