Question

How did William Harvey’s ideas about autopsies from the cultural of his time

Answer 1

Answer:

William Harvey Discoverer of the mechanisms that circulate blood inside the body, Harvey knew that all secrets end up being revealed. I also knew that beauty sometimes takes strange forms, which frequently takes the form of viscera and maps, of the bodies that inhabit the bottom of the ponds and of those who travel the roads tirelessly until they reach cities of languages ​​and customs foreign. Harvey had dissected hundreds of animals until he managed to establish the theory that the heart was the organ responsible for driving blood inside veins and arteries, but his theory was not complete. He knew that in the human body the process was the same, but he needed to prove it. In seventeenth-century England, autopsies were prohibited. They altered the order of things, the natural law that established that the viscera should remain inside the bodies, which should not be revealed in the eyes of men. But the practice of medicine required corpses, and students and doctors robbed them of cemeteries when night fell. All except Harvey, who hated digging in the earth, dragging bodies in the middle of the shadows, manipulating unknown corpses. When he finally managed to prove his theory, he did it with some bodies that he did not need to steal from a cemetery: he carried out with his own hands the autopsy of his father and his sister. Beauty sometimes takes strange forms.

Answer 2

William Harvey wanted to conduct public autopsies si that the general public might learn from them. However, at that time, anatomical studies were considered as taboos and were disproved by the doctrines. Leonardo da Vinci's anatomical drawings were also charged with heresy.