• Michael Servetus• 29 September 1511 – 27 October1553

• (Miguel Servet or Miguel Serveto also Miguel De Villanueva or Michel De Villeneuve)

• Servetus was the first European to describe the function of pulmonary circulation

• His interests included many sciences: theology,mathematics,cartography, astronomy and meteorology, geography, human anatomy, medicine and pharmacology, as well as jurisprudence, and the scholarly study of the Bible in its original languages

• Servetus recounts his discovery that the blood of the pulmonary circulation flows from the heart to the lungs (rather than air in the lungs flowing to the heart as had been thought in Galen’s system). His discovery was based on the color of the blood, the size and location of the different ventricles, and the fact that the pulmonary vein was extremely large, which suggested that it performed intensive and transcendent exchange.

• Servetus does not talk just about cardiology. he also talks of the brain, the cerebellum, the meninges, the nerves, the eye, the tympanum, etc.

1628

1574

1543-1553

(1210-1280)

Most copies of his book were burned shortly after its publication in 1553 because of annoyance of Servetus by religious Priests. Three copies survived, but these remained hidden for decades and his achievement was not widely recognized at the time.

He participated in the Protestant Reformation, and later developed a nontrinitarian Christology. He Condemned by Catholics and Protestants alike and was arrested in Geneva and burnt at the stake as a

heretic by order

of the Protestant

Geneva governing

council.

Monument to

Michael Servetus

Champel, Switzerland

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