A few days ago, I joined in a New Year Eve party held by some Chinese students and made dumplings together, which is the indispensable food for us to celebrate the beginning of a new year. After learned of my major, they got so excited that a various of historical questions were listed quickly in front of me for proof, most of which I had no idea of. So I had to play the card again "I am a historian, but not an encyclopedia ......" I shocked them by the fact that I did not all the things that had happened in history, and another day I also shocked Marri-Ann, one of my roommates who is doing research in medicine and therapy in the Western, that I was doing research in William Harvey. She recommended me a book related to the blood circulation and told me that my major was awesome! I laughed a lot and could not help wondering that maybe I would ask myself a question what I should know and what should not.
Back to my topic! Dissecting Harvey is not that hard, and I cut him into little pieces, such as his theories including blood circulation, muscular movement，generation, embryo, liver, heart and spirit; his methodology including his research purpose, difficulties, criticism, and relations among his three main books; his life including his personality, precursors, friends, enemies, etc. Then I realize that I am really not a doctor, because the dissected body of Harvey is a mess. I find it is a little hard for me to reconstruct the main points of Harvey and introduce him to others.
The reason why I relate my research work to the medical dissection is that I read an interesting article. It is William Harvey's Prelectiones: The performance of the body in the Renaissance Theater of Anatomy by Luke Wilson. In his article, Wilson tells a tradition in the sphere of medicine during Harvey's times. After the dissection of a body, either human beings or animals, a special ritual would follow, in which all the dissected parts would be put back into the body and buried in grave. When I was reading this article, it reminded me of the confusing situation I faced and it eased my nerves by humoring myself.
I am really grateful that I have worked with different groups to figure out that question, after all, it is a group project and I learned a lot from my classmates. Although I was frustrated by the software of edisum, it still was worth of spending some time on learning new things. At present, I participated in the Arm Projector Group, working on a projector, which is used to show the idea of blood circulation in a person's arm. I am enjoying sharing the information with my group members and I believe we will come up with great idea together!
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