European Expansion brought great advances in technology, especially medicine. In the 1500's, Gabriel Falliopius diagnosed ear diseases with an ear speculum. He also described in detail the muscles of the eye and tear ducts. Italian physician Girolamo Fracastoro recognized that infectious diseases are spread by invisible "seeds" that can reproduce themselves.

The biggest discovery in 17th century medicine was the discovery of how the blood circulates in the body by the English physician William Harvey. He wrote an "Essay on the Motion of the Heart and the Blood" in 1628 which established that the heart pumps the blood in continuous circulation. An Italian anatomist, Marcello Malpighi, expanded on Harvey's work by discovering tiny blood vessels called capillaries. An English physician, Francis Glisson, described nutritional disorders, and was the first to prove that muscles contract when activity is performed. Richard Lower, another English physician, studied the anatomy of the heart...