Timelines of the Timelines of the History of MedicineHistory of Medicine
December 06, 2010December 06, 2010
c. -550 BCc. -550 BC TheThe Indian physician Susruta Indian physician Susruta
pioneers plastic surgery of the nosepioneers plastic surgery of the nose c. -2000 BCc. -2000 BC
Medicine men in Peru practice Medicine men in Peru practice trephination, cutting holes in the trephination, cutting holes in the skulls of brave or foolhardy patientsskulls of brave or foolhardy patients
c. -550 BC Indian medical theory maintains that
the body consists of three humours - spirit, phlegm and bile
c. -400 BC Hippocrates, on the Greek island of Kos,
founds an influential school of medicine c. -280 BC The Alexandrian school of medicine
develops an alarming form of clinical anatomy – human vivisection
c. -100 BC The practice of acupuncture is
described in Nei Qing, a Chinese medical text
c. 50 The Roman surgeon Cornelius Celsus
describes in De Medicina how to cut stones from a patient's bladder
158 A new doctor, Galen, is appointed to
look after the gladiators at Pergamum c. 950 Medieval Europe's first institute of
higher education is established, with the founding of the medical school at Salerno
c. 1000 The first illustrated manual of surgery is
written by Abul Kasim, an Arab physician in Cordoba
c. 1020 The Persian scholar Avicenna, author of
encyclopedic works on philosophy and medicine, spends the last part of his life in Isfahan
1100 Conjoined twins Mary and Eliza Chulkhurst
are born in Biddenden, in Kent
c. 1489 Leonardo da Vinci begins an unprecedented
series of detailed anatomical drawings, based on corpses dissected in Rome
c. 1500 European diseases bring death on a
massive scale to an American population that has no immunity
1513 Eucharius Rösslin publishes the first
textbook for midwives, later translated into English as The byrthe of mankynde
1543 Flemish anatomist Andreas Vesalius
publishes a seven-volume work which for the first time lays bare human anatomy
1545 Ambroise Paré, the greatest surgeon of his
day, publishes an account of how to treat gunshot wounds
c. 1580 William Chamberlen invents the obstetrical Forceps 1610 First documented Caesarian section in which
mother survives
1628 William Harvey publishes a short book, De
Motu Cordis, proving the circulation of the blood
1658 Samuel Pepys has a two-ounce stone cut from
his bladder, in an operation carried out at home in the presence of his family
1665 The first recorded attempt at blood
transfusion, at the Royal Society in London, proves that the idea is feasible
1667 The first successful human blood transfusion
is achieved in Paris by Jean Baptiste Denis, apparently saving the life of a 15-year-old boy
1717 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, observing the
Turkish practice of inoculation against smallpox, submits her infant son to the treatment
1752 English obstetrician William Smellie
introduces scientific midwifery as a result of his researches into childbirth
1761 Austrian physician Joseph Leopold
Auenbrugger describes his new diagnostic technique – percussion, or listening to a patient's chest and tapping
1775 Captain Cook publishes his discovery of a
preventive cure against scurvy, in the form of a regular ration of lemon juice
1784 Benjamin Franklin, irritated at needing two
pairs of spectacles, commissions from a lens-grinder the first bifocals
1785 William Withering's Account of the Foxglove
describes the use of digitalis for dropsy, and its possible application to heart disease
1796 In Berkeley, Gloucestershire, Edward
Jenner inoculates a boy with cowpox in the pioneering case of vaccination
1796 German physician Samuel Hahnemann
coins the term 'homeopathy' and describes this new approach to medicine
1816 René Laënnec, reluctant to press his ear to
the chest of a young female patient, finds a solution in the stethoscope
1828 William Burke and William Hare
murder 16 victims and sell their bodies to the Edinburgh Medical School for anatomical study
1832 The USA suffers the first of several
choleraepidemics, spanning the sixty years to
1892
Anesthesia Anesthesia 1846 A dentist in Boston, William Morton, uses
ether as an anaesthetic while surgeon John Collins Warren removes a tumour in a patient's neck
1847 Scottish obstetrician James Simpson uses
anaesthetic (ether, and later in the year choloroform) to ease difficulty in childbirth
1847 James Young Simpson is the first to deliver a
baby (christened Anaesthesia) using chloroform
1851 German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz
invents the ophthalmoscope, making it possible for a doctor to examine the inside of a patient's eye
1853 The hypodermic syringe with a plunger is
simultaneously developed in France and in Scotland
1854 William Baikie, on an expedition up the
Niger, protects his men from malaria by administering quinine
1854 English physician John Snow proves that
cholera is spread by infected water (from a pump in London's Broad Street)
1854 Florence Nightingale, responding to reports
of horrors in the Crimea, sets sail with a party of twenty-eight nurses
1855 Jamaican-born nurse Mary Seacole sets up
her own 'British Hotel' in the Crimea to provide food and nursing for soldiers in need
1860 Florence Nightingale opens a training school
for nurses in St Thomas's Hospital, establishing nursing as a profession
1861 Hungarian physician Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis
publishes his discovery that deaths from puerperal fever can be dramatically reduced by a strict hand-washing routine
1865 English surgeon Joseph Lister introduces the
era of antiseptic surgery, with the use of carbolic acid in the operating theatre
1875 An outbreak of measles in Fiji, brought to the
islands by British visitors, kills a quarter of the population
c. 1882 German bacteriologist Robert Koch
announces his discovery of the bacillus that causes tuberculosis
1885 Louis Pasteur uses rabies inoculation to
save the life of 9-year-old Joseph Meister, bitten by a rabid dog
1887 A German physiologist, Adolf Fick, grinds a
pair of lenses to fit snugly in contact with a patient's eyeballs
1897 British physician Ronald Ross identifies the
Anopheles mosquito as the carrier of malaria
1900 The Bayer company in Germany sells
aspirin in the form of water-soluble tablets, the first medication of its kind
1900 Sigmund Freud publishes one of his most
significant works, The Interpretation of Dreams
1900 The Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov keeps
dogs alive almost indefinitely by severely curtailing their bodily functions
1903 German surgeon Georg Clemens Perthes
discovers, in Leipzig, that X-rays can inhibit cancer
1903 Dutch physiologist Willem Einthoven
invents the galvanometer, or electrocardiograph, for recording the electrical impulses within the heart muscle
1904 Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud
publishes The Psychopathology of Everyday Life
1906 German immunologist August von
Wasserman develops a diagnostic test to reveal the presence of the syphilis spirochaete in the blood
1906 Belgian physiologists Jules Bordet and
Octave Gengou identify Bacillus pertussis, the bacterium causing whooping cough
1906 A pediatrician in Vienna, Clemens von
Pirquet, describes a condition for which he coins the term 'allergy'
1906 The German neuropathologist Alois Alzheimer
identifies physical symptoms in the brain of a dead woman who had presenile dementia
1907 Austrian scientist Clemens von Pirquet
discovers a diagnostic test to identify tuberculosis in a patient
1909 French biologist Charles Nicolle discovers that
epidemic typhus is transmitted by the body louse
1910 Chicago cardiologist James Herrick publishes
the first account of the cells causing sickle-cell anaemia
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