Medicine (0001-2001)

Medicine (0001-2001)The struggle for mankind to understand the functioning and repair of the human body.

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c. 0050The first century Greek physician, Dioscorides, recommended the use of orchid tubers asan aphrodisiac.

0180In his Methodus Medendo, Greek physician Galen devises a system of medicine that willinfluence medical thinking for over a thousand years

c. 0201Claudius Galen (130?-?), a Greek Anatomist, wrote 'On the Natural Faculties'.

c. 0500Susrata, an Indian medical book, was compiled.

c. 0600Vaghbata, Indian medical book compiled.

0765A school of medicine is established in Baghdad.

1070Possible founding date of the Hospital of St. John in Jerusalem by Amalfi merchants.

c. 1100(Between 1100-1200) The 12th century book 'Gyuschi' was a compilation of Tibetan medicinethat described the making and applications of medications extracted from herbs, roots andminerals often served as hot teas.

1180In Montpellier, France, a medical school was founded.

1280Eyeglasses are invented and later improved in the late medieval period.

1322Arabian writers recorded ideas about artificial insemination.



1333The Black Death erupted in China.

1478Girolamo (Gerolamo) Fracastoro (Latin: Hieronymus Fracastorius) (1478-1553), Italianphysician, scholar and poet was born in Verona. He was later educated at Padua Universityand lived and practised in his hometown. He was a friend and colleague of Copernicus.

1485The medical encyclopedia 'Gart der Gesundheit' described the female mandrake, thought tostop bleeding, and to scream when pulled by its roots.

1491Pietro Roccabonella, doctor of medicine and lecturer at the University of Padua, died.

1 May 1493Phillippus Paracelsus, physician and alchemist, was born.

c. 1500(Between 1500s) Europe began to restrict the practice of medicine to qualified doctors.

c. 1500(Between 1500-1600) Giulio Cesare Aranzi, Italian anatomist, name the hippocampusformation of the brain because of its resemblance to Hippocampus, the seahorse.

1518Henry VIII authorized a college of physicians and it was founded by Oxford physicianThomas Linacre.

1518Raphael painted a portrait of Leo X which showed spectacles with concave lenses forshort-sightedness.

1520Spectacles were in use amongst Europe's educated.

1520A smallpox epidemic raged in Vera Cruz, Mexico. The 16th century smallpox epidemic inMexico and Central America killed about half of the Aztecs.



1527Theophrastus von Hohenheim established chemotherapy and the modern school of medicalthinking at the University of Basel in Switzerland.

1528Typhus swept through Italy and killed tens of thousands.

1530Opium known as laudanum was used as a pain reliever.

1530Girolamo Fracastoro wrote a long poem on syphilis 'Gaulish Syphilis sive de morbo'(Syphilis, or the French Disease), from the title of which the disease takes its name.Fracastoro took the name 'syphilis' from the legend of Syphylus, a young shepherd boywho, having neglected his flocks, was punished by Apollo with a terrible disease thatcovered his entire body with ulcers.

1533A professorship in botany created at the university in Padua established plant study as adiscipline separate from medicine.

1537Andreas Vesalius, the Belgian 'father of anatomy', accepted the chair of anatomy atPadua.

1540The united companies of barbers and surgeons were incorporated in London.

1540The pulmonary circulation of the blood was discovered by Michael Servetus, a Spanishtheologian and physician, who was later burned at the stake for heresy.

1540Ether was produced from alcohol and sulfuric acid.

1543Anatomist Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), publishes 'De Humani Corporis Fabrica' whichcorrects Greek medical errors and revolutionizes medicine.



1544The first herbarium was published by Italian botanist Luca Ghini.

1545A typhus epidemic killed hundreds of thousands of natives and colonists in Cuba and NewSpain.

1546Gerolamo Fracastoro (1478-1553) writes 'De contagione ET contagiosis morbis' (OnContagion and Contagious Diseases). In which he proposes the earliest germ theory ofdisease that epidemic diseases are caused by transferable seedlike entities that couldtransmit infection by direct or indirect contact or even without contact over longdistances.

1551Spanish sailors in the Caribbean became ill after eating a fish stew. Most likely causedby ciguatera, a disease caused by toxins of microorganisms eaten by reef fish.

1552Bartolommeo Eustachio, Italian anatomist, described the Eustachian tube of the ear andthe Eustachian valve in the heart.

27 Oct 1553Michael Servetus, who discovered the pulmonary circulation of the blood, was burnt forheresy in Switzerland.

1553Michael Servetus (Miguel Serveto) (1511-1553), describes the circulation of blood intothe heart after being mixed with air in the lungs. He was burnt alive for heresy inGeneva in the same year at the instigation of Calvin.

1554Fernelius, French physician, codified the medicine of the Renaissance.

1559Realdo Colombo (1516-1559), Italian anatomist, advanced the understanding of human bloodcirculation by describing the lesser circulation of blood through the lungs in detail.



1561Gabriel Fallopius, wrote one of the first studies in anatomy in 'Observationesanatomicae'.

1564Andreas Vesalius, the father of modern anatomy, was forced by the Inquisition to make apilgrimage to the Holy Land. He disappeared during the voyage.

1565The Royal College of Physicians in London was officially permitted to carry out humandissections.

2 Jul 1566French astrologer, physician and prophet, Nostradamus, died in Salon.

1567Typhoid fever swept through parts of South America and killed more than two millionIndians.

1568Constanzo Varoli, Italian anatomist, studied the anatomy of the human brain.

1570Spanish viceroy Alva banishes Zutphen City's only physician, Joost Sweiter, 'because heis a Jew'.

1572Ambroise Pare, French surgeon, introduced more humane treatment for battlefield wounds.He substituted egg yolk and turpentine for boiling oil, and introduced arterial ligatureinstead of cauterization.

1575Plague swept through Italy and Sicily.

1578William Harvey (1578-1657), English physician, was born. He discovered the way the heartpumps blood through the arteries and veins of the body.



1578Li Shih-Chen summed up Chinese pharmacology in his 'Great Pharmacopoeia'.

c. 1597The 'Materia Medica Pharmacopeia' was written and detailed some 1,900 herbs, minerals andanimals used by the Chinese to treat ailments through the ages.

1601Jean Robin published a catalog for his medicinal herb garden.

1603Girolamo Fabrici studies leg veins and notices that they have valves which only allowblood to flow toward the heart.

1603Spigelius published instructions on making dried herbarium specimens which was atechnique that had only come into practice during the previous 50 years.

1604The first official condemnation of tobacco was made by King James I, who cited the healthhazards of smoking in his Counterblaste to Tobacco.

1618Pietro da Cortona, artist, made an atlas of human anatomy: 'Tabulae Anatomicae'.

1628British physician William Harvey explains circulation of blood, the vein-artery systemand structure of the heart in 'De Motu Cordis et Sanguinis'.

1639Francois Citois, the physician of Cardinal Richeliue, published a book that described thedisease colica Pictonum, and noted the prevalence of the disease to the wine region ofPoitou, where tart wines needed sweetening.

1645The San Marcoul Hospital was established in Rheims, France, by a devout woman for thecare of scrofulous (tubercular) patients.



1649In Seville, Spain, one in three died of the Black Plague.

c. 1654Samuel Stockhausen, a physician in Goslar in the Harz Mountains of Germany, identifiedthe ailment of Huttenkatze as stemming from lead poisoning in the local mining towns.This find later made possible Gockel's discovery of the cause of colica Pictonum.

c. 1656Robben Island in Cape Town's Table Bay, South Africa, from this time on was variouslyused by European settlers as a mental institution, leper colony and prison.

1658Jan Swammerdam observes red blood cells under a microscope.

1663Robert Hooke sees cells in cork using a microscope.

1664There was no litigation in London, England due to the Black plague.

15 Aug 1665Between 15 August abd 22 August, The London weekly 'Bill of Mortality' recorded 5,568fatalities. 4,237 were killed by the plaque.

1665The Great Plague of London killed a quarter of the population, an estimated 68,000 people.

1665The villagers of Eyam in Derbyshire, England, voluntarily isolated themselves so as notto spread the plague. 250 of 350 people died and the town became known as the PlagueVillage.

14 Nov 1666The first blood transfusion was performed.

1666Samuel Pepys reports on the first blood transfusion which was between dogs.



1666Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689), writes on treating fevers.

1672Regnier de Graaf discovers structures in the ovary (Graafian follicles).

1676Anton van Leeuwenhoek observes protozoa and calls them 'animalcules'.

1677Anton van Leeuwenhoek observes spermatazoa.

1677The first medical publication in America, a pamphlet on smallpox, was produced in Boston.

1677Cinchona bark included in the London Pharmacopoeia as a fever treatment.

1678First known American medical publication appears, from clergyman-physician ThomasThacher, 'A Brief Rule to Guide the Common-people of New England How to Order Themselvesand Theirs in the Small Pocks, or Measels'.

1683Anton van Leeuwenhoek observes bacteria

1692Royal Hospital Founders Day first celebrated.

1693Edmund Halley prepares the first mortality tables statistically relating death rate toage.

1694(1694-1696) An outbreak of colic struck the region around Ulm, Germany. Eberhard Gockel,the city physician, was able to trace the cause to a wine sweetener that used a whiteoxide of lead.



1699The Republic of Lucca promulgated the first regulations designed to prevent the spread oftuberculosis.

1701In Constantinople, Giacomo Pylarini gives the first smallpox inoculations

1705Raymond Vieussens describes the left ventricle of the heart and the course of coronaryblood vessels.

1714Gabriel Fahrenheit constructs the mercury thermometer.

1717Giovanni Lancisi suggests that malaria can be transmitted by mosquitoes.

1724Abraham De Moivre studies mortality statistics and the foundation of the theory ofannuities in Annuities on Lives.

1726Stephen Hales measures blood pressure of the horse.

1726Edinburgh University Medical School founded.

1728Pierre Fauchard describes how to fill a tooth.

1730First tracheotomy for treatment of diphtheria performed by George Martine.

1736First successful appendectomy performed by Claudius Amyand, in France.

1736American physician William Douglass describes scarlet fever.



1745The Company of Surgeons splits from the Barbers in London.

1747Doctor James Lind experimented with 12 sailors who had scurvy and discovered thatconsuming lemons and oranges for 6 days produced a great improvement by ensuring anadequate intake of Vitamin C (ascorbic acid).

1747First textbook on physiology appears - Albrecht von Haller's 'Primae Lineae Physiologiae'.

1748J. Daviel performs the first cataract operation.

17 May 1749Edward Jenner was born in the small village of Berkeley in Gloucestershire.

1751Peter Kalm a Linnean student and botanical explorer noted that Native Americans treatedeye diseaes with a concoction of water in which witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) hadbeen boiled.

1751Pennsylvania Hospital, the first American hospital, was founded.

1752The first scientific approach to obstetrics appears, 'Theory and Practice or Treatise onMidwifery', by William Smellie.

1752Reaumur discovers that digestion is a chemical process.

1756The oldest US hospital was founded, Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. A principalfounder was Benjamin Franklin.

1759Caspar Wolff shows that specialized organs develop out of unspecialized tissue.



1760First physician licensing statute enacted in New York City.

1761John Hill established an association between tobacco snuff and malignant (and fatal) nosepolyps.

1761Leopold Auenbrugger develops percussion technique for diagnosing chest disorders.

1763Claudius Aymand performs the first successful appendectomy.

1765The first American medical college opens in Philadelphia, based largely on the model ofthe University of Edinburgh.

1765John Morgan delivers 'A discourse upon the institution of medical schools in America', aproposal for the first American medical school, outlining the course of medical educationand guidelines for the development of medicine as a university discipline.

1766First medical society in the American colonies founded in New Jersey.

1766First American medical periodical appears: 'Transactions of the New Jersey MedicalSociety'.

1767Medical instruction begins at King's College, New York City.

1768The first American bachelor of medicine degree was awarded to Dr John Archer.

1769Samuel Bard outlines the conduct and 'duties of a physician' in his commencement addressto medical graduates at King's College, New York City.



1771Luigi Galvani measures electricity in animals.

1771John Hunter's 'The Natural History of the Human Teeth' appears.

1772Colonial New Jersey regulates medical practice creating a board of medical examiners.

1773Lazzaro Spallanzani discovers digestive action of saliva.

1774Franz Mesmer uses hypnosis as a medical treatment.

1775Percivall Pott suggests that environmental factors can cause cancer.

1775Edward Jenner began to study the relationship between cowpox (a comparatively harmlessdisease) and the more dangerous and disfiguring smallpox.

1776Benjamin Rush, professor of chemistry at Philadelphia and a member of Congress, signs theDeclaration of Independence. Rush and his 'heroic' system of medicine dominated theprofession well into the nineteenth century.

1780Luigi Galvani experiments with muscles and electricity.

1783Medical education begins at Harvard.

1784The German poet Goethe discovers the human intermaxillary bone.

1785William Withering, an English country doctor, published a study about a home remedy fordropsy which was based on foxglove. It both slowed heart rate and increased the strengthof each heart beat which improves circulation and therefore alleviates edema.



1785William Withering uses digitalis, from the foxglove plant, to cure dropsy.

1789Lavoisier's theories completely revise the language of chemistry.

1790Archibald Menzies journeyed as surgeon-naturalist on Captain George Vancouver'sexpedition to the Pacific Northwest and collected some dried herbarium material.

1790Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City establish local boards of healthduring the 1790's.

1791George Hayward, a US surgeon, is the first to use ether.

1793Benjamin Rush successfully treats epidemic of yellow fever.

1794Dr Jessee Bennet of Edom VA, performs first successful Cesarean section operation on hiswife.

1794Lavoisier is guillotined in France.

14 May 1796Edward Jenner conducted an experiment by scraping pus from a cowpox sore on the arm of amilkmaid and inserting it into two cuts on the arm of a young boy.

1 Jul 1796Edward Jenner (1749-1823), following on from a prevoius experiment on 14th May, conducteda second experiment scraping pus from a smallpox sore and inserting it into two cuts onthe arm of a young boy. The boy caught the cowpox from the prevoius experiment, but didnot catch smallpox.



1797Medical education begins at Dartmouth College.

1798Dr George Balfour becomes first naval surgeon in the US navy.

1798Congress establishes the Marine Hospital Service, currently the U.S. Public HealthService.

1798Only 312 individuals have received medical college degrees in the U.S. since 1765. By1900, this would increase to 5,200.

1798Chlorine is used to purify water.

1798Xavier Bichat announces that the human body is made of tissues and that diseases attackparticular tissues.

1798After repeating the same cowpox/smallpox vaccination experiment sucessfuully on 23different cases, Edward Jenner published his findings and submitted them to the RoyalSociety. They refused to publish his findings because of opposition to vaccination fromdoctors.

1799Edward Jenner's smallpox vaccination is introduced.

1800Humphry Davy announces the anaesthetic properties of nitrous oxide.

1801Philippe Pinel advocates a more humane treatment of the insane.

1801Thomas Young discovers the cause of astigmatism.



1802Edward Jenner was awarded a grant of £10,000 by the government.

1803German pharmacist F.W. Serturner isolated morphine from opium latex

1805First formally organized medical library founded in Boston.

1805Frederick Serturner isolates morphine.

1806Edward Jenner was awarded a grant of further £20,000 by the government.

1809Jean Lamarck advocated a theory of evoloution through inherritance of acquiredcharacteristics.

1809First successful ovariotomy (without anaesthetic).

1810Illinois passes the first state vaccination legislation in the US.

1810Medical education begins at Yale.

1810Samuel Hahnemann introduces homeopathy.

1812New England Journal of Medicine (precursor) founded, currently the oldest US medicaljournal.

1812College of Physicians and Surgeons of the Western District of the State of New York(Fairfield, New York) founded. By 1840, it had enrolled 3123 students and graduated 589.



1812College of Medicine of Maryland trusteeship is vested with its faculty, which gainscorporate authority. American medical education subsequently evolves into proprietarymedical education, where the faculties divide matriculation fees.

1812Medical education in the US combines apprenticeship and public lectures of widely varyinginterpretations. Little uniformity exists among faculties across institutions.

1812Benjamin Rush's 'Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind'appears.

1814Charles Waterton experimented with a donkey using a mixture of Amazonian plant mixturecalled 'curare'. This later led to the observation that curare immobilizes voluntarymuscle tissue through blocking transmission of nerve impulses to muscles.

1816Rene Laennec invents the stethoscope.

1817Medical education begins at Transylvania University (Lexington, Kentucky), the firstmedical school west of the Alleghenies.

1817James Parkinson's 'Essay on the Shaking Palsy' appears.

1817First cholera pandemic begins.

1818Humphry Davy discovers nitrous oxide ('laughing gas').

1819Medical College of Ohio (Cincinnati) founded by Daniel Drake, M.D.. At this time, lessthan twenty percent of physicians practicing in Ohio have medical degrees.



1820French chemists isolated quinine from the bark of Cinchona making possible the productionof a purified chemical treatment for malaria.

1820The first general pharmacopoeia in US published, Boston.

1820Bichat, using the new mathematics of probability discovered by Laplace, begins the firstapplication of statistics (compiled from the French Revolution) to medicine.

1821College of Apothecaries organized in Philadelphia, the first US pharmacy college.

1821Philadelphia College of Pharmacy founded, the first American school of pharmacy.

1821Charles Bell describes facial paralysis.

1822Charles M Graham of New York patents artificial teeth (false teeth).

26 Jan 1823Edward Jenner died in the small village of Berkeley in Gloucestershire, aged 74.

1823The periodical 'The Lancet' first appears.

1824Second cholera pandemic begins.

1825First dental school in North America is established in Bainbridge, Ohio.

1826Pierre Bretonneau describes the symptoms of diphtheria.



1827Richard Bright describes kidney disease.

1828Friedrich Wohler synthesizes urea.

1829Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker arrive in Boston to be exhibited.

1829Haemophilia described by Schonlein.

1829Scandal of William Burke and William Hare, who murdered to supply bodies to Scottishanatomist Robert Knox.

1830German anatomist Johannes Muller discovered proteins.

1831Samuel Guthrie discovers chloroform.

1831During the cholera epidemic of 1831-58 in England, William Farr uses statistical mappingto trace cholera to drinking water, inaugurating the science of epidemiology.

1832The first appearance of cholera at Edinburgh in Scotland. Thomas Latta injects a salinesolution into a patient and pioneers a new treatment.

1832The first appearance of cholera in London.

1832Warburton Anatomy Act legalizes the sale of bodies for dissection in England.

1832Thomas Hodgkin describes cancer of the lymph nodes.



1833Anselme Payen and J F Persoz first isolated an enzyme.

1833Ohio state legislature repeals all laws pertaining to the regulation of the practice ofmedicine, out of frustration over 'regular physician - sectarian physician' animositiesand rivalries.

1834Amalgam first used for filling teeth.

1835Botanico-Medical College (Columbus) founded, followers of Thomsonianism.

1835Theodor Schwann uncovers pepsin in gastric juice.

1836Theodor Schwann discovers pepsin in extracts from the stomach lining, the first isolationof an animal enzyme.

1836US Library of the Surgeon General's Office created, forerunner to the National Library ofMedicine.

1837Theodor Schwann shows that heating air will prevent it from causing putrefaction(rotting).

1838Matthias Schleiden discovers that all living plant tissue is composed of cells.

1839Theodor Schwann defines the cell as the basic unit of animal structure.

1839Third cholera pandemic begins.



1840The Gould medicinal plant business began in Maldin in Massachusetts. Products such ascatnip tea were sold under their own label. They also supplied botanicals to other makersof medicines.

1840Smallpox vaccination, pioneered by Edward Jenner, became free for all infants and becamecompulsory in Britain in 1853.In 1980 the World Health Assembly declared that smallpoxhad been eradicated throughout the world.

1841F. G. Henle publishes a treatise on microscopic anatomy.

1842Matthias J. Schleiden (and Theodor Schwann in 1847) established the theory that the cellis the basic unit of all life helping to create the new general study of biology.

1842In Georgia, after observations he had made during 'ether frolics', Crawford Long performsthe first surgical operation using ether anesthesia.

1844The first dental use of nitrous oxide, Hartford, Ct, when Horace Wells pulls one of hisown teeth painlessly.

1844Dudley Medical University (Medina County) founded.

1845Ether was first used in childbirth in US, Jefferson, Georgia.

1845Patent awarded for adhesive medicated plaster, the precusor of the bandaid.

1846The first public use of ether anesthesia, by dentist Dr William Thomas Green Morton, insurgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.



1847Ignaz Semmelweis studies and prevents the transmission of puerperal fever.

1847In Philadelphia, the American Medical Association is founded.

1847Botanico-Medical School, followers of Thomsonianism, founded in Cleveland.

1848John Parker Paynard originates the medicated adhesive plaster.

1848The first US homeopathic medical college opens in Pennsylvania.

1849Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in the US to receive medical degree.

1849Mrs Elizabeth Blackwell becomes first woman physician in US

1850Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania becomes the first US female medical school.

1850Western College of Homeopathic Medicine (Cleveland) formed, followers of Samuel Hahnemann.

1851Gail Borden announces invention of evaporated milk.

1851Female Medical College of Pennsylvania established in Philadelphia, the first medicalcollege for women in the world.

1851Hermann von Helmholtz introduces the ophthalmoscope.



1852Great Ormond St Hospital for Sick Children, London, admits its first patient.

1852Miami Medical College (Cincinnati) founded, becoming the College of Medicine of theUniversity of Cincinnati in 1916.

1852Antonius Mathijsen develops plaster of paris casts for setting fractures.

1853The US Marine Hospital at Presidio in San Franciso is established.

1853Charles Pravaz invents the hypodermic syringe.

1853Chloroform administered to Queen Victoria in childbirth.

1855Louisiana creates the first state health department in the USA.

1855Boston Veterinary Institute, the first US veterinary college, is founded.

1856French chemist Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), created the dicipline of micrbiology byestablishing that micro-organisms are responsible for fermentation.

1858Rudolf Virchow proposes that cells can only arise from pre-existing cells.

1858First edition of Gray's 'Anatomy' appears.

1858In Cellularpathologie, Virchow demonstrates that every cell is a product of another cell.



1859Elizabeth Garrett Anderson met Elizabeth Blackwell, America’s first woman doctor. As aresult, Anderson wanted to become a doctor.

1859Charles Darwin published 'On the origin of species by means of natural selection'explaining that evolution is a simple change in the overall character of a population ofeither plants or animals.

1859Physio-Medical Institute (Cincinnati) formed, followers of Alva Curtis.

1860Nightingale Nursing School founded in London.

1861The process of osmosis was discovered.

1861Pasteur discovers anaerobic bacteria.

1861The Civil War Sanitary Commission is founded in New York City, America's first voluntaryhealth association.

1862Haemoglobin was first crystallized.

1862Louis Pasteur convincingly disproves the spontaneous generation of cellular life.

1863International Community of the Red Cross founded in Geneva (Nobel prizes 1917, 1944, 1963)

1863Fourth cholera pandemic begins.



1865Elizabeth Garrett Anderson qualified as the first British woman doctor.

1865Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk, presents his experiments on the crossbreeding of peaplants and postulates dominant and recessive factors but achieved little recognition.

1865Joseph Lister performs the first antiseptic surgery, using phenol as a disinfectant.

1866Elizabeth Garrett Anderson opened her own hospital, the St Mary's Dispensary for Womenand Children. This later to become the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital.

1866Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt invents the medical thermometer.

1866Pasteurization is first used, to prevent wine spoilage.

1867Cleveland Homeopathic College for Women formed.

1867First international medical congress, in Paris.

1869Jacques Reverdin describes skin-grafting.

1870Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) and Robert Koch (1843-1910) establish the germ theory ofdisease.

1871Physiologist Henry Bowditch establishes the first experimental medicine laboratory in theUS, at Harvard.



1871Charles Eliot, President of Harvard Medical School, institutes the first real reform inAmerican medical education by raising entrance requirements, grading the curriculum, andlengthening it to three years.

1872Elizabeth Garrett Anderson opened the New Hospital for Women, a London infirmary entirelystaffed by females, for females.

1872American Public Health Association formed.

1873Dentist John Beers of San Francisco patents the gold crown.

1873First three schools of nursing in the U.S. founded, in Boston, New Haven, and New YorkCity. The Bellevue school in New York City is modeled after Florence Nightingale'seducational specifications.

1873University of Pennsylvania constructs the first hospital in the U.S. built for use by amedical school.

1874Elizabeth Garrett Anderson co-founded the London School of Medicine for Women.

1874Dr Andrew T Sill, of Macon, Missouri, develops the science of osteopathy.

1874London School of Medicine for Women opened by Sophia Jex-Blake.

1875Electric dental drill is patented by George F Green.

1875Formal opening of US Marine Hospital at Presidio.



1876Oskar Hertwig and Hermann Fol show that fertilized eggs possess both male and femalenuclei.

1876International Electropathic Institute (Mentor, Ohio) formed.

1876American Medical College Association formed, raising educational standards andrequirements for its member colleges. It becomes the present Association of AmericanMedical Colleges in 1890.

1876Siegfried von Basch invents the modern blood pressure measuring device.

1876Robert Koch, the originator of modern bacteriology by plate cultures in the 1880s,identifies the anthrax bacillus.

1876A connection between the pancreas and sugar diabetes is discovered.

29 Apr 1878Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), reads the paper 'The Germ Theory and Its Applications toMedicine and Surgery' before the French Academy of Sciences.

1879Constantine Fahlberg discovers saccharin, an artificial sweetener.

1879National Board of Health established, the first organized medical research program of theUS government.

1879Listerine is introduced as a patent medicine.

1879Patrick Manson discovers mosquitoes transmit filariasis.



1880In this decade over 25% of sailors in the Japanese Navy developed beriberi frominsufficient quantities of the vitamin thiamine. It was not until several years laterthat C. Eijkman, a Dutch physician, working in the East Indies demonstrate that a diet ofbrown rice, as opposed to white rice, prevented the disease.

1880Gregor Mendel discovers hereditary factors in plants.

1880Metchnikoff discovers the role of white blood cells in disease control.

1880Charles Laveran isolates the blood parasite that causes malaria.

1880Civil War army surgeon and bibliographer John Shaw Billings issues the first volume ofthe most exhaustive medical bibliography ever.

1881Louis Pasteur develops an anthrax vaccine.

1881American Red Cross founded by Clara Barton.

1881Fifth cholera pandemic begins.

1882The first Dutch female physician Aletta Jacobs opens office.

1882US Senate ratifies treaty establishing the Red Cross.

1882Louis Pasteur develops a rabies vaccine.



1882Robert Koch isolates the tubercle bacillus, and identifies it as the cause of 'TB'.

1883Robert Koch discovers the cholera vibrio.

1884An assistant to Sigmund Freud discovered purified cocaine could be used as a localanesthetic. Later a similar chemical compound was produced synthetically Procaine (orNovocain) which has replaced cocaine for anesthesis.

1884Elie Metchnikoff describes phagocytosis.

4 Jan 1885Dr W W Grant of Iowa, performs first appendectomy on the patient Mary Gartside who was 22years old.

1886The Dutch government began a study of beri-beri a disease that was devastating the nativeIndonesian population.

1888Eugene Kalt develops the first contact lens.

1889In Germany, Bayer introduces aspirin in powder form.

1889Ohio College of Obstetrics, Medicine, & Midwifery (Cincinnati) formed.

1890A US St Louis physician formulated peanut butter as a food for invalids and in 1893 J. H.Kellogg made peanut butter for patients with poor teeth.

1890Emil von Behring discovers antitoxins and uses them to develop tetanus and diptheriavaccines.



1890Cleveland Medical College (Homeopathic) formed, followers of Samuel Hahnemann.

1890William Halsted introduces surgical gloves.

1891National Confederation of State Medical Examining and Licensing Boards founded.

1892Dr Washington Sheffield invents the toothpaste tube.

1892Anti-Tuberculosis Society of Philadelphia founded.

1893Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine founded, offering the first formalprogressive clinical education of physicians.

1893Daniel Williams performs the first open-heart surgery in Chicago.

1893Jean Charcot writes on the use of hypnotism in medicine.

1894The first US poliomyelitis epidemic breaks out in Rutland, Vermont.

1894Vaccine for diphtheria announced by Dr Roux of Paris.

1894First use of the diphtheria antitoxin in Britain.

8 Nov 1895German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen discovers x-rays and the world immediatelyappreciates their medical potential.



1895D.D. Palmer of Davenport, Iowa, becomes the first US chiropractor.

1896Emile Grubbe is the first doctor to use radiation treatment for breast cancer.

1896The first X-ray photo in US by Dr Henry Smith, Davidson, NC, to examine bone fractures.

1896German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen announces his discovery of x-rays.

1896Josef Maria Eder and Eduard Valenta publish stereoscopic Röntgen photographs.

1896Scipione Riva-Rocci invents a device for measuring blood pressure.

1898Martinus Beijerinck uses filtering experiments to show that tobacco mosaic disease iscaused by something smaller than a bacteria which he names a 'virus'.

1898The Bayer Company introduced heroin as a substitute for morphine and codeine. However, by1917 this drug was found to be greatly addictive and its use in over-the-counter coughsyrups was discontinued.

1899Felix Hoffmann patents 'Aspirin'.

1899The Bayer Company begins production of aspirin.

1899Sixth cholera pandemic begins.

1900Dr Walter Reed begins research that beats Yellow Fever.



1900Hugo de Vries rediscovers Mendel's laws of genetics.

1900Karl Landsteiner discovers human blood groups, or types.

1900Freud's 'The Interpretation of Dreams' is published.

1900US Army Yellow Fever Commission founded.

1900Henry Carter of the US Public Health Service shows that a lapse of twelve to fifteen daysis necessary before a case of yellow fever becomes dangerous to others.

1900Dr Jesse Lazear dies tragically in experiments, confirmed by Walter Reed, demonstratingthat yellow fever is transmitted by the Aedes Aegypti mosquito.

1901William Gorgas eradicates yellow fever from Havana, Cuba, the first time in 150 years.

1901Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research founded, the first US institute devotedentirely to biomedical research.

1901An academic degree is required for admission to Harvard Medical School.

1902Dr Harvey Cushing, the first US brain surgeon, performs the first brain operation.

1902Parke, Davis & Co of Detroit creates the first commercially operated research lab in theUS.



1902John McCormick Institute for Infectious Diseases established in Chicago.

1903Henry Phipps Institute for Tuberculosis established in Philadelphia.

1903Willem Einthoven describes the first electrocardiograph.

1904Netherlands Indies colony begins opium production.

1905Ernest Henry Starling (1866-1927) and William Maddock Bayliss (1860-1924) isolatesecretin, the first known hormone.

1905George W. Crile performs the first direct blood transfusion.

1905J.B. Murphy develops the first artificial hip joints.

1906Frederick Hopkins suggests the existence of vitamins and suggests that a lack of vitaminscauses scurvy and rickets.

1906Frederick Hopkins suggests the existence of vitamins ('accessory food factors') andsuggests that a lack of vitamins causes scurvy and rickets.

1906US Pure Food and Drug Act enacted, establishing the basis for federal regulation of foodsand drugs.

1906C. Sherrington's neurology classic 'The Integrative Action of the Nervous System' ispublished.



1907Emil Fischer artificially synthesizes peptide amino acid chains and thereby shows thatamino acids in proteins are connected by amino group-acid group bonds.

1907Ivan Pavlov demonstrates conditioned responses with salivating dogs.

1907Paul Ehrlich develops a chemotheraputic cure for sleeping sickness.

1907Bubonic Plague breaks out in San Fransisco.

1907Gold dental inlays first described by William Taggart, who invented them.

1908Sulphanilamide first synthesized.

1910Using Salvarsan for syphilis, Paul Ehrlich inaugurates modern chemotherapy.

1911Georg von Hevesy conceives the idea of using radioactive tracers later to be used inmedical diagnosis and many other applications.

1911William Hill develops the first gastroscope.

1912Frederick Hopkins showed that there were chemical substances obtained from food that areessential to human growth and maintenance. Casimir Funk termed these substances'vitamines'.

1912Harvey Cushing's 'The Pituitary Gland and its Disorders' is published.



1913American College of Surgeons founded.

1913John Abel builds the first kidney dialysis machine.

1913W. H. Bragg and W. L. Bragg construct the first X-ray spectroscope.

1914In Brussels, the first successful blood transfusion took place.

1914College of Homeopathic Medicine, Ohio State University, formed.

1914First successful heart surgery performed, on a dog.

1914Henry Dale discovers the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in ergot.

5 Dec 1916Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins, was born, at Pongaroa, New Zealand. His parents came fromIreland and his father Edgar Henry Wilkins was a doctor in the School Medical Service.

1916US President Wilson signs Harrison Drug Act.

1916Rockefeller Foundation appropriation establishes the first formalized school of publichealth at Johns Hopkins University.

1916Margaret Sanger establishes the first American birth-control clinic, in Brooklyn, N.Y.

1916Walter Gaskell names the involuntary nervous system.



1917American Board of Ophthalmology formed, the first medical specialty board in the US.

1917Carl Jung's 'Psychology of the Unconscious' is published.

1918The first use of iron lung (Boston's Children Hospital)

1918Spanish influenza pandemic begins.

1920Earl Dickson invents the Band-Aid.

1921Edward Mellanby discovers vitamin D and shows that its absence causes rickets.

1921Toronto's Dr F. G. Banting & Dr C. H. Best announce the isolation of insulin.

1922Insulin is first used to treat diabetes. the patient was Leonard Thompson, 14, of Canada.

1923Insulin becomes generally available for diabetics.

1923Albert Calmette and Camille Guerin develop the BCG vaccine for tuberculosis.

1926James Sumner crystallizes the first enzyme (urease).

1927Boston physician Herman Blumgart first uses radioactive tracers to diagnose heart disease.

1927Philip Drinker and Louis Shaw develop the 'iron lung'.



1928Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin in a mold.

1928Ernst Ruska develops the electron microscope.

1928Albert Szent-Gyorgyi isolates vitamin C.

1929Phoebus Levene discovers the sugar deoxyribose in nucleic acids. He goes on to describethe components of DNA, the phosphate groups and the nucleic acid bases.

1929Medical diathermy machine is first used, in Schenectady, New York.

1929Henry Dale and H.W. Dudley demonstrate chemical transmission of nerve impulses.

1929Werner Forssmann develops a cardiac catheter.

1930National Institute of Health (NIH) created.

1931Frederick S. McKay discovers that fluoride prevents tooth decay.

1932Yellow fever vaccine for humans is announced.

1932Gerhard Domagk develops a chemotheraputic cure for streptococcus.

1932Armand Quick introduces a test to measure the clotting ability of blood.



1933Dried human blood serum is first prepared, at the University of Pennsylvania.

1935Passage of the US Social Security Act.

1935The Mayo Clinic establishes the first blood bank.

1935Prefrontal lobotomy developed to treat mental illness.

1936The first radioactive isotope medicine administered, Berkeley, Ca

1937The first US blood bank is established in Chicago, Illonois.

1937The first US state contraceptive clinic opens (Raleigh NC)

1937Health Service Plan Commission, later called the Blue Cross Commission, organized.

1937National Cancer Institute of NIH established.

1937Daniele Bovet and Anne-marie Staub synthesize antihistamine for allergy relief.

1937Max Theiler develops vaccine against yellow fever.

1937Charles Dodds discovers a synthetic oestrogen (stilboestrol).

1938March of Dimes is established to fight polio.



1938Passage of the US Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

1938First total artificial hip replacement.

1939George N. Papanicolau develops the pap test for detecting cervical cancer.

1940Florey and Chain develop penicillin as an antibiotic.

1940Landsteiner discovers the Rhesus factor in blood.

1941Sister Elizabeth Kenny new treatment for infantile paralysis approved

1941Gregg links rubella in pregnancy to abnormalities in children.

1942Kaiser Permanente Health Plan formed, the first HMO.

1943Waksman discovers the antibiotic streptomycin.

1944John Hopkins hospital performs 1st open heart surgery

1944The first eye bank opens (NYC)

1944Blalock performs the first blue-baby operation.

1945Fluoridation of water introduced in the US to prevent tooth decay.



1946First randomized clinical trials of streptomycin for treatment of TB begin.

1948The World Health Organisation is formed by the UN.

1948The US National Institutes of Health established.

1949The first 12 women graduate from Harvard Medical School

1949The first photograph of genes is taken at University of Southern California by Pease andBaker.

1950The first kidney transplant (Chicago).

1950The US National Science Foundation established.

1951The US Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals formed.

1951John Gibbon develops the heart-lung machine.

1952Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase use radioactive tracers to show that DNA, not protein, isthe genetic material in bacteriophage viruses which carries information from generationto generation.

1952Fred Sanger - Hans Tuppy and Ted Thompson complete their chromatographic analysis of theinsulin amino acid sequence



1952Dr Jonas Salk develops the first polio (myelitis) vaccine.

1952Rosalind Franklin uses X-ray diffraction to study the structure of DNA and suggests thatits sugar-phosphate backbone is on its outside.

1952The first plastic lens for cataract patients fitted (Philadelphia)

1952The first transistorized hearing aid offered for sale (Elmsford NY)

1952Virginia Apgar develops a scoring system to help determine the health of newborn babies.

1952Artificial heart valves implanted inaugurating open heart surgery.

1953James Watson and Francis Crick propose a double helix structure for DNA.

1953Max Perutz and John Kendrew determine the structure of hemoglobin using X-ray diffractionstudies

1953Stanley Miller shows that amino acids can be formed when simulated lightning is passedthrough vessels containing water - methane - ammonia and hydrogen

1953The first successful separation of Siamese twins

1953The US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare established.

1953John Gibbon operates successfully using the heart-lung machine.



1953Graham and Wynder show that tobacco tars cause cancer in mice.

1954The first mass inoculation with Salk vaccine (Pittsburgh)

1954The first microbiology laboratory dedicated (New Brunswick NJ)

1954First successful kidney transplant.

1954Plastic contact lenses produced.

1955Arthur Kornberg discovers DNA polymerase enzymes

1955Severo Ochoa discovers RNA polymerase enzymes.

1955The first separation of virus into component parts reported

1955Johnson & Johnson introduces Tylenol.

1956The first prefrontal lobotomy performed, Washington DC

1957Albert Sabin develops a live polio vaccine.

1957Lillehei develops the first compact heart pacemaker.

1957Asian influenza pandemic begins.



1958Ultrasound used by Ian Donald to diagnose foetus disorders.

1960Birth control pill is approved for general use.

1962Dr Watson (US) & Drs Crick & Wilkins (Britain) win Nobel Prize for Medicine for work indetermining structure of DNA.

1962Johanne Relleke gets stung by bees 2,443 times in Rhodesia & survives.

1964US report "Smoking & Health" connects smoking to lung cancer

1964US Surgeon General Luther Terry reports that smoking may be hazardous

1967The first human heart transplant performed by Dr Christian Barnard, in South Africa.

1968Christian Barnard performs 2nd heart transplant

1968Dr N E Shumway performs 1st US adult cardiac transplant operation

1969Dr Denton Cooley implants 1st temporary artificial heart

1969Tobacco advertising is banned on Canadian radio and TV.

1969US Federal govt bans use of cyclamates artificial sweeteners



1970Hamilton Smith and Daniel Nathans discover DNA restriction enzymes

1970Howard Temin and David Baltimore independently discover reverse transcriptase enzymes

1971Berkeley chemists announces 1st synthetic growth hormones

1971Development of a serum hepatitis vaccine for children announced

1972Computer axial tomography (which is commonly known as CAT scanning) is introduced whichcombines many high-definition cross-sectional x-rays to produce a two-dimensional imageof a patient's anatomy

1972Robert Woodward synthesizes vitamin B-12

1974Leslie Orgel shows that RNA can replicate without RNA-replicase and that zinc aids thisreplication.

1974Manfred Eigen and Manfred Sumper show that mixtures of nucleotide monomers andRNA-replicase will give rise to RNA molecules which replicate, mutate and evolve.

1974Dr Christian Barnard transplants the first human heart without removing the old heart.

1976Government halts swine flu vaccination program following reports of paralysis

1977Fred Sanger and Alan Coulson present a rapid gene sequencing technique which usesdideoxynucleotides and gel electrophoresis.



1977Walter Gilbert and Allan Maxam invent a rapid gene sequencing technique which usescloning with base destroying chemicals and and gel electrophoresis

1978Fred Sanger presents the 5386 base sequence for the virus phiX174 which was the firstsequencing of an entire genome.

1980World Health Organisation announced that smallpox had been eradicated.

1980The World Health Assembly declared that smallpox had been eradicated throughout the world.

1982The first permanent artificial heart successfully implanted (University of Utah) inretired dentist Barney Clark; lived 112 days with the Jarvic-7 heart

1983US Supreme Court struck down state & local restrictions on abortion

19846 year old Texan Stormie Jones gets 1st heart & liver transplant

1984The first baby conceived by embryo transplant born in Long Beach CA

1984William Schroeder, becomes 2nd to receive Jarvik-7 artificial heart

19853rd person to receive an artificial heart (Murray Haydon)

1985US approves screening test for AIDS

1985William Schroeder is 1st artificial heart patient to leave hospital He spent 15 minutesoutside Humana Hospital in Louisville KY



1986Mary Lund of Minnesota, is 1st female recipient of an artificial heart

1986US Federal health officals announce AZT will be available to AIDS patients

1987The first heart-lung transplant take place (Baltimore)

1987US FDA approves sale of AZT (AIDS treatment)

1995Blind teenage boy receives a 'Bionic Eye' at a Washington Hospital

1995US approves 1st chicken pox vaccine, Varivax by Merck & Co

5 Jul 1996Dolly the sheep, the first mamal to be cloned from an adult cell, was born.

1996UK admits humans can catch CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease aka Mad Cow Disease)

1997Scientists in Scotland announced they had succeeded in cloning an adult mammal, producinga lamb named 'Dolly'.

Nov 2001Dr José Cibelli, of the research company Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), suceeded incloning a human embryo to the six cell level. This was in an attempt to create stemcells rather than create a complete human.

14 Feb 2003Dolly the sheep, the first mamal to be cloned from an adult cell, died. A decision wastaken to 'euthanase' six-year-old Dolly after a veterinary examination showed that shehad a progressive lung disease.

Documents

Medicine (0001-2001)