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