Central Events in Medicine

Murray, C.A. (2003) Human accomplishment the pursuit of excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950. HarperCollins Publishers.

Year	Country	Event
400 BCE	Greece	Hippocrates and his followers develop the empirical study of disease, distancing medicine from religion.
20	Rome	Celsus’s De Medicina is one of earliest medical texts and is used for centuries.
70	Rome	Dioscorides’s De Materia Medica, covering 600 plants and 1,000 drugs, is the first systematic pharmacopoeia.
180	Greece	Galen writes medical texts that are treated as authoritative for the next 13 centuries.
1320	France	Henry of Mondeville’s Chirurgia advocates use of sutures, cleans­ing of wounds, limitation of supperation, and wine dressing for wounds.
1530	Germany	Paracelsus pioneers the application of chemistry to physi­ology, pathology, and the treatment of disease.
1538	Italy	Girolamo Fracastero’s De Contagione et Contagiosis Morbis is the first explanation of the spread of infectious disease that invokes analogues of microbes or germs as a cause.
1545	France	Ambroise Pare’s Methode de Traicter les Plaies discourages the prac­tice of cauterizing wounds and introduces ligature for stopping arterial bleeding.
1665	England	Richard Lower attempts the first blood transfusion, between dogs.
1710	France	Dominique Anel invents the suction syringe for surgical purposes.
1736	England	Claudius Aymand conducts the first successful appendectomy.
1747	Scotland	James Lind uses a controlled dietary study to establish that citrus causes scurvy.
1761	Austria	Leopold Auenbrugger introduces the use of percussion for med­ical diagnosis.
1775	England	William Withering discovers digitalis.
1776	England	Matthew Dobson proves that the sweetness of diabetics’ urine is caused by the presence of sugar.
1784	USA	Benjamin Franklin invents bifocal lenses.
1796	England	Edward Jenner systematizes vaccination for smallpox, founding immunology.
1800	England	Humphrey Davy explores the physiological properties of nitrous oxide and recommends its use as an anesthetic.
1801	France	Philippe Pinel’s Traite Medico-Philosophique sur I’Alienation Mentale on la Manie is an early and influential empirical study of mental illness.
1816	France	Rene Laennec invents the stethoscope.
1831	Germany, France, USA	Justis von Liebig, Eugene Soubeiran, and later, Samuel Guthrie, independently prepare chloroform.
1846	USA	William Morton popularizes the use of ether through a demonstration at Massachusetts General Hospital.
1847	Germany, USA	Ignaz Semmelweiss and the elder Oliver Wendell Holmes independently argue that puerperal fever is a contagious disease caused by attending physicians.
1849	England	John Snow uses epidemiological data to demonstrate that cholera is spread by contaminated water.
1849	England	Thomas Addison describes the disease of the adrenal glands known as Addison’s disease.
1851	Germany	Hermann Helmholtz invents the ophthalmoscope.
1853	Scotland, France	Alexander Wood and Charles Pravaz invent the hypodermic syringe.
1854	England	Florence Nightingale founds modern nursing practice.
1856	France	Louis Pasteur invents pasteurization.
1862	France	Louis Pasteur gains acceptance for the germ theory of disease, transforming the course of medical research and practice.
1863	France	Casimir Davaine discovers the microorganism that causes anthrax, the first linkage of a disease with a specific microorganism.
1863	Germany	Johann Baeyer discovers barbituric acid, the first barbiturate.
1865	England	Joseph Lister introduces phenol as a disinfectant in surgery, reducing the death rate from 45 to 15 percent.
1865	France	Claude Bernard's Introduction a l’Etude de la Medecine Experimental is instrumental in establishing medicine as a science with observation, hypothesis, and experimentation.
1874	USA	Andrew Still discovers that dislocations of the vertebrae are a source of disease, founding osteopathy.
1876	Germany	Robert Koch demonstrates that bacilli are the cause of anthrax.
1881	France	Louis Pasteur invents anthrax inoculation, the first effective treatment of an infectious disease with an antibacterial vaccine.
1881	Austria	Christian Billroth successfully excises a cancerous pylorus, beginning intestinal surgery; sometimes said to be the beginning of the modern era of surgery.
1881	Germany	Robert Koch introduces steam sterilization.
1881	USA	William Halsted conducts the first known human blood transfusion.
1882	Germany	Robert Koch isolates the tubercle bacillus.
1884	Austria	Sigmund Freud and Carl Koller use cocaine as a local anesthetic.
1884	England	Rickman Godlee surgically removes a brain tumor.
1884	Germany	Edwin Klebs and Friedrich Loffler isolate the bacterium for diphtheria and identify it as the causative agent.
1885	France	Louis Pasteur invents a rabies vaccine.
1887	France	Augustus Waller records the electrical activity of the heart, founding electrocardiology.
1890	Germany	Emil von Behring develops the first antitoxin, for tetanus.
1891	Germany, Japan, France	Emil von Behring, Kitasato Shibasaburo, and Emile Roux develop an antitoxin for diphtheria.
1893	USA	Daniel Williams conducts the first successful heart surgery on a human.
1896	Germany	Hermann Strauss introduces X-rays for diagnostic purposes.
1896	Germany	Ludwig Rehn successfully sutures a wound in a human heart.
1896	Italy	Scipione Riva-Rocci invents the mercury sphygmomanometer, the precursor of modern version.
1896	Netherlands	Christiaan Eijkman discovers that beriberi is caused by a dietary deficiency.
1897	England	Ronald Ross discovers the malaria parasite in the anopheles mosquito.
1899	Sweden	Tage Sjogren achieves the first proven cure of a patient by X-ray treatment.
1901	Netherlands	Gerrit Grijns discovers that the cause of beriberi is removal of an essential nutrient in polished rice.
1902	USA	Alexis Carrel introduces suturing for blood vessels.
1903	Netherlands	Willem Einthoven invents the forerunner of the electrocardiogram.
1904	Germany	Alfred Einhorn invents Novocaine.
1905	Germany	Fritz Schaudinn and Erich Hoffmann discover the spirocheta pallida, the cause of syphilis.
1906	England	Frederick Hopkins discovers that food contains ingredients essential to life that are not proteins or carbohydrates, leading to the discovery of vitamins.
1909	Germany, Japan	Paul Ehrlich and Sahachiro Hata discover salvarsan, an effective treatment for syphilis, founding modern chemotherapy.
1910	USA	Frank Woodbury introduces iodine as a disinfectant for wounds.
1911	USA	Russell Hibbs conducts a successful spinal fusion operation.
1913	USA	Elmer McCollum and Marguerite Davis discover and isolate vitamin A.
1915	Japan	K. Yamagiwa and K. Ichikawa identify the first carcinogen by exposing rabbits to coal tar.
1916	USA	Jay McLean discovers the anti-coagulant heparin.
1920	USA	Harvey Cushing and W. T. Bowie introduce cauterization of blood vessels in surgery.
1921	Canada	Frederick Banting, Charles Best, and James Collip invent a method for isolating insulin and injecting it in patients.
1921	USA	Elmer McCollum and Edward Mellanby discover an antiricketic substance in cod liver oil and name it vitamin D.
1926	USA	George Minot and William Murphy successfully treat pernicious anemia with liver.
1928	England	Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin, the first antibiotic.
1928	USA	George Papanicolaou invents the pap test for diagnosing uterine cancer.
1929	USA	Philip Drinker, Louis Shaw, and Alexis Carrel invent an artificial respirator (the iron lung).
1932	Germany	Gerhard Domagk discovers that prontosil has antibacterial properties.
1934	USA	John and Mary Gibbon invent a heart-lung machine.
1938	England	Philip Wiles conducts a total artificial hip replacement, using stainless steel.
1939	England	Howard Florey and Ernst Chain isolate the antibacterial agent in penicillin mold.
1939	USA	Karl Landsteiner, Philip Levine, and Alexander Weiner discover the connection between the RH factor and pathology in newborns.
1941	USA, Germany	Andre Cournand, Werne Forssmann, and Dickinson Richards introduce cardiac catheterization.
1943	USA	Selman Waksman, William Feldman, and Corwin Hinshaw discover streptomycin, the first antibiotic effective in treating tuberculosis.
1943	USA	Willem Kolff invents the dialysis machine.
1944	USA	Alfred Blalock, Helen Taussig, Vivien Thomas, and Edgar Sanford conduct the first “blue baby” operation, correcting the blood supply to the lungs of an infant.
1945	USA	John Frisch and Francis Bull initiate the fluoridation of water.
1948	USA	Benjamin Duggar and Albert Dornbush discover the tetracycline group of antibiotics.
1950	USA	Richard Lawler conducts a successful kidney transplant between two live humans.