c. 2600s BC - Imhotep wrote texts on ancient Egyptian medicine
describing diagnosis and treatment of 200 diseases in 3rd dynasty
Egypt.
c. 2596 BC¹ - The legendary date of composition of Huangdi Neijing
(Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine), which lays the
framework for the basic theories of traditional Chinese medicine
c. 1500 BC¹ - Saffron used as a medicine on the Aegean island of Thera
in ancient Greece
c. 500 BC¹ - Sushruta wrote Sushruta Samhita describing over 120
surgical instruments, 300 surgical procedures, classified human surgery
in 8 categories and described cosmetic surgery in the Ayurvedic text
Sushruta Samhita
c. 500 BC - Bian Que becomes the earliest physician known to use
acupuncture and pulse diagnosis.
420 BC - Hippocrates of Cos maintains that diseases have natural
causes and puts forth the Hippocratic Oath, marking the birth of
medicine in the west.
300 BC - Charaka writes the Ayurvedic text Charaka Samhita which uses
a rational approach to the causes and cure of disease and uses
objective methods of clinical examination.
280 BC - Herophilus studies the nervous system and distinguishes
between sensory nerves and motor nerves
250 BC - Erasistratus studies the brain and distinguishes between the
cerebrum and cerebellum
50-70 - Pedanius Dioscorides writes De Materia Medica - a precursor of
modern pharmacopeias that was in use for almost 1600 years
180 - Galen studies the connection between paralysis and severance of
the spinal cord
220 - Zhang Zhongjing publishes Shang Han Lun (On Cold Disease
Damage), the oldest complete medical textbook in the world, focusing on
diagnosis, treatment and prognosis.
215-282 - Life of Huangfu Mi, who wrote the Zhenjiu Jiayijing (The ABC
Compendium of Acupuncture), the first textbook focusing solely on
acupuncture.
Middle Ages
c. 610-800 - Muhammad discussed the contagious nature of leprosy,
mange and sexually transmitted disease.[1]
750 - Madhav writes the Ayurvedic text Nidana where he lists diseases
along with their causes, symptoms, and complications.
c. 800-873 - Al-Kindi (Alkindus) introduces quantification into medicine
with his De Gradibus
c. 830-870 - Hunayn ibn Ishaq translates Galen's works into Arabic
c. 838-870 - Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari, a pioneer of pediatrics and the
field of child development, writes the first encyclopedia of medicine.[2]
c. 865-925 - Rhazes pioneers pediatrics,[3] and makes the first clear
distinction between smallpox and measles in his al-Hawi. He also writes
the Doubts about Galen, where he refutes Galen's theory of humorism
using an experiment.
1000 - Abulcasis establishes surgery as a profession of in his Kitab al-
Tasrif, which remains a standard textbook in Muslim and European
universities until the 16th century. The book first introduced the plaster,
[4] inhalant anesthesia, and many surgical instruments, including the
first instruments unique to women,[5] as well as the surgical uses of
catgut and forceps, the ligature, surgical needle, scalpel, curette,
retractor, surgical spoon, sound, surgical hook, surgical rod, specula,[6]
and bone saw.[7]
1021 - Alhazen completes his Book of Optics, which made important
advances in ophthalmology and eye surgery, as it correctly explained
the process of visual perception for the first time.[5]
c. 1030 - Avicenna writes The Book of Healing and The Canon of
Medicine, in which he establishes experimental medicine and evidence-
based medicine. The Canon remains a standard textbook in Muslim and
European universities until the 18th century. The book's contributions to
medicine includes the introduction of clinical trials, systematic
experimentation and quantification in medicine and physiology,[8] the
discovery of contagious diseases, the distinction of mediastinitis from
pleurisy, the contagious nature of phthisis, the distribution of diseases
by water and soil, and the first careful descriptions of skin troubles,
sexually transmitted diseases, perversions, and nervous ailments,[9] as
well the use of ice to treat fevers, and the separation of medicine from
pharmacology, which was important to the development of the
pharmaceutical sciences.[5]
1100-1161 - Avenzoar invents the surgical procedure of tracheotomy in
al-Andalus.[10] He is also the first physician known to have carried out
human dissections and postmortem autopsy, and proves that the skin
disease scabies is caused by a parasite, which contradicted the
erroneous theory of humorism.[11] He was also the first to provide a real
scientific etiology for the inflammatory diseases of the ear, and the first
to clearly discuss the causes of stridor.[12] Modern anesthesia was also
developed in al-Andalus by the Muslim anesthesiologists Ibn Zuhr and
Abulcasis. They were the first to utilize oral [haha] as well as inhalant
anesthetics, and they performed hundreds of surgeries under inhalant
anesthesia with the use of narcotic-soaked sponges which were placed
over the face.[13]
1242 - Ibn an-Nafis suggests that the right and left ventricles of the heart
are separate and discovers the pulmonary circulation (the cycle
involving the ventricles of the heart and the lungs) and coronary
circulation,[14] for which he is considered the pioneer of circulation
theory[15] and one of the greatest physiologists.[16] He emphasized the
rigours of verification by measurement, observation and experiment, and
was an early proponent of experimental medicine, postmortem autopsy,
and human dissection.[17] He also discredited many other erroneous
Avicennian and Galenic doctrines on the four humours, pulse bones,
muscles, intestines, sensory organs, bilious canals, esophagus,
stomach, and the anatomy of other parts of the human body.[18] Ibn al-
Nafis also drew diagrams to illustrate different body parts in his new
physiological system.[19]
c. 1248 - Ibn al-Baitar wrote on botany and pharmacy, studied animal
anatomy and medicine, and was a pioneer of veterinary medicine.
1249 - Roger Bacon writes about convex lens spectacles for treating
long-sightedness
1300s - When the Black Death bubonic plague reached al-Andalus, Ibn
Khatima hypothesized that infectious diseases are caused by
microorganisms which enter the human body.[20]
1313-1374 - Ibn Khatima wrote a treatise called On the Plague, in which
he establishes the existence of contagion through "experience,
investigation, the evidence of the senses and trustworthy reports." He
also discovers that "transmission is affected through garments, vessels
and earrings."[20]
1403 - concave lens spectacles to treat myopia
early 16th century: Paracelsus, an alchemist by trade, rejects occultism
and pioneers the use of chemicals and minerals in medicine
[edit] 1500 - 1800
1543 - Andreas Vesalius publishes De Fabrica Corporis Humani which
corrects Greek medical errors and revolutionizes European medicine
1546 - Girolamo Fracastoro proposes that epidemic diseases are caused
by transferable seedlike entities
1553 - Spanish physician Miguel Serveto describes the circulation of
blood through the lungs and is accused of heresy by Catholics and
Protestants alike; burned at the stake for heresy the same year at age 44
1556 - Amato Lusitano describes venous valves in the Ázigos vein
1559 - Realdo Colombo describes the circulation of blood through the
lungs in detail
1563 - Garcia de Orta founds tropical medicine with his treatise on Indian
diseases and treatments
1596 - Li Shizhen publishes Běncǎo Gāngmù or Compendium of Materia
Medica, containing 1,892 distinct herbs and other materia medica. There
are some 11,096 side prescriptions to treat common illness.
1603 - Girolamo Fabrici studies leg veins and notices that they have
valves which allow blood to flow only toward the heart
1628 - William Harvey explains that the vein-artery system is a
continuous loop and that the heart works like a pump to push blood in a
one-way circuit through the body, in Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu
Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus
1701 - Giacomo Pylarini gives the first smallpox innoculations in Europe.
They were widely practised in the east before then.
1747 - James Lind discovers that citrus fruits prevent scurvy
1763 - Claudius Aymand performs the first successful appendectomy
1785 - William Withering publishes "An Account of the Foxglove" the first
systematic description of digitalis in treating dropsy
1790s - Samuel Hahnemann rages against the prevalent practice of
bloodletting as a universal cure and founds homeopathy
1796 - Edward Jenner develops a smallpox vaccination method
1800 - Present
1800 - Humphry Davy announces the anaesthetic properties of nitrous
oxide
1816 - Rene Laennec invents the stethoscope
1818 - British obstetrician James Blundell performs the first successful
human blood transfusion.
1842 - Crawford Long performs the first surgical operation using
anaesthesia with ether
1847 - Ignaz Semmelweis discovers how to prevent puerperal fever,
childbed fever, a blood infection passed to women during childbirth by
their doctors. The fever killed one-third of mothers in some hospitals of
the time.
1849 - Elizabeth Blackwell is the first woman to gain a medical degree
1867 - Lister publishes Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery,
based partly on Pasteur's work.
1870 - Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch establish the germ theory of
disease
1879 - first vaccine for cholera
1881 - Louis Pasteur develops an anthrax vaccine
1882 - Louis Pasteur develops a rabies vaccine
1890 - Emil von Behring discovers antitoxins and uses them to develop
tetanus and diphtheria vaccines
1895 - Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovers medical use of X-rays in
medical imaging
1901 - Karl Landsteiner discovers the existence of different human blood
types
1901 - Alois Alzheimer identifies the first case of what becomes known
as Alzheimer's disease
1906 - Frederick Hopkins suggests the existence of vitamins and
suggests that a lack of vitamins causes scurvy and rickets
1907 - Paul Ehrlich develops a chemotherapeutic cure for sleeping
sickness
1908 - Victor Horsley and R. Clarke invents the stereotactic method
1917 - Julius Wagner-Jauregg discovers the malarial fever shock therapy
for general paresis of the insane
1921 - Edward Mellanby discovers vitamin D and shows that its absence
causes rickets
1921 - Frederick Banting and Charles Best discover insulin - important
for the treatment of diabetes
1923 - First vaccine for Diphtheria
1926 - First vaccine for Pertussis
1927 - First vaccine for Tuberculosis
1927 - First vaccine for Tetanus
1928 - Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin
1929 - Hans Berger discovers human electroencephalography
1932 - Gerhard Domagk develops a chemotherapeutic cure for
streptococcus
1933 - Manfred Sakel discovers insulin shock therapy
1935 - Ladislas J. Meduna discovers metrazol shock therapy
1935 - First vaccine for Yellow Fever
1936 - Egas Moniz discovers prefrontal lobotomy for treating mental
diseases
1938 - Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini discover electroconvulsive therapy
1949 - First implant of intraocular lens, by Sir Harold Ridley
1952 - Jonas Salk develops the first polio vaccine
1957 - William Grey Walter invents the brain EEG topography
(toposcope)
1960 - Invention of Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR)
1962 - First Oral Polio Vaccine
1964 - First vaccine for Measles
1965 - Frank Pantridge installs the first portable defibrillator
1967 - First vaccine for Mumps
1970 - First vaccine for Rubella
1981 - First vaccine for Hepatitis B
1987 - Ben Carson, leading a 70-member medical team in Germany, was
the first to separate occipital craniopagus twins.
1999 - Great Ormand Street Hospital discovers XLP (X-linked
lymphoproliferative syndrome) and finds how to find it in children / adults
.
2003 - Carlo Urbani, of Doctors without Borders alerted the World Health
Organization to the threat of the SARS virus, triggering the most effective
response to an epidemic in history. Urbani succumbs to the disease
himself in less than a month.
2005 - [David Hartley] in the UK sets up the XLP Research Trust to find a
genetic cure for XLP instead of a Bone Marrow Transplant.