Timeline of medicine and medical technology

This is a timeline of the history of medicine and medical technology.

Antiquity

c. 12000 BC – The earliest known example of dental caries manipulation is found in a Paleolithic man in Northern Italy.
7300 - 6200 BC – First evidence of trepanation, with signs of healing suggesting survival, identified in a skull in Ukraine.
3350 - 3105 BC - Ötzi dies with a parasitic whipworm infection while carrying Piptoporus betulinus, a type of birch fungus that contains toxic resins against whipworm and induces diarrhea. It has been likely used an anthelmintic medication.
3000 BC – The origins of Ayurveda traced back to around 3,000 BCE.
c. 2600 BC – Imhotep the priest-physician to be later deified as the Egyptian god of medicine.
2500 BC – Egyptian inscription speaks of Iry as eye-doctor of the palace, palace physician of the belly, guardian of the royal bowels, and he who prepares the important medicine (name cannot be translated) and knows the inner juices of the body.
8th century – Homer tells that Polydamna supplied the Greek forces besieging Troy with healing drugs. Homer also tells about battlefield surgery Idomeneus tells Nestor after Machaon has fallen: A surgeon who can cut out an arrow and heal the wound with his ointments is worth a regiment. There is little evidence to support the claims but he is, nonetheless, important.
fl. 425 BC – Diogenes of Apollonia
496 – 405 BC – Sophocles "It is not a learned physician who sings incantations over pains which should be cured by cutting."
420 BC – Hippocrates of Cos maintains that diseases have natural causes and puts forth the Hippocratic Oath. Origin of rational medicine.

Medicine after Hippocrates

c. 400 BC – 1 BC – The Huangdi Neijing (Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine) is published, laying the framework for traditional Chinese medicine
4th century BC – Philistion of Locri
375–295 BC – Diocles of Carystus
3rd century BC – Philinus of Cos founder of the Empiricist school. Herophilos and Erasistratus practice androtomy. (Dissecting live and dead human beings)
280 BC – Herophilus Dissection
1st century AD – Rufus of Ephesus; Marcellinus a physician of the first century AD;
50 – 70 AD – Pedanius Dioscorides writes De Materia Medica – a precursor of modern pharmacopoeias that was in use for almost 1600 years
2nd century AD Aretaeus of Cappadocia
98 – 138 AD – Soranus of Ephesus
129 – 216 AD – Galen – Clinical medicine based on observation and experience.
d. 260 – Gargilius Martialis, short Latin handbook on Medicines from Vegetables and Fruits
362 – Julian orders xenones built, imitating Christian charity (proto hospitals)
484 – 590 – Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus
fl. 511 – 534 – Anthimus Greek: Ἄνθιμος
536 – Sergius of Reshaina (died 536) – A Christian theologian-physician who translated thirty-two of Galen's works into Syriac and wrote medical treatises of his own Alexander Trallianus
500 – 550 – Aetius of Amida Encyclopedia 4 books each divided into 4 sections
550 – 630 Stephanus of Athens
560 – 636 – Isidore of Seville
c. 620 Aaron of Alexandria Syriac writes 30 books on medicine, the "Pandects". He is the first author in antiquity who mentions the diseases of smallpox and measles translated by Māsarjawaih a Syrian Jew and Physician, into Arabic about A. D. 683
c. 630 – Paul of Aegina Encyclopedia in 7 books very detailed surgery used by Albucasis
790 – 869 – Leo Itrosophist also Mathematician or Philosopher wrote "Epitome of Medicine"
c. 800 – 873 – Al-Kindi (Alkindus) De Gradibus
820 – Benedictine hospital founded, School of Salerno would grow around it
c. 830 – 870 – Hunayn ibn Ishaq (Johannitius) Syriac-speaking Christian also knows Greek and Arabic. Translator and author of several medical tracts.
c. 910d – Ishaq ibn Hunayn
9th century – Yahya ibn Sarafyun a Syriac physician Johannes Serapion, and makes the first clear distinction between smallpox and measles in his al-Hawi.
d. 955 – Isaac Judaeus Isḥāq ibn Sulaymān al-Isrāʾīlī Egyptian born Jewish physician
d. 982 – 994 – 'Ali ibn al-'Abbas al-Majusi Haly Abbas
1123 – St Bartholomew's Hospital founded by the court jester Rahere Augustine nuns originally cared for the patients. Mental patients were accepted along with others
1127 – Stephen of Antioch translates the work of Haly Abbas
1100 – 1161 – Avenzoar Teacher of Averroes
1170 – Rogerius Salernitanus composes his Chirurgia also known as The Surgery of Roger
1126 – 1198 – Averroes
1240 Bartholomeus Anglicus
1260 – Louis IX establishes Les Quinze-vingt; originally a retreat for the blind, it became a hospital for eye diseases, and is now one of the most important medical centers in Paristhumb|Anathomia, 1541
1288 – The hospital of Santa Maria Nuova founded in Florence, it is a strictly medical one.
1310 – Pietro d'Abano's Conciliator ()
d. 1368 – Guy de Chauliac
f. 1460 – Heinrich von Pfolspeundt Pathological anatomy
1493 – 1541 – Paracelsus surgery book

1500–1699

thumb|[[Hieronymus Fabricius, Operationes chirurgicae, 1685]]

Early 16th century:
Paracelsus, an alchemist by trade, rejects occultism and pioneers the use of chemicals and minerals in medicine. Burns the books of Avicenna, Galen and Hippocrates.
Hieronymus Fabricius
Caspar Stromayr
1500? – 1561 Pierre Franco
Ambroise Paré (1510–1590) pioneers the treatment of gunshot wounds.
Bartholomeo Maggi at Bologna, Felix Wurtz of Zurich, Léonard Botal in Paris, and the Englishman Thomas Gale (surgeon), (the diversity of their geographical origins attests to the widespread interest of surgeons in the problem), all published works urging similar treatment to Paré's. But it was Paré's writings which were the most influential.
1518 – College of Physicians founded, now known as Royal College of Physicians of London is a British professional body of doctors of general medicine and its subspecialties. It received the royal charter in 1518
1540 – 1604 – William Clowes – Surgical chest for military surgeons
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
1550 – 1612 – Peter Lowe
1553 – Miguel Servet describes the circulation of blood through the lungs.
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
1570 – 1643 – John Woodall Ship surgeons use lemon juice to treat scurvy
1590 – Microscope is invented, which played a huge part in medical advancement
1596 – Li Shizhen publishes Běncǎo Gāngmù or Compendium of Materia Medica
1603 – Girolamo Fabrici studies leg veins and notices that they have valves which allow blood to flow only toward the heart
1621 – 1676 – Richard Wiseman
1628 – William Harvey explains the circulatory system in Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus
1683 – 1758 – Lorenz Heister
1688 – 1752 – William Cheselden

18th century

1701 – Giacomo Pylarini gives the first smallpox inoculations in Europe. They have been widely practised in the East before then.
1714 – 1789 – Percivall Pott
1720 – Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
1728 – 1793 – John Hunter
1736 – Claudius Aymand performs the first successful appendectomy
1744 – 1795 – Pierre-Joseph Desault First surgical periodical
1747 – James Lind discovers that citrus fruits prevent scurvy
1749 – 1806 – Benjamin Bell – Leading surgeon of his time and father of a surgical dynasty,
1752 – 1832 – Antonio Scarpa
1763 – 1820 – John Bell
1766 – 1842 – Dominique Jean Larrey Surgeon to Napoleon
1768 – 1843 – Astley Cooper surgeon principles and practice
1774 – 1842 – Charles Bell, surgeon
1774 – Joseph Priestley discovers nitrous oxide, nitric oxide, ammonia, hydrogen chloride and oxygen
1777 – 1835 – Baron Guillaume Dupuytren The age Dupuytren
1785 – William Withering publishes "An Account of the Foxglove" the first systematic description of digitalis in treating dropsy
1790 – Samuel Hahnemann rages against the prevalent practice of bloodletting as a universal cure and founds homeopathy
1796 – Edward Jenner develops a smallpox vaccination method
1799 – Humphry Davy discovers the anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide

19th century

1800 – Humphry Davy announces the anaesthetic properties of nitrous oxide.
1803 – 1841 – Morphine was first isolated by Friedrich Sertürner, this is generally believed to be the first isolation of an active ingredient from a plant.
1813–1883 – James Marion Sims vesico-vaganial surgery Father of surgical gynecology.
1816 – René Laennec invents the stethoscope.
1827 – 1912 – Joseph Lister antiseptic surgery Father of modern surgery
1818 – James Blundell performs the first successful human transfusion.
1842 – Crawford Long performs the first surgical operation using anesthesia with ether.
1845 – John Hughes Bennett first describes leukemia as a blood disorder.
1846 – First painless surgery with general anesthetic.
1847 – Ignaz Semmelweis discovers how to prevent puerperal fever.
1849 – Elizabeth Blackwell is the first woman to gain a medical degree in the United States.
1850 – Female Medical College of Pennsylvania (later Woman's Medical College), the first medical college in the world to grant degrees to women, is founded in Philadelphia.
1858 – Rudolf Carl Virchow 13 October 1821 – 5 September 1902 his theories of cellular pathology spelled the end of Humoral medicine.
1861 – Louis Pasteur discovers the germ theory of disease.
1861 – Snellen chart developed by Herman Snellen.
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.
1878 – Ellis Reynolds Shipp graduates from the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania and begins practice in Utah.
1879 – First vaccine for cholera.
1881 – Louis Pasteur develops an anthrax vaccine.
1882 – Louis Pasteur develops a rabies vaccine.
1887 – Willem Einthoven invents electrocardiography (ECG/EKG)
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

20th century

1900s

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
1907 – Henry Stanley Plummer develops the first structured patient record and clinical number (Mayo clinic)
1908 – Victor Horsley and R. Clarke invents the stereotactic method
1909 – First intrauterine device described by Richard Richter.
1910 – Hans Christian Jacobaeus performs the first laparoscopy on humans

1910s

1917 – Julius Wagner-Jauregg discovers the malarial fever shock therapy for general paresis of the insane

1920s

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
1921 – Fidel Pagés pioneers epidural anesthesia
1923 – First vaccine for diphtheria
1924 – Hans Berger discovers human electroencephalography
1926 – First vaccine for pertussis
1927 – First vaccine for tuberculosis
1927 – First vaccine for tetanus

1930s

1930 – First successful sex reassignment surgery performed on Lili Elbe in Dresden, Germany.
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; Enrique Finochietto develops the now ubiquitous self-retaining thoracic retractor
1938 – Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini discover electroconvulsive therapy
1938 – Howard Florey and Ernst Chain investigate Penicillin and attempted to mass-produce it and tested it on the policeman Albert Alexander (police officer) who recovered but died due to a lack of Penicillin

1940s

1943 – Willem J. Kolff builds the first dialysis machine
1944 – Disposable catheter – David S. Sheridan
1946 – Chemotherapy – Alfred G. Gilman and Louis S. Goodman
1947 – Defibrillator – Claude Beck
1948 – Acetaminophen – Julius Axelrod, Bernard Brodie
1948 – The World Health Organization (WHO) is founded as a specialised agency of the United Nations.
1949 – First implant of intraocular lens, by Sir Harold Ridley
1949 – Mechanical assistor for anesthesia – John Emerson

1950s

1952 – Jonas Salk develops the first polio vaccine (available in 1955)
1952 – Cloning – Robert Briggs and Thomas King
1953 – First live birth from frozen sperm
1953 – Heart-lung machine – John Heysham Gibbon
1953 – Medical ultrasonography – Inge Edler
1954 – Joseph Murray performs the first human kidney transplant (on identical twins)
1954 – Ventouse – Tage Malmstrom
1955 – Tetracycline – Lloyd Conover
1956 – Metered-dose inhaler – 3M
1957 – William Grey Walter invents the brain EEG topography (toposcope)
1958 – Pacemaker – Rune Elmqvist
1959 – In vitro fertilization – Min Chueh Chang

1960s

1960 – Invention of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR)
1960 – First combined oral contraceptive approved by the FDA
1967 – First vaccine for mumps
1967 – René Favaloro develops Coronary Bypass surgery
1967 – Christiaan Barnard performs the first human heart transplant
1968 – Powered prothesis – Samuel Alderson
1968 – Controlled drug delivery – Alejandro Zaffaron
1969 – Balloon catheter – Thomas Fogarty
1969 – Cochlear implant – William House

1970s

1970 – Cyclosporine, the first effective immunosuppressive drug is introduced in organ transplant practice
1971 – MMR Vaccine – developed by Maurice Hilleman
1971 – Genetically modified organisms – Ananda Chakrabart
1971 – Magnetic resonance imaging – Raymond Vahan Damadian
1971 – Computed tomography (CT or CAT Scan) – Godfrey Hounsfield
1971 – Transdermal patches – Alejandro Zaffaroni
1971 – Sir Godfrey Hounsfield invents the first commercial CT scanner
1972 – Insulin pump Dean Kamen
1973 – Laser eye surgery (LASIK) – Mani Lal Bhaumik
1974 – Liposuction – Giorgio Fischer
1976 – First commercial PET scanner
1978 – First live birth from in vitro fertilisation (IVF)
1978 – Last fatal case of smallpox
1979 – Antiviral drugs – George Hitchings and Gertrude Elion

1980s

1980 – Smallpox is declared eradicated by the WHO.
1980 – Raymond Damadian builds first commercial MRI scanner
1980 – Lithotripter – Dornier Research Group
1980 – First vaccine for hepatitis B – Baruch Samuel Blumberg
1980 – Cloning of interferons – Sidney Pestka
1981 – Artificial skin – John F. Burke and Ioannis V. Yannas
1981 – Bruce Reitz performs the first human heart-lung combined transplant
1982 – Human insulin – Eli Lilly
1982 – Willem Johan Kolff performs the first artificial heart transplant.
1985 – Automated DNA sequencer – Leroy Hood and Lloyd Smith
1985 – Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) – Kary Mullis
1985 – Surgical robot – Yik San Kwoh
1985 – DNA fingerprinting – Alec Jeffreys
1985 – Capsule endoscopy – Tarun Mullick
1986 – Fluoxetine HCl – Eli Lilly and Co
1987 – commercially available Statins – Merck & Co.
1987 – Tissue engineering – Joseph Vacanti & Robert Langer
1988 – Intravascular stent – Julio Palmaz
1988 – Laser cataract surgery – Patricia Bath
1989 – Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) – Alan Handyside
1989 – DNA microarray – Stephen Fodor

1990s

1990 – Gamow bag® – Igor Gamow
1992 – Description of Brugada syndrome (Pedro and Josep Brugada)
1992 – First vaccine for hepatitis A available
1992 – Electroactive polymers (artificial muscle) – SRI International
1992 – Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) – Andre van Steirteghem
1995 – Adult stem cell use in regeneration of tissues and organs in vivo – B. G Matapurkar U.S . International Patent
1996 – Dolly the Sheep cloned
1998 – Stem cell therapy – James Thomson
1999 – The hormone Ghrelin is identified by Japanese scientists Masayasu Kojima, Kenji Kangawa and their colleagues.

21st century

2000s

2000 – The Human Genome Project draft was completed.
2001 – The first telesurgery was performed by Jacques Marescaux.
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 – Jean-Michel Dubernard performs the first partial face transplant.
2006 – First HPV vaccine approved.
2006 – The second rotavirus vaccine approved (first was withdrawn).
2007 – The visual prosthetic (bionic eye) Argus II.
2008 – Laurent Lantieri performs the first full face transplant.

2010s

2011 – First successful Uterus transplant from a deceased donor in Turkey
2013 – The first kidney grown in vitro in the U.S.
2013 – The first human liver was grown from stem cells in Japan.
2014 – A 3D printer is used for first ever skull transplant.
2014 - Sonendo, a medical technology company based in Laguna Hills, California, introduces the GentleWave system in the United States for root canal treatments.
2016 – The first ever artificial pancreas was created
2019 – 3D-print heart from human patient's cells.

2020s

2020 – First vaccine for COVID-19.
2022 – The complete human genome is sequenced.

Notes

Citations

Reference:

1. International patent USA. .wef 1995. US PTO no.6227202 and 20020007223.
2. R. Maingot's Text Book of Abdominal operations.1997 USA.
3. Text book of Obstetrics and Gynecology. 2010 J P Publishers.

References

Matapurkar B G. (1995). US international Patent 6227202 and 20020007223.medical use of Adult Stem cells. A new physiological phenomenon of Desired Metaplasia for regeneration of tissues and organs in vivo. Annals of NYAS 1998.

Bynum, W. F. and Roy Porter, eds. Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine (2 vol. 1997); 1840pp; 72 long essays by scholars excerpt and text search
Conrad, Lawrence I. et al. The Western Medical Tradition: 800 BC to AD 1800 (1995); excerpt and text search
Bynum, W.F. et al. The Western Medical Tradition: 1800–2000 (2006) excerpt and text search
Loudon, Irvine, ed. Western Medicine: An Illustrated History (1997) online
McGrew, Roderick. Encyclopedia of Medical History (1985)
Porter, Roy, ed. The Cambridge History of Medicine (2006); 416pp; excerpt and text search
Porter, Roy, ed. The Cambridge Illustrated History of Medicine (2001) excerpt and text search excerpt and text search
Singer, Charles, and E. Ashworth Underwood. A Short History of Medicine (2nd ed. 1962)
Watts, Sheldon. Disease and Medicine in World History (2003), 166pp online

External links

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The Historyscoper