Timeline of the history of medicine and medical technology.
Antiquity
2600 ac – Imhotep wrote texts on ancient Egyptian medicine describing diagnosis and treatment of 200 diseases in 3rd dynasty Egypt.
2596 BC – The Huangdi Neijing (Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine) is published, laying the framework for traditional Chinese medicine
1500 BC – Saffron used as a medicine on the Aegean island of Thera in ancient Greece
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
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
200 BC – the Charaka Samhita uses a rational approach to the causes and cure of disease and uses objective methods of clinical examination
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 medical textbook in the world
270 – Huangfu Mi writes the Zhenjiu Jiayijing (The ABC Compendium of Acupuncture), the first textbook focusing solely on acupuncture
400 – the Sushruta Samhita is published, laying the framework for Ayurvedic medicine
]Middle Ages
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750 – Kawsar Ahmed 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.
c. 865–925 – Rhazes pioneers pediatrics, and makes the first clear distinction between smallpox and measles in his al-Hawi.
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 described the plaster cast, inhalant anesthesia, and many surgical instruments.
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.
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, 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, as well the use of ice to treat fevers, and the separation of medicine from pharmacology.
1100–1161 – Avenzoar carries 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. 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. Modern anesthesia was also developed in al-Andalus by the Muslim anesthesiologists Ibn Zuhr and Abulcasis. They utilized oral 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.
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, for which he is considered the pioneer of circulation theory and one of the greatest physiologists of the Middle Ages. He emphasized the rigours of verification by measurement, observation and experiment, and was an early proponent of experimental medicine, postmortem autopsy, and human dissection. 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. Ibn al-Nafis also drew diagrams to illustrate different body parts in his new physiological system.
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
14th century – When the Black Death bubonic plague reached al-Andalus, Ibn Khatima hypothesized that infectious diseases are caused by microorganisms which enter the human body.
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 claims that "transmission is affected through garments, vessels and earrings."
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
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 – Miguel Serveto describes the circulation of blood through the lungs. He is accused of heresy and burned at the stake
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
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 the circulatory system 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.
1736 – Claudius Aymand performs the first successful appendectomy
1747 – James Lind discovers that citrus fruits prevent scurvy
1774 – Joseph Priestley discovers nitrous oxide, nitric oxide, ammonia, hydrogen chloride and oxygen
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
1800 – 1899
1800 – Humphry Davy announces the anaesthetic properties of nitrous oxide
1816 – Rene Laennec invents the stethoscope
1818 – 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
1849 – Elizabeth Blackwell is the first woman to gain a medical degree
1855 – first rubber condom
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
1900 – 1999
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
1903 - Willem Einthoven discovers electrocardiography (ECG/EKG)
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
1909 – First Intrauterine device described by Richard Richter.
1910 - Hans Christian Jacobeus performs the first laparoscopy on humans
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
1921 – Fidel Pagés pioneers epidural anesthesia
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
1943 – Willem Kolff build the first dialysis machine
1949 – First implant of intraocular lens, by Sir Harold Ridley
1952 – Jonas Salk develops the first polio vaccine
1954 - Joseph Murray performs the first human kidney transplant (on identical twins)
1957 – William Grey Walter invents the brain EEG topography (toposcope)
1960 – Invention of Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR)
1960 – First combined oral contraceptive approved by the FDA
1962 – First Oral Polio Vaccine
1963 - Thomas Starzl performs the first human liver transplant
1963 - James Hardy performs the first human lung transplant
1964 – First vaccine for Measles
1965 – Frank Pantridge installs the first portable defibrillator
1965 – First commercial ultrasound
1966 - Richard Lillehei performs the first human pancreas transplant
1967 – First vaccine for Mumps
1967 – Christiaan Barnard performs the first human heart transplant
1970 – First vaccine for Rubella
1970 - Cyclosporine, the first effective immunosuppressive drug is introduced in organ transplant practice
1971 – Sir Godfrey Hounsfield invents the first commercial CT scanner
1976 – First commercial PET scanner
1978 – Last fatal case of smallpox
1980 – Raymond Damadian builds first commercial MRI scanner
1981 – First vaccine for Hepatitis B
1981 - Bruce Reitz performs the first human heart-lung combined transplant
1987 – Ben Carson, leading a 70-member medical team in Germany, was the first to separate occipital craniopagus twins.
1992 – First vaccine for Hepatitis A available
2000 – present
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 – Second rotavirus vaccine approved (first was withdrawn)
2008 – Laurent Lantieri performs the first full face transplant
See also
(source:wikipedia)
