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1010 AD:
Iranian physician Avicenna
(Ibn Sina) compiles Arab medical knowledge in Al
Qanun fi ay Tibb (The canon of Medicine) a classic
text that influences both Islamic and medieval
Western medicine.
1100 AD:
Monks of ‘the Order the
Saint Lazarus’ open special houses for the care of
patients afflicted with Leprosy.
1150 AD:
Gerard (born c. 1114,
Cremona, Lombardy [Italy] died 1187, Toledo, kingdom
of Castile [Spain]) European medieval scholar who
translated the works of many major Greek and Arabic
writers into Latin.
1200 AD:
Faculties of medicine and
philosophy are formed at the University of Bologna.
1268 AD:
English scholar Roger Bacon
discusses a theory of lenses and vision. He is the
first to describe eyeglasses, which are already in
use in China and Europe.
1300 AD:
Under the leadership of
Jacob Ben Machir ibn Tibbon, the ‘University of
Montpellier’, in southern France, develops into the
most important medical school in Europe.
1347 AD:
The “Black Death” or
Bubonic plague arrives in Europe, killing at least
1/3rd of the population over the next four year.
1493 AD:
Sever epidemics of malaria
occur in Europe.
1494 AD:
Syphilis appears among
soldiers in Italy, and then spreads rapidly
throughout Europe. French and Italian writers blame
each other’s armies for introducing the disease.
1503 AD:
Relying on close
observation and dissection, Italian artist Leonardo
da Vinci undertakes detailed anatomical drawings.
1543 AD:
Flemish anatomist Andreas
Vesalius writes ‘De Humani Corporis Fabrica’ (‘On
the Fabric of the Human Body’), a revolutionary
anatomy text that ends the dominance of Galen’s
doctrines.
1546 AD:
Italian Humanist and
physician Girolamo Fracastoro (Italian physician,
poet, astronomer, and geologist, who proposed a
scientific germ theory of disease more than 300
years before its empirical formulation by Louis
Pasteur and Robert Koch) proposes that contagious
disease are spread by invisible particles in air or
through direct or indirect contact.
1561 AD:
Gabriello Fallopio, or
Fallopia the most famous of 16th-century Italian
anatomists, who gives detailed descriptions of the
female reproductive system. Fallopio discovered the
tubes that connect the ovaries to the uterus (now
known as fallopian tubes). He described the
semicircular canals of the inner ear (responsible
for maintaining body equilibrium) and named the
vagina, placenta, clitoris, palate.
1628 AD:
English physician William
Harvey (Born April 1, 1578, Folk stone, Kent,
England, died June 3, 1657, London) publishes ‘De
Motucordis’ (‘On the Movement of the Blood’). This
book accurately describes the circulation of the
blood.
1630 AD:
Jesut missionaries bring
cinchona bark from Peru to Europe. The bark, which
contains traces amounts of naturally occurring
quinine, is used to treat malaria.
1633 AD:
French religious worker
Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac establish the
Daughters of Charity to provide nursing and medical
care for the poor.
1661 AD:
Through microscopic
observations, Italian physician Marcello Malpighi
identifies capillaries connecting the small arteries
and veins in the ling.
1665 AD:
The great Plague in London
kills about 75,000 of the 460,000 residents.
1677 AD:
After three years’
research, Dutch microscopist Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek
announces his observations of spermatozoa through a
simple microscope. His work inaugurates the field of
microbiology.
1733 AD:
English physiologist and
chemist Stephen and chemist Stephen Hales describes
the process for measuring blood pressure
quantitatively.
1746 AD:
British surgeon William
Hunter begins his distinguished career teaching
anatomy in London. A famous obstetrician, he writes
‘The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus’ Exhibited
in Figures in 1774.
1751 AD:
The First incorporated
hospital in the American colonies is founded in
Philadelphia.
1757 AD:
In James Lind’s book ‘On
the Most Effectual Means of Preserving the Health of
Seamen’, it’s been written that citrus fruits
prevent Scurvy.
1765 AD:
The first medical school in
the American colonies opens at the College of
Philadelphia (later the University of Pennsylvania).
1778 AD:
William Cullen, Professor
of medicine at Edinburgh, publishes the first volume
of his First Lines of the Practice of Physic, an
attempt to classify all disease.
1780 AD:
Swiss doctor J.A. Vevel
opens the first institution for crippled children
and the first institute for Orthopedics.
1784 AD:
American inventor Benjamin
Franklin invents bifocal lenses.
1796 AD:
English physician Edward
Jenner introduces the technique of vaccination
against smallpox, one of the most feared diseases of
the time.
1800 AD:
In his
‘Treatise on the Membranes, French physiologist
Xavier Bichat argues that the body is composed of
different tissues, whose functions and properties
define the behavior and treatment of disease.
1802 AD:
Phrenology,
a technique for determining intellect and
personality from the shape of skull, is first
proposed. Though described today, the practice is
quite popular throughout the 19th century.
1819 AD:
William
Worrall Mayo is born in England. He and subsequent
generations of his family become pioneers in the
practice of group medicine and found the highly
influential Mayo clinic in the U.S.
1819 AD:
In his
classic On Mediate Auscultation French physician
Rene-Theophile-Hyacinthe Laennec describes the
stethoscope and its use in examining the sounds of
the heart and lungs and in diagnosing diseases.
1820 AD:
French
pharmacists Pierre Pelletier and Joseph Caventou
isolate several physiologically active alkaloids
from plants, including caffeine, strychnine and
quinine.
1821 AD:
The
Philadelphia College of pharmacy and science, the
first college of pharmacy and United States, is
established in Pennsylvania.
1822 AD:
French
physiologist François Magendie shows that sensory
and motor nerves have separate origins in the spine.
1827 AD:
German
embryologist kart Ernst von Baer describes the
mammalian ovum.
1829 AD: French
educator Louis Braille first publishes his system of
writing for the visually impaired. In it, letters
are encoded as raised dots on embossed cardboard and
read with the fingertips.
1832 AD:
The first
of three major 19th-century cholera epidemics
strikes Europe and the united states. The epidemics
inspire sanitary reforms and the contribute to the
development of epidemiology.
1840 AD:
The first
dental school in North America is founded in
Baltimore, Maryland.
1842 AD:
British
public health reformer Edwin Chadwick prepares his
report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring
Population of Great Britain. The report helps spur
urban sanitary reform.
1845 AD:
Leukemia, a
group of malignant diseases of the blood –forming
tissues, is first described by English physician
John H. Bennett and German pathologist Rudolph
Virchow.
1846 AD:
At
Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Americen
physician William Thomas Morton demonstrates the use
of ether as a general anesthetic.
1847 AD:
German
physiologist Carl Ludwig introduces the kymograph,
which allows graphical recording of physiological
functions like blood pressure and muscle
contraction.
1847 AD: The
Americen medical Association is founded in
Philadelphia “to promote the science and art of
medicine and the betterment of public health.”
1851 AD:
German
scientist Hermann von Helmholtz invents the
ophthalmoscope, to study the structure and function
of the eye and the condition of retinal blood
vessels.
1856 AD:
French
physiologist Claude Bernard discovers that the liver
synthesizes glycogen and that vasomotor nerves
control the dilation of blood vessels in response to
temperature.
1858 AD:
German
Physician ‘Rudolf Virchow’ proposed that the cell is
the locus of ‘Pathology’. His work makes humoral and
environmental theories of disease obsolete.
1860 AD:
Florence
Nightingale establishes the Nightingale School for
Nurses, the world’s first school for nurses, at St.
Thomas’s Hospital in London.
1861 AD:
French
surgeon and anthropologist Paul Broca announces that
the seat of articulate speech is localized to the
left frontal region of the brain.
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