-
Birth of Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine. Greek physician and founder of first university. He based medicine on observation and reasoning rather than superstition. The Hippocratic Oath, that doctors have to take before practicing medicine, is named after him.
-
Persian physician Rhazes identifies smallpox and suggests blood as the cause of infectious disease.
-
Dutch lens grinder Zacharius Jannssen invents the telescope.
-
Edward Jenner develops the process of vaccination for smallpox, the first vaccination for ANY disease.
-
Sir Humphry Davy announces the anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide.
-
James Blundell performs the first successful blood transfusion.
-
Ronald Ross demonstrates that malaria parasites are transmitted via mosquitos.
-
Karl Landsteiner discovers the existence of different human blood types.
-
Jonas Salk develops a vaccine for poliomyelitis (Polio). It wasn't available until 1955.
-
German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen discovers X-rays.
