-
Period: 100,000 BCE to 50,000 BCE
Out of Africa II
Movement of modern humans into Eurasia and beyond -
Period: 8000 BCE to 3000 BCE
Neolithic Revolution and emergence of cities
-
Period: 8000 BCE to 3500 BCE
Rise of agriculture and domestication of crops
-
6000 BCE
Domestication of bison and cattle
-
3200 BCE
First Cuneiform tablets
Oldest writing system -
1700 BCE
Earliest medical papyri in Egypt
-
Period: 460 BCE to 370 BCE
Hippocratic writings
Deemed that a physician's job is to give advice -
Period: 250 BCE to 150 BCE
Roman conquest of Greek world
Greek ideas (including medicine) gain prominence in Roman culture -
213 BCE
Burning of books in China
The exception was some practical books, but many ancient medical texts destroyed -
Period: 200 BCE to 100 BCE
Alexandrian Medicine; earliest versions of Caraka and Suśruta; Huang Di nei jing su wen appears
-
Period: 100 to 200
Galen; Caraka and Suśruta beginning to be quoted widely; Huang Di nei jing su wen being edited into final form; Daoism introduced in China
-
Period: 200 to 500
Buddhism flourishes in China
Later develops into Zen Buddhism -
1000
Avicenna’s Canon
1st Islamic book on general medical theory, later influential in Europe -
Period: 1050 to 1100
Revival of European medical learning; establishment of corporations and founding of early universities
-
Period: 1100 to 1200
Founding of municipal hospitals in cities
-
Period: 1111 to 1117
Shengji zonglu
Containing 20,000 prescriptions, including demonological
and astrological ones, and beginnings of “specialization” of learning -
Period: 1300 to
European witchcraft trials
Witchcraft arises as a charge in political trials, many witchcraft accusations entertained by judges until 17th century -
1348
Black Death strikes Europe for the first time
Development of quarantine measures; economy became more labor based -
1350
Rise of Italian Renaissance
First consumer revolution; rising literacy; return to purified Greco-Roman precedents; rise of medical humanism; careful attention to diseases and anatomy -
1486
Malleus Malificarum
Published to refute those who don’t believe in witchcraft; made out many midwives to be witches -
Period: 1493 to 1541
Paracelsus/Paracelsian medicine
Advocate for use of specific drugs for cures; shifted focus of alchemy to the development of new drugs in later centuries -
Period: 1500 to
Europeans gain new remedies and goods such as China root and ginseng from Asia; Columbian exchange of plants, animals, medicines, disease, and slave labor between Old and New World
-
Rise of the mechanical body
Alignment of philosophical materialism and commercial materialism and setting aside questions of spirit, soul, etc. in medicine -
Period: to
Midwifery becomes more formal
Licenses required; many informational books emerge; guilds established; rise of male-midwife (typically barber-surgeons) -
De motu cordis et sanguinis
Harvey explored anatomy and physiology; recognized circulation of blood; challenged fundamental assumptions on how the body worked as well as dietetics; shifted emphasis of medicine from
preserving health to restoring health -
Period: to
Warring in Japan
Expulsion of missionaries and Christians; beginning of Japan’s search for their own style of learning (Chinese foundations, newfound interest in European learning) -
Rise of medical advertising and patent medicine
Medicine becoming more and more commercial