HIST 0286A Timeline

By rdarling4
  • 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