Timeline: History of Medicine-Nick Call

4000 BCE

Primitive Times(life span 20 years)

-Believed that illnesses and disease were caused by spirits and demons. Also believed that it was punishment from the gods.
-Witch doctors treated illness with ceremonies
-Herbs and plants used as medicine(Morphine, digitalis)
-Trepanation/Trephining was used(surgically drilling holes in the skull to release bad spirits)

3000 BCE

Ancient Egyptians(life span 20-30 years)

-Physicians were usually priests
-Bloodletting and leeches was a common practice
-Bloodletting would later nearly kill George Washington thousands of years later

1700 BCE

Ancient Chinese(life span 20-30 years)

-Believed that you needed to treat the whole body by curing the spirit and nourishing the body
-Recorded a pharmacopoeia of herbs and medicines
-Acupuncture invented during the Han Dynasty
-Began to search for medical reasons for illness

1200 BCE

Ancient Greeks(life span 25-35 years)

-Hippocrates(father of medicine) and other physicians existed
-First to observe the human body and effects of disease
-Believed illness is a result of natural causes
-Used massage, art, and herbal treatment
-Stressed diet, hygiene, and exercise as disease prevention

753 BCE

Ancient Romans(life span 25-35 years)

-First to organize medical care by providing care for injured soldiers
-Later hospitals were religious and charitable institutions
-First sanitation systems like sewers and aqueducts
-Galen established belief that the body was regulated by four body humors. Blood, phlegm, black bile, yellow bile

400

Dark Ages(life span 20-30 years)

-Emphasis on saving the soul. Study of medicine was prohibited.
-Prayer and divine intervention was used to treat illness
-monks and priests provide custodial care for sick people
-Medications were mainly herbal mixtures
-Disease cause still blamed on circumstance

800

Middle Ages(life span 20-35 years)

-Renewed interest in medicine
-1100: Arabs began to require physicians to pass exams
-1346-1253: Bubonic plague killed 75% of Europe's population
-1220-1255: medical universities are established

1350

Renaissance(life span 30-40 years)

-Rebirth of science and medicine
-Body dissections led to increased understanding of anatomy
-1440: Invention of the printing press allowed knowledge to spread easier
-1543: First anatomy book was published by Andreas Vesalius
-Disease cause still unknown.

1500

16th-17th Century(life span 35-45 years)

1500s: Ambroise Pare, known as the father of modern surgery
1600s: Apothecaries made, prescribes, sold medecines
1670: invention of the microscope
-cause of disease still unknown
-Knowledge of the human body greatly increased

1700

18th Century(life span 40-50 years)

1714: Gabriel Fahrenheit created the first thermometer
1760: Benjamin Franklin invented bifocals
1778: John Hunter established scientific surgical procedures and introduced tube feeling
1798: Small pox vaccine discovered

1800

19th Century(life span 40-60 years)

-Rapid advancements due to discoveries of microorganisms, anesthesia, and vaccinations
1895: X-ray machine discovered
1893: First open heart surgery

1860: formal training for nurses begins

1900

20th Century

1901: ABO blood groups discovered
1922: Insulin discovered to treat diabetes
1928: Antibiotics discovered
1943: Kidney dialysis machine
1953: Heart Lunch Machine, and Structure of DNA discovered and research in gene therapy begins