Hoffmann History of Healthcare Timeline

  • Period: 4000 BCE to 3000 BCE

    Early Beginnings

  • 3900 BCE

    Diseases Caused By

    Evil Spirits
  • 3600 BCE

    Treatments For Sick

    Tribal Doctors performed ceremonies to force out evil spirits. Herbs and plants.
  • 3100 BCE

    Medicines Used Today - Quinine

    Quinine: Comes from cinchona tree bark. It controls fever, relieves muscle spasms, and helps prevent malaria.
  • 3100 BCE

    Medicines Used Today - Belladonna and Atropine

    Medicines Used Today - Belladonna and Atropine
    Belladonna and Atropine: Comes from the poisonous nightshade plant. It relieves muscle spasms, especially in gastrointestinal (GI) pain.
  • 3100 BCE

    Medicines Used Today - Digitalis

    Medicines Used Today - Digitalis
    Digitalis: Comes from the foxglove plant. Today is used in pill form or injections to treat heart conditions. People used to chew these leaves to strengthen and slow their heartbeat.
  • 3100 BCE

    Medicines Used Today - Morphine

    Medicines Used Today - Morphine
    Morphine: Made from the opium poppy. It is an effective medication for treating severe pain. It is addicting and only used when nothing else helps.
  • Period: 2999 BCE to 399

    Ancient Times

  • 2900 BCE

    Ancient Egyptians

    Ancient Egyptians
    Accurate health records. The physicians are priests. They healed with medicines and bloodletting (leeches).
  • 1900 BCE

    Ancient Chinese

    Ancient Chinese
    First to use primitive acupuncture therapies. They used stone tools. Still commonly used.
  • 900 BCE

    Ancient Greeks

    Ancient Greeks
    They thought illnesses may have natural causes. Religious customs did not allow bodies to be dissection.
    Hippocrates kept carful records and found diseases weren’t caused by supernatural forces. Wrote standard of ethics called the Oath of Hippocrates.
  • 100

    Ancient Romans

    Ancient Romans
    Romans learned from the Greeks that lack of sanitation could cause disease. So they brought in clean water into there cities, built sewers, and made public baths with filtering systems.
    First to organize medical care. Sent medical equipment and physicians with armies to care for wounded soldiers.
    Built rooms in houses for ill. This was the beginning of hospitals.
  • Period: 400 to 800

    Dark Age

  • 500

    Stopped the study of medicine, why?

    When the Roman Empire was conquered by the Huns, medical study’s stopped.
  • 700

    How do they treat disease?

    Prayer and herbal mixtures
  • Period: 800 to 1400

    Middle Age

  • 1100

    Epidemics

    Bubonic Plague (the Black Death) alone killed 60 million people. Others were smallpox, diphtheria, syphilis, and tuberculosis.
  • Period: 1350 to

    Renaissance

  • 1450

    Rebirth?

    -The building of universities and medical schools for research.
    -The acceptance of dissection of the body for study.
    -The development of the printing press and the publishing of books, allowing greater access to knowledge from research.
  • Period: 1501 to

    16th and 17th Centuries

  • 1515

    Leonardo da Vinci

    Leonardo da Vinci
    Studied and recorded the anatomy of the body
  • 1550

    Gabriele Fallopius

    Discovered the fallopian tubes of the female anatomy
  • 1563

    Bartolommeo Eustachio

    Discovered the tube leading from ear to throat (Eustachian tube).
  • William Harvey

    Able to describe the circulation of blood and pumping of the heart.
  • Antoine von Leeuwenhoek

    Invented microscope. Also scraped his teeth and found bacteria that causes tooth decay.
  • Apothecaries

    Early Pharmacies
    Engaged in a flourishing trade in drugs and spices from the East.
  • Period: to

    18th Century

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Benjamin Franklin
    Discovered bifocals and and found colds could be passed from person to person.
  • Medical students learning

    Students didn’t just attend lectures they observed patients at the bedside.
  • Joseph Priestley

    Discovered the element oxygen. He also observed the plants refresh air that has lost oxygen, making it usable for respiration.
  • Edward Jenner

    Discovered a method of vaccination for smallpox.
  • Rene Laennec

    Invented the stethoscope (1st made of wood). Increased ability to hear heart and lungs allowing doctors to determine if disease was present.
  • Period: to

    19th and 20th Centuries

  • Ignaz Semmelweis

    Identified cause of childbed fever. Many women died of this fever after giving birth. Hands were dirty and affected women.
  • Florence Nightingale

    Cared for soldiers, training for nurses, clean hospitals.
  • Louis Pasteur

    Discovered microorganisms were everywhere and caused disease. Discovered pasteurization and vaccine for rabies.
  • Dmitri Ivanovski

    Discovered micro organisms that can’t be seen under a microscope, called viruses.
  • Joseph Lister

    Helped prevent infections with carbolic acid. First doctor to use antiseptics (a substance that slows/stops the growth of microorganisms).
  • Ernst von Bergmann

    Developed asepsis (sterile conditions, free from lol germs). Knew germs case infections.
  • Robert Koch

    Discovered many disease causing organisms. Introduce the importance of cleanliness and sanitation in preventing the spread of disease.
  • Paul Ehrlich

    Discovered the effect of medicine on disease-causing microorganisms. His discoveries brought the use of chemicals to fight disease. On his 606th experiment he found a treatment for syphilis that worked.
  • Wilhelm Roentgen

    Discovered x-rays in 1895. First x-ray picture of his wife’s hand. This discovery allowed doctor to see inside the body and find out what’s wrong.
  • Anesthesia

    Anesthesia
    Before the 19th century pain was a problem because they had no anesthesia. Many patients died from shock or pain. Nitrous oxide, ether, and chloroform were discovered. These drugs had the ability to prevent pain during surgery.
  • Sir Alexander Fleming

    Found penicillin killed life-threatening bacteria. Before penicillin was discovered people died of some of todays curable illnesses like pneumonia, gonorrhea, and blood poisoning.
  • Sigmund Freud

    Discovered conscious and unconscious parts of the mind. Determined the mind and body work together. This lead to an understanding of physical illness cause by emotional conflict. Basic psychology
  • Gerhard Domagk

    Discovered sulfonamide compounds. These were the first medications effective in killing bacteria.
  • Jonas Salk

    Discovered that a dead polio virus would cause immunity to poliomyelitis. This virus caused people to be paralyzed. He discovered the vaccine.
  • Albert Sabin

    Used a live polio virus vaccine, which was more effective. This vaccine is used today to immunize babies against the disease.
  • Francis Crick and James Watson

    Discovered the molecular structure of DNA, based on its known double helix. Their model explained how it replicates.
  • Christian Barnard

    Performed the first successful heart transplant in 1968.
  • Ben Carson

    Continues to be a pioneer in separating Siamese twins and performing surgeries on the brain to stop seizures.
  • Period: to

    21th Century

  • Reattachment

    The ability to reattach severed body parts
  • Organ Donors

    The ability to transplant organs from and donor to a recipient
  • Unborn Fetus

    The advancement in caring for the unborn fetus.
  • Diagnosis

    The ability to use noninvasive techniques for diagnosis.
  • Genetic Research

    The possibility of eliminating disabling disease through genetic research.