-
Jan 1, 1489
Leonardo Da Vinci disects corpses
Leonardo dissected 30 male and female corpses of different ages. Together with Marcantonio, he prepared to publish a theoretical work on anatomy and made more than 200 drawings. -
William Harvey publishes An Anatomical Study of the Motion of the Heart and of the Blood in Animals
Forms the basis for future research on blood vessels, arteries and the heart. -
Anton van Leeuwenhoek observes bacteria.
Using his microscope, Leeuwenhoek observes plaque from inbetween his teeth and finds thhat it is made of small organisms. -
First successful appendectomy
Claudius Aymand performs the first successful appendectomy on an 11 year old boy. He recovered from the surgery within one month. -
Smallpox vaccine developed
Edward Jenner takes liquid from a lesion due to cowpox and injects it into a small boy. After a experiencing a very weak case of cowpox, the boy recovered. Jenner then injected the boy with liquid from a smallpox lesion and found that he was immune. -
Anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide discovered
Sir Humphrey Davy inhaled nitrous oxide and it produced a soaring euphoria, which soon passed into uncontrollable outbursts of laughter and sobbing, until it made him unconscious by the substance he unhesitantly called “laughing gas.” -
Stethoscope is invented by Rene Laennec
Allowed doctors to listen to their patient's hearts. The heart beat they heard could be used to help determine certain illnesses or diseases. -
Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery
Joseph Lister develops the use of antiseptic surgical methods and publishes Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery -
First vaccine for anthrax
Pasteur made the anthrax vaccine by exposing the bacilli to oxygen and saved countless lives -
First vaccine for rabies
Pasteur created the rabies vaccine by desiccating the spinal cords of infected rabbits. -
Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen discovers X rays
Discovered by passing radioactive waves through a barium platinocyanide screen. -
Felix Hoffman develops aspirin
Hoffmann synthesized acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) for the first time in a stable form usable for medical applications. -
Karl Landsteiner introduces the system to classify blood into A, B, AB, and O groups
In 1900 Karl Landsteiner found out that the blood of two people under contact agglutinates, and in 1901 he found that this effect was due to contact of blood with blood serum. As a result he succeeded in identifying the three blood groups A, B and O, which he labelled C, of human blood. -
Congress passes the Food and Drugs Act
Aimed at food adulteration and fake remedies, the Food and Drugs Act federally regulated food and drugs so that food was safe to consume, and drugs actually helped people. -
Insulin first used to treat diabetes.
In 1916 Nicolae Paulescu developed an aqueous pancreatic extract which, when injected into a diabetic dog, had a normalizing effect on blood sugar levels. He had to postpone his findings due to WWI -
Sir Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin
Alexander Fleming showed that, if Penicillium rubens were grown in the appropriate substrate, it would create a substance with antibiotic properties, which he dubbed penicillin. -
First vaccine developed for influenza
Dr. Francis isolates the influenza virus in minced chicken embryo's cultures -
Rosalind Franklin uses X-ray diffraction to study the structure of DNA
Rosalind Franklin worked at applying the Patterson function to the X-ray pictures of DNA she had produced.This was a long and labour-intensive approach but it yielded significant insight into the structure of the molecule -
Jonas Salk develops the first polio vaccine
created a killed virus vaccine. Upon injecting people with his vaccine, he found it to be successful. -
Dr. Christiaan Barnard performs the first human heart transplant
Transplanted the heart of a brain-dead woman into a man with an incurable heart disease. He lived for 18 days before he died from pnemonia. -
First vaccine developed for chicken pox
Developed by Michiaki Takahashi in 1974 derived from the Oka strain. Prevents millions of infections each year. -
Robert S. Ledley invents CAT-Scans
EMI scans were prevelant at the time and the machines were very expensive ($500,000). Ledley and his team was given funds to develope a similar functioning machine for a fraction of the price. Through developement, he created the CAT scan, which could scan a person's entire body -
First test-tube baby is born
Louise Joy Brown was born by process of in vitro fertilization -
HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is identified
Two separate research groups led by Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier independently discovered that HIV caused AIDS -
Dolly the sheep is the first mammal to be cloned
Dolly was a female domestic sheep, and the first mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell, using the process of nuclear transfer
