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Eyeglasses
The earliest known document mentioning concave lenses being used for correcting myopia was a letter from the Duke of Milan to his ambassador in Florence ordering three dozen eyeglasses, including "a dozen that are suitable for near vision, that is for the elderly." -
Anesthesia
Dr. Crawford W. Long performed the first operation using diethyl ether as an anesthetic. He pressed an ether-soaked towel against the patient's face to put him to sleep, then removed one of two tumors from his neck. He billed the patient $2, itemizing the cost of the ether as well as the operation. -
X-Ray
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, a German physicist, discovered the X-ray, an invention so remarkable that many did not believe the first reports of its use. The New York Times referred to it mockingly as Dr. Röntgen's "alleged discovery of how to photograph the invisible." -
Pacemaker
Dr. Albert S. Hyman demonstrated a heart pacemaker. The device was about 10 inches long and weighed less than a pound; it supplied the heart with a current with adjustable voltage. The device, Dr. Hyman said, had been used in seven cases, although the results were good in only two of them. -
Dialysis
Willem J. Kolff, a Dutch physician, built the first dialysis machine, working with tin cans and parts from washing machines during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Although his first few attempts were failures, Dr. Kolff did finally develop a useful machine in the 1950s while working with colleagues at the Cleveland Clinic. -
Fetal Ultrasound
Dr. Edward Hon of Yale reported using a Doppler monitor on a woman's abdomen to detect fetal heartbeat. Ultrasound's principles had been known for more than a century (a Swedish physicist, Christian Andreas Doppler, gave his name to the phenomenon in 1842), but this was its first use in prenatal care. -
Portable Defibrillator
Dr. Frank Pantridge installed the first portable defibrillator in an ambulance in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It weighed 150 pounds and was powered by car batteries. -
Heart Transplant
Dr. Christiaan Barnard, a South African, performed the first human heart transplant. The patient, a 53-year-old man, died 18 days later. -
CT Scanner
The first commercial CT scanner, developed by Dr. Godfrey Hounsfield, was used on a patient in London. Dr. Hounsfield shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his invention. -
M.R.I
Dr. Raymond V. Damadian announced that he had patented a technique using nuclear magnetic resonance to distinguish between normal and cancerous tissue. In 2003, two other researchers won a Nobel Prize for further discoveries.
