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Around the 15th century, autopsy was authorized more often in the case of suspicious deaths. When Pope Alexander V died suddenly in 1410, an autopsy of his body was ordered.
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It was Anton van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723), a Dutch draper and scientist, and one of the pioneers of microscopy who in the late 17th century became the first man to make and use a real microscope.
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IIn the 18th century, the anti-smallpox vaccine was rediscovered in the west. At first it had been invented in China by a Taoist monk in the 10th century BC.
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In 1816, the Frenchman Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec invented a wooden tube which was capable of isolating the organic noises from the surrounding environment and making them louder.
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In 1887, the German ophthalmologist A.E. Fick devised the first corneal lenses, now known as contact lenses.
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In 1933, the American Clark and Gollan kept some mice immersed in a liquid which flooded their lungs and should have killed them. But they stayed alive. This fluid was an emulsion of a fluorocarbon in water.
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In 1945, the Dutchman Willem Kolff made the first artificial kidney. Kolff’s kidney could be used for purifying the blood of a human being suffering from kidney failure.
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Blaise Pascal made a syringe for scientific use. The syringe was made up of a silver cylinder and the lid of the pump body could be screwed down; the cylinder had a nozzle to which the cannula could be fixed, which was itself extended by a steel trocar.
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In 1982, Kolff implanted an artificial heart into a man who survived for 112 hours.
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On December 15th 1992, the Automated DNA Sequencing Technique was invented. DNA sequencing is the process of determining the precise order of nucleotides within a DNA molecule.
