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Benjamin Waterhouse introduces the smallpox vaccine to the United States and Helps gain acceptance for the new procedures.
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John Collins Warren, provided the first public demonstration of anesthesia in surgery
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Reginald Heber Fitz provides the first clinical description of appendicitis; he also performing appendectomies.
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Theobald Smith identifies the mechanism of insect-borne disease transmission, discovers the cause of scurvy and develops the concept of heat-killed vaccines.
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Paul Dudley White introduces the electrocardiograph to the United States.
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Maggot therapy was invented by William Baer.
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Elliott Joslin becomes one of the first physicians to introduce insulin to the United States and subsequently founds Joslin Diabetes Center.
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Eliot Cutler performs the world’s first successful heart valve surgery at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, today part of Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
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*Philip Drinker invents the iron lung to help polio-paralyzed patients breathe.
*William Hinton develops a blood test for the detection of syphilis. -
In a first, the newly developed Drinker Respirator (iron lung) saves a polio patient at Peter Bent Brigham in collaboration with Children's Hospital Medical Center, today Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Harvard School of Public Health.
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In a first, the newly developed Drinker Respirator (iron lung) saves a polio patient at Peter Bent Brigham in collaboration with Children's Hospital Medical Center, today Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Harvard School of Public Health.
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In a first, the newly developed Drinker Respirator (iron lung) saves a polio patient at Peter Bent Brigham in collaboration with Children's Hospital Medical Center, today Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Harvard School of Public Health.
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*Carl Walter, John Merrill and George Thorn perfect the Kolff-Brigham artificial kidney for clinical use. *Working at Boston Children’s, Sidney Farber is responsible for the first successful pediatric remission of acute leukemia.
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A surgical team, led by Ronald Malt, at Mass General performs a replantation of a severed arm, thus achieving the first successful reattachment of a human limb. Bernard Lown becomes the first to use direct electric current to restore the rhythm of the heart.
1964
Human blood storage -
Dana-Farber researchers clone the gene ras and demonstrate that, when mutated, this gene—the first known human oncogene—helps spur the development of many common human tumors. Mass General researchers pioneer the positron emission tomography (PET) scan, an imaging technique that made possible one of the first noninvasive looks at functional changes within the brain and other organs.
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Mass General radiologists pioneer the use of MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, to diagnose illness and injury.
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Researchers at Harvard Medical School and affiliated institutions make, and continue to make to this day, numerous key discoveries in the HIV/AIDS field.
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Mass General researchers contribute to the discovery of the first gene associated with inherited early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Louis Kunkel and colleagues at Boston Children’s discover the gene that causes Duchenne muscular dystrophy.