-
500 BCE
Asclepius
The greek god of healing with a symbol of a snake around a pole. Priest healers used the "Rod of Asclepius" as their symbol, still a healthcare symbol today. -
Period: 500 BCE to 400 BCE
Ancient Medicine
Ever since the beginning, humans have practiced medicine in some way. Natural remedies and religion were large factors. People thought health and illness depended on the moods of the gods. -
460 BCE
Hippocrates
Hippocrates created many writings about exams and the treatment of patients. These writings included a code to keep the patients privacy and that doctors could never harm patients. -
460 BCE
Hippocratic Oath
The Hippocratic Oath is the modern code of ethics that started in Ancient Greece. It includes the obligations of a doctor and is still used in medical schools today. -
Period: 400 BCE to 1400
The Middle Ages
This is when spiritual and superstitious causes of disease were replaced by science and reason. This was also the time of the Bubonic Plague. -
130 BCE
Galen
Galen was a Roman physician to the gladiators. His writings are used to train physicians; he documented the importance of the spinal cord and did a tracheotomy. -
130 BCE
Four Humors
It was believed that the body was made up of four humors. If the were imbalanced it would cause a mental or physical illness. The 4 humors are blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. -
500
Bubonic Plague
An outbreak of a deadly disease broke out, killing 1/3 of the population in Europe. Europe was very unsanitary at the time and there were dead bodies everywhere. -
910
Rhazes
Rhazes was a Persian physician and he documented differences between smallpox and measles. -
1010
The Cannon of Medicine
This was compiled by a Persian philosopher named Avicenna. It is 5 volumes about Greek and Arabic medicine -
1140
Regulations
Norman King Roger the second introduced a license that a person has to have in order to practice medicine. They got this license after going through training, but women were not allowed to. Midwives have been assisting women with giving birth for a very long time. -
1200
Barber Surgeons
Barbers did more then cut hair, they were surgeons as well. They did things like bloodletting, cupping, pulling teeth and enemas. They served In the military and amputated limbs. They hung bandages on a pole to dry and to show people that they were surgeons too, this is where the modern day barber pole came from. -
1200
Religion and Medicine
Christian and Muslim teachings promote caring for those in need. Islamic hospitals had wards for different illnesses, trained nurses, and stores of medicine. Christian monasteries were created to treat sick people, most treatments were rest and prayer. -
Period: 1400 to
The Renaissance
Many changes happened during this times. The printing press was created, the scientific method was used, and doctors looked for actual causes of illnesses. -
1543
Anatomy
Anatomy was banned in churches and corrected many ideas. De humani corporis fabrica was created, it was the 1st accurate work on anatomy. -
1545
Ambroise Pare
Pare was a French barber surgeon that was in the army. One day his oil supply ran out and he treated wounds with a mixture that included egg yolk, rose oil, and turpentine. Wounds treated with the mixture healed better than the ones treated with oil. He wrote a book about his finding but no one took him seriously because it was written in French instead of Latin. -
Andreas Vesalius
Vesalius was a Belgian physician that introduced human dissections into medical teachings. This helped medical students get a better look at the human body and get the chance to learn hands on. -
William Harvey
Harvey was the first physician to describe how the heart pumps blood around the body. He published a book about it called Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus in 1628. -
Period: to
Industrial Revolution
In the time period there were big changed because machines started being used and invented like stethoscopes, microscopic organisms were seen, and capillaries were discovered. -
Edward Jenner
Jenner found it fascinating that a person that had cowpox, which is very harmless, could not be infected with smallpox. One day he found a dairymaid that had cowpox, injected a child with it and injected him with smallpox 10 days later. He found that the boy did not get the disease -
Period: to
Modern Medicine
Many things developed and changed rapidly in medicine like antibiotics, x rays, organ transplants and many other things. -
Joseph Lister
Lister was the first person to insist on using clean instruments during surgery. His principle, that bacteria must never reach an open wound is still used today. -
Robert Koch
Koch injected animals with pathogens that caused infections in the animals. He found that pathogens are sources of disease. -
Wilhelm Röntgen
Röntgen was a German physicist who accidentally discoverd x rays. Within a year, the first radiology department was introduced in a hospital. -
Alexander Fleming
Fleming created the first antibiotic which was Penicillin. It wasn't until the 1940's when it's true potential was used. -
Ernst Ruska
Ruska invented the first electron microscope. It allowed scientists to see things that were too small to be seen using alight microscope. -
James D. Watson and Francis Crick
These men were the first people to found out the genetic material is a double spiral. They received a Nobel Piece Prize. -
John Heysham Gibbon
Gibbon was an American surgeon and was the first to perform an open heart surgery. The surgery was done to repair an atrial septal defect. -
First Successful Kidney Transplant
Richard and Ronald Herrick were identical twins but Richard had a very bad kidney disease. In a hospital in Boston, Ronald donated one of his kidneys to Richard, the process was a success. -
Raymond Damadian
Damadian was a physician that created Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). He got the idea from nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and realized it could be used to diagnose disease in patients. -
Cloning
Cloning was first envisioned by Hans Spemann. He had a theory that animals could be cloned by fusing one embryo with an egg cell. -
Human Genome Identified
The Human Genome Project (HGP) is a scientific research project that was created to find the chemical base pairs that make up DNA. There are about 20,000 to 25,000 genes of the human genome. -
Jacques Marescaux
Marescaux is a french doctor that performed the first TeleSurgery. It was an operation on a gallbladder done by a remote controlled robot.
