History of Pharmacology

By tdommert

  • Sir Hymphry Davy

    Sir Humphry Davy announces the anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide, although dentists do not begin using the gas as an anesthetic for almost 45 years.

  • Crawford W. Long

    American surgeon Crawford W. Long uses ether as a general anesthetic during surgery but does not publish his results. Credit goes to dentist William Morton.

  • Dr. Horace Wells

    Dr. Horace Wells, American dentist, uses nitrous oxide as an anesthetic.

  • Dr. William Morton

    Boston dentist Dr. William Morton demonstrates ether's anesthetic properties during a tooth extraction.
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    Germ Theory

    Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch establish the germ theory of disease. According to germ theory, a specific disease is caused by a specific organism. Before this discovery, most doctors believe diseases are caused by spontaneous generation. In fact, doctors would perform autopsies on people who died of infectious diseases and then care for living patients without washing their hands, not realizing that they were therefore transmitting the disease.

  • Cholera

    First vaccine for cholera.

  • Anthrax

    First vaccine for anthrax

  • Rabies

    First vaccine for rabies.

  • Emil von Behring

    Emil von Behring discovers antitoxins and uses them to develop tetanus and diphtheria vaccines.

  • Typhoid Fever

    first vaccine for Typhoid Fever

  • Plague

    First vaccine for plague.

  • Felix Hoffman

    Felix Hoffman developes aspirin.

  • Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins

    Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins suggests the existence of vitamins and concludes they are essential to health. Receives the 1929 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

  • Edward Mellanby

    Edward Mellanby discovers vitamin D and shows that its absence causes rickets.
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    Muliple Vaccines Discovered

    insulin first used for diabetes, vaccines for diphtheria,pertussis, tuberculosis, tetanus, typhus, influenza and yellow fever. penecillin was also discovered.

  • first oral Polio Vaccine

  • First Vaccine for Measles

  • First Vaccine for Mumps

  • First Vaccine for Rubella

  • First Vaccine for Chicken Pox

  • First Vaccine for Pneumonia

  • First Vaccine for Meningitis

  • First Vaccine for hepatitis B

  • First Vaccine for Hepatitis A

  • First Vaccine for Lyme Disease