Hoffmann History of Healthcare Timeline

By 28emhoffmann
  • Period: 4000 BCE to 3000 BCE

    Early Beginnings

  • 3900 BCE

    Diseases Caused By

    Evil Spirits
  • 3600 BCE

    Treatments For Sick

    Tribal Doctors performed ceremonies to force out evil spirits. Herbs and plants.
  • 3100 BCE

    Medicines Used Today - Quinine

    Quinine: Comes from cinchona tree bark. It controls fever, relieves muscle spasms, and helps prevent malaria.
  • 3100 BCE

    Medicines Used Today - Belladonna and Atropine

    Belladonna and Atropine: Comes from the poisonous nightshade plant. It relieves muscle spasms, especially in gastrointestinal (GI) pain.
  • 3100 BCE

    Medicines Used Today - Morphine

    Morphine: Made from the opium poppy. It is an effective medication for treating severe pain. It is addicting and only used when nothing else helps.
  • 3100 BCE

    Medicines Used Today - Digitalis

    Digitalis: Comes from the foxglove plant. Today is used in pill form or injections to treat heart conditions. People used to chew these leaves to strengthen and slow their heartbeat.
  • Period: 2999 BCE to 399

    Ancient Times

  • 2900 BCE

    Ancient Egyptians

    Accurate health records. The physicians are priests. They healed with medicines and bloodletting (leeches).
  • 1900 BCE

    Ancient Chinese

    First to use primitive acupuncture therapies. They used stone tools. Still commonly used.
  • 900 BCE

    Ancient Greeks

    They thought illnesses may have natural causes. Religious customs did not allow bodies to be dissection.
    Hippocrates kept carful records and found diseases weren’t caused by supernatural forces. Wrote standard of ethics called the Oath of Hippocrates.
  • Period: 400 to 800

    Dark Age

  • Period: 800 to 1400

    Middle Age

  • Period: 1350 to

    Renaissance

  • Period: 1501 to

    16th and 17th Centuries

  • Period: to

    18th Century

  • Period: to

    19th and 20th Centuries

  • Period: to

    21th Century