Medical

Medical Timeline

By Dominic_Gozzola1
  • Period: to

    Medical Advances throughout history

  • 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.

  • Blood Transfusion

    First successful human blood transfusion using Landsteiner's ABO blood typing technique

  • Cardiologist

    Dr. Paul Dudley White becomes one of America's first cardiologists, a doctor specializing in the heart and its functions, and a pioneer in use of the electrocardiograph, exploring its potential as a diagnostic tool.

  • Vitamin D

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

  • Insulin

    Insulin first used to treat diabetes.

  • Diptheria

    First vaccine for diphtheria.

  • Pertussis

    First vaccine for pertussis (whooping cough).

  • Tuberculosis

    First vaccine for tuberculosis.

  • Tetanus

    First vaccine for tetanus.

  • Penicillin

    Scottish bacteriologist Sir Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin. He shares the 1945 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Ernst Chain and Sir Howard Florey.

  • Yellow Fever

    First vaccine for yellow fever.

  • Gibbon

    Dr. John H. Gibbon, Jr. , successfully uses a heart-lung machine for extracorporeal circulation of a cat (i.e., all the heart and lung functions are handled by the machine while surgery is performed). Dr. Gibbon uses this method successfully on a human in 1953. It is now commonly used in open heart surgery.

  • Typhus

    First vaccine for typhus.

  • Waksman

    Microbiologist Selman A. Waksman discovers the antibiotic streptomycin, later used in the treatment of tuberculosis and other diseases.

  • Influenza

    First vaccine for influenza.

  • pacemaker

    Paul Zoll develops the first cardiac pacemaker to control irregular heartbeat.

  • DNA

    James Watson and Francis Crick at Cambridge University describe the structure of the DNA molecule. Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin at King's College in London are also studying DNA. (Wilkins in fact shares Franklin's data with Watson and Crick without her knowledge.) Watson, Crick, and Wilkins share the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1962 (Franklin had died and the Nobel Prize only goes to living recipients).

  • Kidney Transplant

    Dr. Joseph E. Murray performs the first kidney transplant between identical twins.

  • Polio

    Jonas Salk develops the first polio.

  • Artificial Heart

    Dr. Willem Kolff and Dr. Tetsuzo Akutzu implant the first artificial heart in a dog. The animal survives 90 minutes.