Mielke History of Healthcare Timeline

  • Period: 4000 BCE to 3000 BCE

    Early Beginnings

  • 3900 BCE

    Disease Caused By?

    Evil Spirits
  • 3600 BCE

    Treatments for Sick?

    They performed ceremonies to exorcise evil spirits.
  • 3100 BCE

    Medicine used today?

    Digitalis, Quinine, Belladonna, Atropine, Morphine.
  • Period: 2999 BCE to 399

    Ancient Times

  • 2900 BCE

    Ancient Egyptians

    They are the earliest people to keep accurate health records. The priests acted as physicians. They used medicine to heal disease.
  • 1900 BCE

    Ancient Chinese

    These people were the first to use primitive acupuncture therapies, they used stone tools to treat illness and diseases.
  • 900 BCE

    Ancient Greeks

    They were the first to study the causes of diseases and determined that illnesses may have natural causes and not spiritual. Religious custom did not allow bodies to be dissected. Hippocrates is the father of medicine.
  • 100

    Ancient Romans

    The Romans were the first to organize medical care. For sanitization, they worse masks which had a spice-filled beak which the Romans believed protected them from infection and bad odors. Roman physicians kept a room in their houses for the ill which is the beginning of hospitals.
  • Period: 400 to 800

    Dark Age

  • 500

    Stopped the study of medicine, why?

    The Roman Empire was conquered by the Huns which caused study of medicine to stop.
  • 700

    How do they treat disease?

    The primary treatment was prayer because the Church has believed life and death were in God’s hands.
  • Period: 800 to 1400

    Middle Age

  • 1100

    Epidemics

    Bubonic plague, smallpox, diphtheria, syphilis, and tuberculosis.
  • Period: 1350 to

    Renaissance

  • 1450

    Rebirth

    Rebirth of learning. Building of universities and medical schools for research. Acceptance of dissection of the body for study. Development of the printing press and the publishing of books allowing greater access to knowledge from research.
  • Period: 1501 to

    16th and 17th Centuries

  • 1515

    Leonardo da Vinci

    He studied and recorded the anatomy of the body.
  • 1550

    Gabriele Fallopius

    Discovered the fallopian tubes of the female anatomy.
  • 1563

    Bartolommeo Eustachio

    Discovered the tube leading from the ear to the throat.
  • William Harvey

    He used this knowledge to understand physiology, he was able to describe the circulation of blood and the pumping of the heart.
  • Antonie von Leeuwenhoek

    Invented the microscope and found bacteria.
  • Apothecaries

    Early pharmacies, they engaged in flourishing trade in drugs and spices from the East.
  • Period: to

    18th Century

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Benjamin Franklin
    He discovered bifocals, colds can be passed from person to person.
  • Medical Students Learning

    When a person died, they dissected the body and were able to observe the disease process, this lead to a better understanding of illness and death.
  • Joseph Priestley

    Joseph Priestley
    Discovered the element oxygen, he also observed that plants refresh air that has lost it’s oxygen, making it usable for respiration.
  • Edward Jenner

    Edward Jenner
    Discovered a method of vaccination for smallpox. His discovery saved millions of lives. His discovery also led to immunization and to preventive medicine in public health.
  • Rene Laennec

    Rene Laennec
    Invented the stethoscope.
  • Period: to

    19th and 20th Centuries

  • Ignaz Semmelweis

    Identified the cause of childbed fever.
  • Florence Nightingale

    Florence Nightingale
    Founder of modern nursing.
  • Louis Pasteur

    Discovered that tiny microorganisms were everywhere and he proved that they caused disease. Also discovered that heating milk prevented the growth of bacteria.
  • Dmitri Ivanovski

    Dmitri Ivanovski
    He discovered that some diseases are caused by microorganisms which are called viruses. Some are, poliomyelitis, chicken pox, rabies, measles, German measles, herpes zoster, influenza, and mumps.
  • Joseph Lister

    Joseph Lister
    Became the first doctor to use an antiseptic during surgery which helped prevent infection in the incision.
  • Ernst von Bergmann

    Developed asepsis, he developed a method to keep an area germ-free before and during surgery.
  • Robert Koch

    He discovered many diseases-causing organisms. Developed the culture plate method to identify pathogens and also isolated the bacterium that causes tuberculosis.
  • Paul Ehrlich

    Discovered the effect of medicine on disease causing microorganisms. His treatment was not effective in killing other bacteria. He completed 606 experiments.
  • Wilhelm Roentgen

    Discovered x-rays.
  • Anesthesia

    Surgery was performed on patients without anesthesia to begin. Nitrous oxide, ether, and chloroform were discovered, which these drugs have the ability to put people in to a deep sleep so that they do not experience pain during surgery.
  • Sir Alexander Fleming

    Found that penicillin killed life-threatening bacteria.
  • Sigmund Freud

    Discovered the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind.
  • Gerhad Domagk

    Gerhad Domagk
    Discovered sulfonamide compounds. These were the first medications effective in killing bacteria.
  • Jonas Salk

    Jonas Salk
    Discovered that a dead polio virus would cause immunity to poliomyelitis.
  • Albert Sabin

    Albert Sabin
    Used a live polio virus vaccine which is more effective.
  • Francis Crick and James Watson

    Discovered the molecular structure of DNA.
  • Christian Barnard

    Performed the first successful heart transplant in 1968.
  • Ben Carson

    Ben Carson
    Continues to be a pioneer in separating Siamese twins and performing hemispherectomies, surgeries on the brain to stop seizures.
  • Period: to

    21st Century

  • Advancements

    1. Nurse and technicians are visiting patients/clients at home or caring for them in an ambulatory care setting.
    2. Doctors are now often practicing telemedicine.
    3. The possibility of eliminating disabling disease through genetic research.
    4. The ability to transplant organs from a donor to a recipient.
    5. The ability to reattach severed body parts.