Events in Medicine and Health
Page last
modified 22/1/2021
See separate page for Covid-19 data
Colour key:
People
Ebola
Other Epidemics
Vaccines and antibiotics,
Smoking – see Morals and
Fashion
For advances in cloning, see
Science and
Technology.
Bovine Spingiform
Encelopathy and CJD– see Farming
Dentistry, see Appendix 1
Heart and Blood Circulation,
see Appendix 2
Kidneys and bladder, see
Appendix 2a
Reproduction, STDs and
Childbirth – see Appendix 3
Thalidomide –
see Appendix 3a
AIDS, see Appendix i
Cholera, see Appendix ii
Diabetes and Insulin, see
Appendix iii
Influenza and other
respiratory inc. Covid-19, see Appendix iv
Malaria, see Appendix v
Measles, see appendix
Mental illness, see Appendix
vi
Polio, see Appendix vii
Smallpox, see Appendix viii
National Health Service
(UK), see Appendix a
Hospitals, see Appendix b.
Anaesthetics, see Appendix c
15/5/2019, The number of Ebola cases in the north-east of the
Democratic Republic of the Congo now exceeded 1,600 since the current outbreak
began in August 2018. In April 2018 the rate of new cases suddenly accelerated
from around 30 to around 100 per week,
2/2/2016, The World Health Organisation declared Zika to be
a global emergency, on a par with Ebola, as Brazil mobilised 220,000 troops
to fight the disease, spraying against mosquitoes and checking for stagnant
water where the mosquito might breed. However the Rio carnival went ahead and
Brazil said it would not cancel the Olympics. Cases of microcephaly, which
first appeared in Polynesia in 2014, rose in Brazil to 3,700 since October
2015, compared with fewer than 200 in 2014. An estimated 1.5 million Brazilians
now carry the Zika virus, which usually causes very little illness in adults,
so they may be unaware of any risk to their unborn baby.
27/1/2016 , Concerns grew about the Zika virus, which if
contracted by pregnant women could cause the baby to have microcephalus. The
virus is spread by mosquitoes and may affect all the Americas except Canada and
Chile, also much of Africa and southern Asia.
29/12/2015, For the first
time since March 2014, Guinea was declared free
from Ebola virus transmissions by the World Health Organization.
26/7/2015, Ebola continued
in Guinea and Sierra Leone, albeit at much lower levels than the peak of the
late-2014 outbreak. The Lancet reported on a vaccine with a 1005 success rate,
as total cases from February 2014 now stood at: Guinea, 3,786 cases, 2,520
deaths; Liberia, 10,672 cases, 4,808 deaths; Sierra Leone, 13,290 cases, 3,951
deaths. There had also been 1 case in Italy, 8 cases and 6 deaths in Mali, 20
cases and 8 deaths in Nigeria, 1 case in Senegal, 1 case in Spain, 1 case in
the UK, and 4 cases, 1 death in the USA.
21/1/2015, Confirmed Ebola
cases in Guinea reached 2,806 cases with 1,814 deaths. In Liberia cases eached
8,331 cases with 3,538 deaths. In Sierra Leone cases reached 10,124, with 3,062
deaths.
9/1/2015, Confirmed Ebola
cases in Sierra Leone reached 7,718, with early 3,000 deaths. However the epidemic
seemed to be abating, with many areas free of new cases for over a month.
22/10/2014, Total Ebola cases
now stood at 9,936, with 4,877 deaths. Mali reported its first case.
18/10/2014, The total Ebola
toll was as follows. Guinea, 1,519 cases, 7788 deaths. Liberia, 4,076 cases,
2,316 deaths. Nigeria, 20 cases, 8 deaths. Senegal, 1 case, 0 deaths. Sierra
Leone, 3,410 cases, 1,200 deaths. Overall total, 9,191 cases, 4,546 deaths.
11/10/2014, The number of
Ebola deaths in West Africa passed 4,000.
26/9/2014, The total Ebola
toll was as follows. Democratic Republic of Congo, 70 cases, 42 deaths. Guinea,
1,074 cases, 648 deaths. Liberia, 3,458 cases, 1,830 deaths. Nigeria, 20 cases,
8 deaths. Senegal, 1 case, 0 deaths. Sierra Leone, 2,021 cases, 605 deaths.
20/9/2014, The total Ebola
toll was as follows. Guinea, 1,008 cases, 632 deaths. Liberia, 3,022 cases,
1,578 deaths. Nigeria, 20 cases, 8 deaths. Senegal, 1 case, 0 deaths. Sierra
Leone, 1,813 cases, 593 deaths.
31/7/2014, The number of
fatalities in the Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia passed
1,200; cases were also reported in Nigeria.
12/12/2005, Scientists announced they had created mice with small amounts of human brain
cells, to study neurological disorders.
30/11/2005, Surgeons in France carried out the first human
face transplant.
28/7/2004, Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA, died aged 88.
5/7/2003, The WHO declared SARS to be ‘contained’
25/10/2000. Britain’s oldest
man, Bill Lee, died. He attributed
his longevity to a dram of whisky every night, and died peacefully in his sleep
aged 108. He was born on 13/1/1892
in Stoke on Trent. He was shot in the arm and blinded in one eye whilst serving
as a sapper in France during World War One, and was awarded the Cross of
the Legion of Honour by the French Government for his services in war.
Afterwards, Mr Lee returned home to manage a Milletts store in Hanley, Stoke,
until he retired at the age of 72. He spent is later years in a residential
home. He left a brother and sister, four grandchildren, ten great
grandchildren, and two great-great grandsons. He was recognised as Britain’s
oldest man by the Guinness Book of Records in August 2000.
26/6/2000. British and American scientists announced they had succeeded in decoding the 3 billion pairs
of human DNA.
13/8/1998, UK
authorities warned of a rat invasion,
saying there were 750,000 rat-infested homes in Britain.
2/7/1997. The British Medical Association announced
that drugs derived from cannabis
were to be made legally available for cancer patients and others suffering from
debilitating diseases.
1/7/1996, The Northern Territory in Australia
legalised voluntary euthanasia.
18/2/1996. The World Health Organisation sent experts to Gabon
where ten people had died of the Ebola
virus.
1993,
US medical costs (public and private combined) amounted to 13.0% of national
income. This compared to 9.1% in 1980 and 7.3$ in 1970.
23/4/1993. The World Health Organisation declared tuberculosis a global emergency, saying TB could kill 30 million people by 2003.
8/5/1991. UK scientists discovered the gene that determines
sex.
22/3/1988, In Australia, doctors
turned off the life support system of a terminally ill female patient for
the first time.
30/9/1987, At the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, Susan Lazarchick had the first successful transplant of the body’s most
complex joint, the knee.
7/9/1987, The world’s first conference on artificial
life began, at Los Alamos National Laboratories, USA.
17/12/1986, Mrs Davina Thompson made medical history at
Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, UK, when she was given a new heart, lungs, and liver.
22/9/1986, At
Harefield Hospital, Middlesex, a 2 ½ month old baby became the youngest heart and lung transplant patient.
21/2/1986, Shigechiyo Izumi, the world’s oldest man, died
in Japan
aged 120.
25/10/1984. The hepatitis
virus was identified.
16/10/1982, Hans Hugo Selye, Austrian endocrinologist who
pioneered studies on stress, died.
5/8/1982, John Charnley, British orthopaedic surgeon,
died aged 70.
7/3/1982, Margulies Lazar, US physician, died.
1981, Onco-genes (cancer genes)
were discovered by US research teams. They do not directly cause cancer but
become carcinogenic when affected by viruses, ionising radiation or
carcinogenic chemicals.
31/3/1978, Charles Herbert Best, Canadian-US physiologist,
died in Toronto, Ontario.
1977, The first prototype
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine was built by Raymond Damadian. See also Atomic Power
and Electricity.
4/8/1977, Edgar Douglas Baron, English physiologist,
died in London.
3/6/1977, Archibald Vivian Hill, English physiologist,
died in Cambroidge.
1976, Endorphins first
discovered.
4/8/1976, First recorded cases of Legionnaires Disease, at an American Legion convention in
Philadelphia, killed 29 people. Scientists isolated the previously unknown
bacteria that caused this disease on 18/1/1977.
1/2/1976, Gene Hoyt Whipple, US physician, died in
Rochester, New York, USA.
25/1/1972, In London, the National Organ Matching And
Distribution Service (NOMDS) was established.
1971, The diamond-bladed scalpel
was invented by the Microsurgical Instrumentation Research Association. It
greatly improved eye surgery.
10/10/1971, Sir Cyril Lodowic Burt, English psychologist,
died in London.
1/10/1971, The first
CT scan was performed, on a patient’s brain, at the Atkinson Morley
Hospital in Wimbledon, London,
25/7/1971. The first
heart and lung transplant was performed.
1970, In Germany,
the first successful nerve transplant took place.
8/12/1970, Philip Edward Smith, endocrinologist, died in
Florence, Massachusetts.
21/2/1968, Lord Florey, Australian-born
British pathologist who made possible the large-scale production of penicillin,
died.
6/1967, Gustave NJ
Nossal proposed that antibodies work by recognising the size and
shape of the antigen.
11/6/1967, Wolfgang Kohler, Russian-German-US
psychologist, died in Enfield, New Hampshire, USA.
5/12/1965, Joseph Erlanger, US physiologist, died in St
Louis, Missouri.
24/4/1964, Gerhard Domagk, German pathologist (born
30/10/1895 in Brandenburg) died in Burgberg.
18/4/1963, The first
human nerve transplant was carried out by Dr
James Campbell at New York University Medical Centre.
1962, English orthopaedic surgeon John
Charnley discovered a low-friction high-density polythene suitable
for artificial joints,
1962, Lasesrs were used in eye surgery for the first time.
10/12/1962, Crick and Watson received the Nobel prize for their work
on DNA.
6/5/1958, Olivier Hélénon, French radiologist, was born
1957, Interferron was discovered
by Alick
Isaacs and Jean Lindemann.
11/3/1957, The World Health Information published the first
indications that radiation may have
genetic effects.
13/12/1955, Antonio Caetano de Abreu Moniz, Portuguese
surgeon, died in Lisbon.
11/3/1955, Sir Alexander
Fleming, discoverer of penicillin in 1928 and
Nobel prize-winner in 1945, died.
1/12/1952, George Jorgensen Jr of the USA became the
first person to have gender reassignment
surgery, becoming Christine Jorgensen.
25/2/1950, George Richards Minot, US physician, was born
in Brookline, Massachusetts.
1949, Cobalt-60 was first used
to treat cancer, at the Ohio State University.
5/10/1949, Major Greenwood
(born 9/8/1880) English epidemiologist and medical statistician, died.
7/4/1948. The World Health Organisation was set up
with its headquarters in Geneva. Its aim was to attain the highest possible
level of health for all peoples.
1947, Sidney Farber
(1903-73) founded the Children’s Cancer Research Foundation at Boston’s
Children’s Hospital. He observed that
folic acid (one of the B vitamins) could increase the number of abnormal white
cells in children with acute leukemia. If these children were given a drug that
reduced the effects of folic acid, the abnormal cells decreased. The idea that
drugs could counteract cancer, or chemotherapy,
was developed from this finding.
3/4/1947. In the UK, the private medical company BUPA was founded.
22/2/1946, Dr Selman Abrahams announced the discovery
of streptomycin, an antibiotic for treating tuberculosis.
31/12/1943, Penicillin was finally in common usage
in hospitals, its development having been delayed by the War. Its first
successful use had been on 13/2/1941. Another ‘wonder drug’, sulphonamide, was
also useful against infections.
2/3/1943, Alexandre Yersin, physician, died.
3/5/1941, The first
successful treatment by penicillin. A patient was treated for a 4 inch
carbuncle, which was cleared and the patient was discharged on 15/5/1941.
21/2/1941, Sir Frederick Banting,
Canadian
scientist who along with Charles Best discovered insulin in 1921, was killed in an
air crash.
13/2/1941, The ‘miracle drug’
penicillin was used on a human for the first time; a policeman from Oxford, UK.
However he died on 15/3/1941 because not enough was available. It then took
some 2,000 litres of mould culture fluid to produce enough penicillin for a
single case of infection. However Florey subsequently discovered
another species of mould that produced 1,000 times as much penicillin. See
31/12/1943.
1940,
Herbert M
Evans used radioactive iodine to prove that iodine is used by the
thyroid gland.
1940,
Karl
Landsteiner and Alexander
S Weiner discovered a relationship between human and rhesus
monkey blood cells, and discovered the rhesus
(Rh) factor.
24/8/1940, The Lancet reported on the first
purification of penicillin by professors
Howard Florey and Ernest Chain.
1938, Tom D Spies pioneered the
treatment of pellagra with niacin.
1938, Englis surgeon Philip Wiles
developed the first artificial hip replacement, using stainless steel.
1937, Pharmacologist Daniele Bovet
developed the first antihistamine.
3/12/1935, Charles Robert Richet, French physiologist, died in Paris.
1933, Pantothenic acid, one of
the vitamin B complex, was isolated from liver.
23/9/1933, Lloyd Old, US immunologist, was born.
31/12/1932, Mildred Scheel, German doctor, was born.
16/9/1932, Sir Ronald Ross, English physician, died in London.
9/1/1929, Fleming treated his
assistant Stuart Craddock for an
infection by washing it out with a penicillin solution; this cleared the
infection.
1928, Dorothy Eustis,
from the US, set up a guide dog training centre at Vervey, Switzerland, after
habing heard of how a pet Alsatian dog looked after its owner who had been
blinded as a soldier in World War One. Following this the Guide Dogs
for the Blind Association was set up in Britain in 1934.
12/10/1928. The first
iron lung was used at the Boston Children’s Hospital, Massachusetts.
15/9/1928. Alexander Fleming
reported the discovery of
penicillin.
6/4/1928, In Italy, handshaking was banned as it was deemed
unhygienic.
2/5/1927, Ernest Henry Starling, English physiologist, died at sea
near Kingston, Jamaica.
12/1/1926. In Paris, the Pasteur Institute
announced the discovery of an anti-tetanus vaccine.
14/6/1924, James Black, Scottish pharmacologist, was born
(died 2010).
11/2/1924, Jacques Loeb, German-US physiologist, died in
Hamilton, Bermuda.
9/9/1923, Daniel Carleton Gajdusek was born in Yonkers,
New York, USA. In 1966 he succeeded in transferring kuru, a disease of the
central nervous system thought to be spread by cannibalism, to chimpanzees.
This was the first time a viral disease of the central nervous system had been
transferred from humans to another species.
10/2/1923. William Konrad Von Roentgen, German physicist
who discovered X rays in 1895, died.
17/7/1921, Alick Isaacs was born. In 1957, along with Jean Lindenmann,
he discovered interferons, chemicals produced by the human body to fight
viruses.
23/1/1921, Heinrich Wilhelm Gottfried von Waldemeyer-Hartz,
German anatomist, died in Berlin.
1919, In the UK, the Ministry of Health was established by
Act of Parliament.
29/12/1919, Sir William Osler, medical teacher, died in
Oxford, England.
22/2/1918. The world’s
tallest man, Robert Wadlow, was born, weighing 8 ½ lbs. He grew to 8 foot 11 ½ inches in height and
weighed 31 stone 5 lbs, when he died in 1940.
27/7/1917, Surgeon Emil Theodor Kocher died.
31/3/1917, Emil von Behring, immunologist (born 15/3/1854
in Hansdorf, Germany), died in Marburg, Germany.
1916, US psychologist Lewis M Terman
invented the term IQ for Intelligence Quotient; plastic surgery advanced as a
result of war inuries.
25/8/1916, Frederick C Robbins was born in Auburn,
Alabama. In 1948, along with John Franklin Enders (born 10/2/1897, West
Hartford, Connecticut) and Thomas Huckle Wells (born 15/6/1915, Ann
Arbor), he discovered how to grow the mumps virus in chick tissue using
penicillin to prevent bacterial contamination.
8/6/1916, Professor Sir Francis Crick, who along with J D Watson
discovered DNA, was born.
20/8/1915, Paul Erlich, bacteriologist, dies of a stroke
in Bad Homburg, Germany. Born in Strehlen, Silesia (now Poland) on 14/3/1854, he laid the
foundations for the use of chemotherapy in treating disease. In
1909 he developed the first compound designed specifically to cure a disease;
Salvarsan, for syphilis.
8/1/1914, Doctors at
the Middlesex Hospital successfully treated cancer with radium.
1912, Casimir Funck coined the term
‘vitamin(e)’.
10/2/1912. Charles Lister.
Lord Joseph Lister, surgeon and discoverer of
antiseptics, died aged 84 at Walmer, Kent.
29/8/1911, John Charnley, British surgeon, was born (died
1982)
17/1/1911, Sir Francis Galton, English scientist and writer on eugenics, died aged 88.
26/8/1910, William James, US psychologist, was born in
Chocorua, new Hampshire.
13/8/1910. Florence Nightingale, born 12/5/1820, died in
London aged 90.
27/5/1910, Robert Koch, German bacteriologist and Nobel
Prize Winner who discovered the
tuberculosis bacillus, died.
3/5/1910, Howard Taylor Ricketts, US pathologist, died
in Mexico City from the typhus he caught whilst researching the disease.
1909, The antibiotic Salvarsan
was discovered by Paul Ehrlich. It was very effective against
syphilis.
1909, W Johannsen in The Netherlands
introduced the term ‘gene’; P T Levene discovered RNA and DNA
16/3/1908. Florence Nightingale,
aged 87, was awarded the Freedom of the City of London.
Born in 1820 to a middle class family in Derbyshire, she became interested in
hygienic care for the sick after visiting a German religious hospital in 1850
which specialised in hygiene and care. In 1854 she was disturbed by terrible
reports of the conditions in military hospitals there. She took 37 nurses and
arrived at the hospital at Scutari, arriving on 4/11/1854. The military did not
at first take her seriously, but her determination won through and she reduced
the hospital’s death rate from 42% to just 2%. After the Crimean War she
trained nurses in London and worked to improve the care for the sick.
31/1/1908, Karl von Voit, physiologist, was born in
Munich, Germany.
1907, Bubonic Plague killed 1.3 million people in
India.
1907, C Pirquet developed a method of
diagnoising tuberculosis; C Ross Harrison developed a tissue culture
technique; Ivan
Pavlov in Russia
published Conditioned Reflexes.
29/11/1907. Florence Nightingale, aged 87, the ‘Lady with
the Lamp’, was presented with the Order of Merit by Edward VII for her work during
the Crimean War, see 4/11/1854.
21/5/1907, Sir Joseph Fayrer, English physician, died
(born 6/12/1824).
23/3/1907, Daniele Bovet was born in Neuchâtel,
Switzerland. In 1936 he discovered the effectiveness of sulphanilamide in
treating streptococci.
1906, The term ‘allergy’ was
coined by Austrian paediatrician Clemens von Parquet.
4/12/1906, Robert Wallace Wilkins was born in
Chattanooga, Tennessee. In 1950 he developed the use of reserpine for the
treatment of high blood pressure.
19/9/1906, Ernst Chain was born in Berlin, Germany. Along
with Howard
Florey (born Adelaide, Australia, 24/9/1908) he developed, in 1940,
the use of penicillin as an antiobiotic.
8/4/1906, D Auguste, the first recorded Alzheimer's victim, died (born 1850)
1905, Zirm, in Austria, performed the
first cornea transplant.
23/11/1905, Sir John Burdon-Sanderson, physiologist, died
(b0rn 21/12/1828).
30/10/1905. Aspirin went on sale in the UK for the first time.
17/2/1905, A typhus
outbreak occurred in London’s East End.
13/10/1904, Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud published his Interpretation of Dreams.
31/7/1903, Alexander
Graham Bell’s proposition that radium could be used to treat cancer
appeared in the US journal, Science.
14/6/1903, Karl Gegenbaur,
German anatomist, died in Heidelberg.
14/4/1903, In New
York, the typhus vaccine was discovered by Dr
Harry Plotz.
1902, The UK passed an Act providing for the training of
midwives, and barring untrained ones from practising. Infant mortality was a
major concern at this time in Britain.
10/1/1902,
New Zealander Ellen Dougherty became
the world's first registered nurse
23/11/1902, Walter Reed, US military surgeon, died in
Washington DC.
2/11/1902, Rudolf Albert von Kolliker, Swiss anatomist
and physiologist, died in Wurzburg, Bavaria.
5/9/1902, Rudolf Carl Virchow, German pathologist, died
in Berlin.
15/11/1901. The first
practical hearing aid, the Acousticon, was patented by Miller Reese Hutchinson of New
York. Earlier devices such as the ear trumpet were bulky and impractical.
Reese;s idea was to have a battery powered device that could be set to the
wearer’s own preferences; it converted the desired sounds into electrical
impulses that were transmitted to a carbon speaker in the earpiece that turned
the electricity back into sound. Unwanted sounds could be filtered out.
1/11/1901. In Chicago, Dr J E Gilman announced an X-Ray treatment for breast cancer.
2/2/1901, Rene Jules Dubos was born in Saint Brice,
France. In 1939 he developed antibiotics from soil bacteria that killed other
bacteria.
16/10/1900, Sir Henry Acland,
English physician (born 23/8/1815) died.
3/9/1900, An
outbreak of Bubonic Plague in Glasgow.
6/3/1899,
The painkiller Aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) was patented by Felix Hoffman. The active ingredient is
derived from willow.
11/12/1898, Sir William Jenner, English physician, died
(born 30/1/1815).
24/9/1898, Sir Howard Florey, British
pathologist and joint discoverer of penicillin with Sir Ernest Chain, was born in Adelaide, Australia.
2/6/1898, Paul Louis Simond, fighting bubonic plague in
India, theorised that fleas transmitted the disease from rats to humans.
7/1/1898, Ernest Hart, medical journalist, died (born
26/1/1835). He raised membership of the British Medical Association from 2,000
to 19,000, and saw the British Medical Journal expand from 20 to 64 pages.
10/10/1897, Felix Hoffman, German chemist, invented the
painkiller aspirin.
1896, The first hormone, adrenaline, was discovered by John Jacob, US biochemist.
28/2/1896, Philip Showalter Hench was born in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. In 1948 he discovered that cortisone can be used to treat
rheumatoid arthritis.
5/1/1896. The German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen gave the first demonstration of X
rays.
1895,
Heroin
was marketed by Bayer Pharmaceuticals as a cough medicine for children.
8/11/1895. Wilhelm Roentgen discovered X rays, during
an experiment at the University of Wurtzburg. He made the first radiograph, or X-ray,
of his wife’s hand, on 22/12/1895. In 1896 Emil Grubbe, having noticed the damage that
X-ray exposure did to his own skin, experimented with applying rays to
cancerous tissie; he treated a woman with breast cancer, but did not publicise
the results until several years later.
28/9/1895, The French chemist Louis Pasteur died (see 6/7/1885). He had been born in Dole,
France, on 27/12/1822.
27/4/1895, Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig, German
physiologist, was born in Leipzig, Saxony.
1894, The first British sanatorium
for the open-air treatment of tuberculosis
opened in Edinburgh. Others soon followed in Glasgow, Renfrewshire and Frimley
(Surrey). The notion that open clean air could assist in the treatment of
tuberculosis had been popular since the late 1800s; the wealthy would take the
train to the Alps of the south of France. Wealthy philanthropists funded the
British sanatoria, although because tuberculosis was considered a disease of the
poor, it attracted less funding than cancer.
6/2/1894, Albert Billroth, surgeon, died (born in Rugen
26/4/1829).
1893, A Japanese scientist, Shibasaburo
Kitasako, proved that The Plague was a bacterial disease carried by
infected rat fleas.
16/8/1893, Jean Charcot, French physician, died (born 29/11/1825).
22/3/1892, David Agnew, US surgeon died (born 24/11/1818).
19/7/1891, Sir Prescott Hewett, British surgeon, died
(born 3/7/1812)
29/1/1890, Sir William Gull, English physician, died
(born 31/12/1816).
30/11/1889, Edgar Adrian,
English
physiologist, was born. He studied the neurons of the nervous system.
24/3/1889, Franciscus Cornelia Donders, Dutch
physiologist, died in Utrecht.
22/7/1888, Selman Abraham Waksman, Russian
microbiologist whose search for antimicrobial substances in soil led to the
discovery of actinomycin and streptomycin, was born.
29/6/1888, The first appendectomy was carried out in the UK,
at the London
Hospital by Professor
Frederick Treves.
27/4/1887, The first
appendix operation, for removing an infected appendix, was carried out by George Thomas
Morton on a 26-year-old man with acute appendicitis, in
Philadelphia, USA.
21/1/1887, Wolfgang Kohler, psychologist, was born in
Revel, Estonia. He was one of the founders of the gestalt school.
11/11/1886, Paul Bert, French physiologist, died in Hanoi
(born in Auxerre 17/10/1833).
2/3/1886, John Forster, British surgeon, died (born
1823).
6/7/1885, Louis Pasteur, 63, administered his first successful
treatment of rabies with anti rabies vaccine made from a weakened rabies virus.
25/11/1884, English surgeon Rickman Godlee undertook the
first operation to remove a brain tumour.
21/9/1884, Charles Joules Henri Nicolle was born in
Rouen, France. In 1909 he discovered that typhus was spread via the body louse.
20/7/1884, Caesar Hawkins, British surgeon, died (born
19/11/1798).
23/1/1882, Sir Robert Christison, Scottish physician,
died (born 18/7/1797).
6/8/1881. Alexander Fleming,
the Scottish bacteriologist who
discovered penicillin, was born in Scotland. Fleming specialised in
bacteriology at St Mary’s Hospital, London. The
enormous death toll amongst soldiers suffering from infected wounds left
Fleming seeking a chemical that could fight the infection. Whilst clearing up
Petri dishes in which he had been growing bacteria, Fleming stumbled on a
mouldy dish in which the bacteria had been killed. However it was not until the
Second World War that chemists really took an interest in the development of
penicillin. Fleming was knighted in 1944 and awarded the Nobel Prize in 1945.
5/5/1881, Louis Pasteur
tested his
inoculation against anthrax on an ox, cows and sheep.
1880, Louis Pasteur accidentally discovered the technique for inoculation, by
injection of a weakened pathogen. He went on holiday, leaving a solution of
chicken cholera bacteria, which he did not realise would grow weaker over time.
On return he injected chickens with these bacteria; to his surprise they became
ill but survived, and then were able to resist full strength bacteria also.
9/7/1880, Paul Broca,
French surgeon and anthropologist, died (born 28/6/1824).
5/10/1879, Francis Peyton
Rous was born in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1910 he discovered that
some animal cancers were caused by viruses.
26/1/1878, Ernst Heinrich,
German physiologist, died in Leipzig, Saxony,
25/9/1877, Carl Reinhold
Wunderlich, German physician, died in Leipzig, Saxony.
24/6/1877, The St
John’s Ambulance brigade was formed, as the Ambulance Association, by the
Red Cross.
10/2/1877, Sir William Fergusson, British surgeon, died
(born 20/3/1808).
17/9/1875, Guillaume Duchenne, French physician, died
(born 17.9/1806).
1874, Armauer Hansen,
a Norwegian doctor, discovered the
bacteria which causes leprosy. However drug s to treat the disease were only
developed in the 1940s.
2/3/1874, Neil Arnott, Scottish physician (born
15/5/1788) died.
20/4/1873, Henry Bence-Jones, English physician, died in
London (born in Suffolk, 1814).
19/10/1871, Physiologist
Walter Bradford Cannon was born in
Prarie du Chien, Wisconsin. He devised the use of bismuth compounds to make
soft organs visible on X-rays.
9/10/1869, Otto Erdmann, physician who introduced
vaccination into Saxony, died (born 11/4/1804).
28/7/1869, Karl Carus, German physician, died (born
1789).
28/8/1868, Antoine Clot, French physician, died (born
7/11/1793).
29/7/1868, John Elliotson, English physician, died (born
29/10/1791).
15/7/1868, William Thomas Morton, US dentist, died in New
York City, New York.
8/12/1867, Jean Pierre Flourens, French physiologist,
died.
17/6/1867. Joseph Lister performed a mastectomy on his
sister Isabella, using carbolic acid as an antiseptic. It was the first operation under antiseptic conditions.
6/3/1867, John Goodsir, Scottish anatomist, died (born
20/3/1814).
6/11/1865, William Leishman was born in Glasgow,
Scotland. In 1900 he discovered that the disease now known as Leishmaniasis is
spread by a parasite of sandflies.
13/8/1865, Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis died in Vienna,
Austria, of childbed fever, a disease he had tried hard to eliminate.
12/8/1865, British surgeon Joseph Lister, 38, operating at
Glasgow Royal Infirmary, pioneered the
use of carbolic acid as a disinfectant, aiming to reduce the 50% mortality
rate amongst amputees.
21/10/1862, Sir Benjamin Brodie, English surgeon, died
(born 1783).
15/12/1860, Physician Neils Finsen was born in the Faroe Islands.
24/6/1860, The training of nurses in Britain started at St
Thomas Hospital, London.
15/6/1860, Florence
Nightingale started her School for Nurses at St Thomas’s Hospital, London.
12/6/1859, Jacob Bell, pharmaceutical chemist, died (born
in London 5/3/1810).
1858, The first edition of the
essential medical textbook, Gray’s Anatomy, appeared. It was written by Henry Gray (1827-61), lecturer
in anatomy at St George’s Hospital, London. Its 40th edition
appeared in 2008.
16/12/1858, Physician Richard Bright died in London, England.
23/11/1858, The General
Medical Council held its first meeting in London. It was set up under the
Medical Act 1858 to maintain a register of qualified medical parctitioners in
the UK, and to regulate the standards of medical education and examinations.
14/8/1858, George Combe, Scottish phrenologist, died
(born 21/10/1788)
2/8/1858, Under the Medical
Act, UK doctors were now required to be registered.
7/3/1857, Julius Wagner von Jauregg was born in Wels,
Austria. In 1927 he was awarded the Nobel prize for his treatment of some forms
of paralysis using malaria inoculation to induce the fever.
1855, Addison’s Disease, a degeneration of the endocrine glands, was
first recognised by physician Thomas Addison (1793-1860).
4/11/1854, Florence Nightingale
arrived at Scutari (Crimean War).
15/3/1854,
Emil von Behring, bacteriologist who won
the Nobel Prize in 1901 for his work on immunisation aganist diphtheria,
was born.
14/3/1854, Paul Erlich, bacteriologist, was born in
Strehlen, Silesia (now Poland); died
20/8/1915.
13/9/1853,
Bacteriologist Hans Christian Joachim Gram
was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 1884 he developed a dye that could
distinguish between two classes of bacteria, those that took upthe dye and
those that didn’t. The groups react differently to antibiotics.
23/9/1852,
Surgeon William Halstead was born in
New York City. In 1890 he introduced the practice of wearing sterilised rubber
gloves during surgery.
12/3/1851,
Bacteriologist Charles Chamberland
was born in Chilly le Vignoble, France.
He improved sterilisation techniques and invented filters to trap bacteria,
which led to the discovery of viruses.
2/6/1850, Jesse Boot, British pharmacist, was born in
Nottingham.
26/9/1849, Ivan Pavlov, son of a village priest, was born
this day near Ryazan, Russia. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1904 for
his discovery of conditioned reflexes.
22/6/1848, Sir William Macewen, surgeon, was born.
9/8/1847, Andrew Combe, physiologist, died (born
27/10/1797)
7/5/1847, The American Medical Association was founded.
26/3/1845, The sticking plaster was patented.
14/11/1844, John Abercrombie,
Scottish physician (born 10/10/1780) died in Edinburgh.
11/12/1843, Robert Koch, German bacteriologist, was born in
Klausthal.
2/7/1843, The originator of homeopathic medicine, Samuel Hanneman,
died in Paris aged 88. He believed that diseases could be cured by drugs
producing similar symptoms, only in much smaller doses than normal; the ‘law of
similars’.
21/6/1843, The Royal
College of Surgeons was formed from the original Barber –Surgeon Company.
28/4/1842, Sir Charles Bell, anatomist, died near
Worcester (born in Edinburgh 11/1774).
12/2/1841, Sir Astley Cooper, English surgeon, died in
London (born 23/8/1768 in Norfolk).
1840, Swiss chemist Charles J Choss
demonstrated the need for calcium for proper bone development.
17/11/1838, Francois Broussart, French physician, died
(born 17/12/1772).
1837, Leeches were heavily used in medicine.
At Bartholomews, London,
96,300 leeches were used during 1837, up from 52,000 in 1822 and 24,700 in
1821. Heavy bleeding was used to induce unconsciousness before an operation
such as an amputation, in the absence of anaesthetics.
1836, The first
nurses training school in the world was opened in Kaiserwerth, Germany by Pastor Theodore
Fiedner and his wife. The Quaker philanthropist Elizabeth Fry visited there and
was so impressed she opened the firest nurses training school ln England in
London in 1840. Florence
Nightingale was trained at the school in Kaiserwerth.
25/8/1836, Christoph Hufeland, German physician,died (born
12/8/1762).
20/7/1836, Physician Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt was born in
Dewsbury, England. In 1866 he developed the clinical thermometer; previously
thermometers in medicine took some 20 minutes to determine the patient’s
temperature.
8/3/1836, Sir Michael Foster, English physiologist, was
born (died 29/1/1907).
17/10/1835, Paul Bert, French physiologist, was born in
Auxerre (died in Hanoi 11/11/1886).
8/2/1835, Guillaume Dupuytren, French surgeon, died
(born 6/10/1777).
26/6/1834, Sir Gilbert Blane, Scottish physician, died in
London (born 29/8/1749).
31/12/1833, During
the year 1833, doctors in France imported 41.5 million leeches, actually making it an endangered species.
1832, Britain passed the Anatomy Act. This was an attempt to
curb the activities of the ‘resurrection men’, who dug up freshly-buried
corpses for dissection in medical schools. The Act provided for the compulsory
requisition of the bodies of paupers who died in workhouses, for this purpose.
It contributed to the general fear of workhouses.
1832, The British Medical
Association was founded. Until 1856 it was known as the Provincial Medical
and Surgical Association. It publishes the British
Medical Journal.
1832, The water bed was
developed by Scottish surgeon Neil Arnott as a means of improving the
comfort of his patients.
20/4/1831, John Abernethy,
British surgeon (born 3/4/1764 in London) died in Enfield.
1830, Physician Marchall Hall (born Basford,
England, 18/2/1790) denounced bloodletting as a treatment for disease.
26/4/1829, Albert Billroth,
surgeon, was born in Rugen (died 6/2/1894).
1828, Estonian naturalist Karl Ernst von Baer founded the science of
embryology, when he discovered the mammalian ovum.
24/12/1828, The trial of bodysnatcher William Burke began in Edinburgh, see
31/10/1828. The other bodysnatcher, William Hare, had turned King’s Evidence and
was not brought to trial. Sentenced to death, Burke was hanged on 28/1/1829 in
front of a large crowd.
21/12/1828, Sir John Burdon-Sanderson, physiologist, was
born (died 23/11/1905).
1/11/1828, Balfour Stewart, Scottish physician, was born
(died 19/12/1887).
31/10/1828, Edinburgh bodysnatchers
Burke and
Hare claimed their last victim, a beggar woman named Docherty.
23/7/1828, Sir Jonathan Hutchinson, English surgeon, was
born.
22/5/1828, Albrecht von Grafe, eye specialist, was born
(died 20/7/1870)
1827, William Herschel devised an
early contact lens, a glass capsule filled with animal jelly.
5/4/1827, Joseph Lister
was born in London. He was a surgeon, and pioneered the use of antiseptics.
28/10/1826, Sir Andrew Clark, British physician, was born
(died 6/11/1893).
13/8/1826, Rene Lannec,
French doctor who invented and named the stethoscope
in 1819, died.
29/11/1825, Jean Charcot,
French physician, was born (died 16/8/1893).
6/12/1824, Sir Joseph Fayrer,
English physician, was born (died 21/5/1907).
28/6/1824, Paul Broca,
French surgeon and anthropologist, was born (died 9/7/1880).
5/10/1823, The
British medical journal, The Lancet,
was first published. It was set up by English surgeon Thomas Wakley.
26/1/1823, Edward Jenner, pioneer of vaccination, died in
Berkeley, Gloucestershire..
27/12/1822, Louis Pasteur
was born in Dole, France.
1821,
Charles Bell,
born Edinburgh 11/1744, gave the first descriotion of Bell’s Palsy, a facial paralysis.
12/5/1820. Florence Nightingale
was born in Florence, Italy; she was named after the city. She had a
privileged education but shocked her family by turning down several marriage
proposals to pursue a career in nursing. In 1854 she nursed soldiers in the Crimean War and resolved to improve the
appalling medical conditions there.
15/4/1820, John Bell, Scottish surgeon, died in Rome
(born in Edinburgh 12/5/1763).
1818, Jean Baptiste Dumas, born Alais,
France, 14/7/1800, first treated goitre with iodine.
24/11/1818, David Agnew, US surgeon (died 22/3/1892) was born.
19/7/1818, Sir John Erichsen, British surgeon, was born
(died 23/9/1896).
31/12/1816, Sir William Gull, English physician, was born
(died 29/1/1890).
1815, Renne Lannec invented the stethoscope
(named after the Greek stethos,
meaning breast). It comprised a roll of paper, then a wooden cylinder, to
listen to the chest. It was intended to avoid the indignity of having to place
an ear next to a woman’s chest.
23/8/1815, Sir Henry Acland, English physician, was born
(died16/10/1900).
4/8/1815, Physician Carl Reinhold Wunderlich was born in Sulz, Germany.
He was the first to realise the usefulness of taking accurate readings of a
patient’s temperature.
30/1/1815, Sir William Jenner, English physician,was born
(died 11/12/1898).
23/10/1814, At the
Duke of York Hospital, Chelsea, surgeon Joseph Constantine performed the
first ‘nose job’. Using a flap of skin
from the patient’s forehead (a technique used in India in 800 BC) he
reconstructed the nose of a soldier disfigured by toxic mercury treatment.
19/4/1813, Physician
Benjamin
Rush died in Philadelphia, USA.
15/3/1813, Dr John Snow, pioneer bacteriologist, was
born.
20/10/1812, Austin Flint, heart research pioneer, was
born.
31/8/1812, John Bennett, English physician, was born in
London (died 1875).
3/7/1812, Sir Prescott Hewett, British surgeon, was born
(died 19/7/1891)
5/3/1810, Jacob Bell, pharmaceutical chemist, was born
in London (died 12/6/1859).
9/7/1809, Friedrich Henle, German anatomist, was born
(died 13/5/1885).
5/5/1808, Pierre Cabanis, French physiologist, died
(born 5/6/1757).
15/10/1806, Paul Barthez, French physician, died in Paris
(born in Montpellier 11/12/1734).
17/9/1806, Guillaume Duchenne, French physician, was born
(died 17/9/1875).
13/6/1806, Julia Brace, US blind deaf mute, who
contributed much to studies in this area, was born in Connecticut (died in
Connecticut 12/8/1884).
31/8/1805, James Currie, Scottish physician, died (born
31/5/1756).
11/4/1804, Otto Erdmann, physician who introduced
vaccination into Saxony, was born (died 9/10/1869.
21/1/1804, Ernst Baldinger, German physician, died in
Marburg (born near Erfurt 13/5/1738).
1801, Thomas Young (born 13/7/1773 in
Milverton, England)
discovered the cause of astigmatism.
27/12/1801, Charles Clay, English surgeon, was born (died
19/9/1893)
17/5/1801, William Heberden, English physician, died
(born 1710).
9/3/1801, Johann Ackermann, German physician (born
17/2/1756) died.
6/10/1799, Physician William Withering died in Birmingham, England.
28/9/1799, Pierre Brasdor, French surgeon, died (born
1721).
19/11/1798, Caesar Hawkins, British surgeon, was born
(died 20/7/1884).
11/12/1797, Richard Brockelsby, English physician, died
(born 11/8/1722).
27/10/1797, Andrew Combe, physiologist, was born (died
9/8/1847).
18/7/1797, Sir Robert Christison, Scottish physician, was
born (died 23/1/1882).
24/6/1795, German physiologist Ernst Heinrich Weber was born in
Wittemberg. He began, in 1826, experiments with two point skin stimulation; how
close can two needle points be felt before they are perceived as just one
sensation.
1/6/1795, Pierre Desault, French surgeon, died (born
6/2/1744).
1794, John Dalton gave the
earliest account of colour blindness, which he described as Daltonism, as he
also has the condition.
13/7/1794, Scottish physician James Lind died in Hampshire,
England.
13/4/1794, Jean Pierre Marie was born in France. He
studied the nervous system,located the centre of respiration, and showed that
the cerebellum controlled muscular movements.
7/11/1793, Antoine Clot, French physician, was born (died
28/8/1868).
29/10/1791, John Elliotson, English physician, was born
(died 29//7/1868).
5/2/1790, William Cullen, physician, died (born
15/4/1710).
23/12/1789, Charles Epee, who did much for the deaf-mute,
died (born 25/11/1712).
21/10/1788, George Combe, Scottish phrenologist, was born
(died14/8/1858).
15/5/1788, Neil Arnott, Scottish physician, was born in
Arbroath (died 2/3/1874 in London).
8/3/1787, Karl Grafe, German surgeon, was born (died
4/7/1840).
30/3/1783, William Hunter, British physician, died (born
23/5/1718).
16/2/1781, Rene Laennec, French doctor who invented and
named the stethoscope, was born in
Quimper, Brittany.
26/12/1780, John Fothergill, English physician, died (born
8/3/1712).
10/10/1780, John Abercrombie, Scottish physician (died
145/11/1844) was born in Aberdeen.
6/10/1777, Guillaume Dupuytren, French surgeon, was born
(died 8/2/1835).
1775, Sir Percival Potts suggested
that chimney sweeps in London were developing cancers of the scrotum and nasal
area due to exposure to soot. This was
one of the first conceptions that environmental factors could cause cancer.
11/4/1775, Birth of James Parkinson, the physician who identified Parkinson’s Disease.
1774, Lazzaro
Spallanzani discovered the digestive action of saliva.
10/2/1773, John Gregory,Scottish physician, died (born
3/6/1724).
1772, Italian
anatomist Antonio
Scarpa (born Motta, 13/6/1747) discovered the labyrinth of the inner
ear; the semicircular canals, vestibule and cochlea.
17/12/1772, Francois Broussart, French physician, was born
(died 17/11/1838).
9/9/1770, Bernhard Albinus, German anatomist, died in
Leiden (born 14/2/1697 in Frankfurt on Oder).
23/8/1768, Sir Astley
Cooper, English surgeon, was born (died 12/2/1841).
3/4/1764, John Abernethy, British surgeon, was born in London
(died 20/4/1831 in Enfield).
12/5/1763, John Bell, Scottish surgeon, was born in
Edinburgh (died in Rome 15/4/1820).
1761, Morgagni
published an anatomy textbook based on observations from over 600 dead bodies
in autopsies.
5/6/1757, Pierre Cabanis, French physiologist, was born (died
5/5/1808).
31/5/1756, James Currie, Scottish physician, was born
(died 31/8/1805).
10/4/1755, Samuel Hahnemann, founder of homeopathy, was
born (died 2/7/1843).
10/4/1752, William Cheselden, English surgeon, died (born
19/10/1688).
1749, David Hartley
(born 30/8/1705 in Yorkshire, England), in his work Observations on man, first used the term ‘psychology’ as a systematic study of the operation of the mind.
29/8/1749, Physician
Sir Gilbert
Blane was born in Blanefield, Scotland. In 1795 he got the Royal
Navy to make consumption of lime juice by sailors compulsory to prevent scurvy.
This earned British sailors the nickname ‘limeys’.
1748, John Fothergill, born in
England, 8/3/1712, gave the first description of diphtheria in his Account of the putrid sore throat.
1747, Thalassotherapy,bathing in sea water, was developed as a therapy by
English physician Richard Russell (1687 – 1759). He tested his
theories in Brighton. The idea was that beneficial elements found in seawater,
such as calcium, iodine, magnesium, potassium and sodium could be absorbed through
the skin. The therapy was intended to help with arthritis, depression, eczema,
psoriasis and rheumatism.
20/5/1747, British naval surgeon James Lind (born 4/10/1716 in
Edinburgh, Scotland) began an investigation to determine the cause of scurvy.
He discovered that oranges and lemons were a good cure. In 1753 he published
his Treatise on scurvy.
6/2/1744, Pierre Desault, French surgeon, was born (died
1/6/1795).
23/9/1738, Hermann Boerhaave, Dutch physician, died in Leiden (born
near Leiden 31/12/1668).
13/5/1738, Ernst Baldinger, German physician, was born near
Erfurt (died in Marburg 21/1/1804).
1736, US physician William Douglass described scarlet fever.
11/12/1734, Paul Barthez, French physician, was born in
Montpellier (died in Paris 15/10/1806).
1730, George Martine performed the first tracheotomy
for the treatment of diphtheria.
13/2/1728, John Hunter, British surgeon, was born (died
16/10/1793).
3/6/1724, John Gregory,Scottish physician, was born
(died 10/2/1773).
11/8/1722, Richard Brockelsby, English physician, was
born (died 11/12/1797).
11/5/1722, Peter Camper, Dutch anatomist, was born (died
7/4/1789).
9/8/1721, Prisoners in Newgate Gaol were offered
a pardon if they agreed to be inoculated to test Dr Charles
Maitland’s theories on the subject. Seven men
volunteered, and all survived to live in freedom.
23/5/1718, William Hunter, British physician, was born
(died 30/3/1783).
25/11/1712, Charles Epee, who did much for the deaf-mute,
was born (died 23/12/1789).
8/3/1712, John Fothergill, English physician, was born
(died 26/12/1780).
8/1/1704, Lorenzo Bellini, Italian physician, died in
Florence (born in Florence 3/9/1643).
14/2/1697, Bernhard Albinus, German anatomist, was born
in Frankfurt on Oder (died 9/9/1770 in Leiden).
1691, Clopton Havers published the first complete
textbook on the bones of the human body.
19/10/1688, William Cheselden, English surgeon, was born
(died 10/4/1752).
18/11/1686, King Louis XIV
of France
underwent a successful operation for haemorrhoids. The surgeon, Charles
Francois, had specially-designed tools for the operation, and had
practised on dozens of peasants and prisoners, some of whom died.
9/3/1683, Michael Ettmuller, physician,
died (born 26/5/1644).
31/12/1668, Hermann
Boerhaave, Dutch physician, was born near Leiden (died in Leiden
23/9/1738).
29/4/1667, John Arbuthnot, British physician, was born
(died 27/2/1735).
2/9/1666, The Great
Fire of London helped end the
Great Plague.
17/6/1666, Antonio Maria Valsalva was born in Imola,
Italy. In 1704 he provided the first detailed description of the physiology of
the human ear.
28/9/1665. London was in the grip of The Plague; 7,000 died in the last week alone.
In July 1665, deaths averaged 200 a week. People were fleeing the city; graveyards
were full, and corpses were thrown into Plague Pits.
7/6/1665, The Plague
was first reported in London. It was a very hot
day. 70,000 people would die of the Plague by October. Plague forced Parliament
to meet in Oxford.
26/5/1644, Michael Ettmuller, physician, was born (died
9/3/1683).
1643, Physician Daniel Whistler,
born in England
1619, gave the first medical description of rickets in his thesis to the University of Leiden.
3/9/1643, Lorenzo Bellini, Italian physician, was born
in Florence (died in Florence 8/1/1704).
24/10/1632, Anthony van Leeuwenhoek, naturalist, was born.
Inventor of the microscope, he was the
first person to see bacteria.
10/3/1628, Marcello Malpighi was born in Crevalcore,
Italy. In 1660 he demonstrated, using the newly-invented microscope. that the
lungs consist of many small air pockets and a complex system of capillaries.
27/1/1621, Birth of Thomas Willis at Great Bedwyn, England. In
1659 he published De febribus, describing typhoid fever.
23/2/1603, Andreas Caesalpinus, physician to Pope Clement
III, died (born 1519).
9/10/1562, Fallopius Gabriello, anatomist, died.
20/12/1590, Ambroise Pare, known as the father of modern
surgery, died in Paris.
21/9/1576, Girolamo
Cardan, Italian physician, died (born 24/9/1501).
10/5/1566, Leonhard
Fuchs, German physician, died (born 17/1/1501).
1546, The first Regius Professor
of Medicine was appointed at Cambridge.
1546, The first description of
typhus, and the nature of contagion, were made by Italian physician Girolamo
Fracastoro in his work, De contagion et
contagiosis morbis. He also described syphilis.
1543, At Basel, Switzerland, Vesalius
published his great work - De humani
corporis fabrica (The Structure of the Human Body). This contained the
first accurate anatomical drawings of the human body.
1540, The United Barber-Surgeon’s
Company was established in Britain.
1528, The first manual of
surgery, Die Kliene Chirugia, was
produced by Paracelsus
(Theophrastus
von Hohenheim), a Swiss physician and alchemist.
20/10/1524, Thomas Linacre, physician to King Henry VII
and VIII and founder of the Royal
College of Physicians in 1518, died.
1518, In England, ‘epidenic’ diseases were made notifiable by
law.
2/8/1512, Alessandro Achillini, Italian anatomist, (born
29/10/1453 in Bologna) died in Bologna.
1508, Leonardo da Vinci drew plans of
an early contact lens; a glass lens
filled with water, to magnify vision.
24/9/1501, Girolamo Cardan, Italian physician, was born
(died 21/9/1576).
17/1/1501, Leonhard Fuchs, German physician, was born
(died 10/5/1566).
1500, The first Caesarian
section, in which both mother and baby survived, was carried out by Jacob Nufer,
Swiss sow-gelder, on his own wife.
29/10/1463, Alessandro
Achillini, Italian anatomist, (died 2/8/1512 in Bologna) was born in
Bologna.
The Black
Death
1407, An outbtreak of the Black Death
in London killed several thousand people.
1403, The Doge of Venice imposed
a ‘quarantine’ period on visitors to
curb the Black
Death. The waiting time was standardised at 40 days in 1485.
1382, Recurrence of the Black
Death, generally less severe than before, although Ireland was badly affected this time.
By 1400 it had killed some 75 million people, completely depopulating some
areas.
1374, Venice was now checking ships before
entry bto the port, and excluding any found to be carrying the Black Death.
1371, A further recurrence of
the Black
Death in Englaqnd, again less severe than the last time.
1361, A recurrence of the Black Death
in England, also across Europe from France to Poland. It was less severe than
the last time, and mainly affected children.
1352, The Black Death reached Moscow, and
also spread back eastwards to India and China again.
1350, The Black Death reached Scotland and
Wales.
1350, Economically,
the Black
Death caused major price changes in England. Thed price of a good
horse fell from 40 shillings to 16 shillings. Cows, oxen and sheep also fell in
price, but the price of corn rose due to a shortage of field hands to harvest
it.
1349, The Black Death killed 30% to 50% of
the population of England and Wales. A truce was called in the war with
Scotland; Scottish soldiers invading England carried the pneumonic form, transmissible
from person to person without rats or fleas, home with them.
24/8/1349, The Black Death broke out in Elbing (Poland).
31/5/1349, The mortality rate from the Black Death
in London finally began to ease.
1348, The Black Death reduced the
population of Locarno, Italy, from 4,800 to 700.
29/9/1348, The Black Death reached London.
24/6/1348, The Black Death outbreak hit Melcombe Regis (Weymouth, Dorset in England).
4/1348, The Black Death reached Cyprus and Florence..
25/12/1347, First cases of the plague recorded in the city of Split
in Croatia.
1/11/1347, Black Death spreads to Aix-en-Provence in France.
1/9/1347, The Black Death reached the French city of Marseilles.
1347, 1348. The Black
Death reached Greece in September 1347, and also appeared in
Sicily
and southern
Italy. By January 1348 Pisa, Venice, Avignon, and Arles were stricken, and by
April 1348 Toulouse,
Spain, and Lyons
had the disease. June 1348 saw the Black Death
arrive in England,
and by 1349 Germany and Brittany were suffering.
1343, Tartars besieging the
Genoese merchants trading post at Caffa, Crimea, catapulted their dead bodies
into the besieged town before they withdrew. Some of these corpses carried the Black Death..
Some merchants died on the road home, but others carried the Black Death
to Constantinople,
Genoa,
Venice
and other ports.
1340, Travellers returning to
Europe from China brought the Black Death back with them, in the rats-borne ticks
and fleeas that travelled with them.
1333, The Black Death began in China,
as starvation and a drought made the population there vulnerable.
1315, Italian surgeon Mondino de
Luzzi held public dissections; he published the manual Anatomia.
1275, The book Chirugia, by William of Saliceto, contained
the earliest writer records of dissection, a practice discouraged by the Church
since 1163.
1235, The first dissections of a
human body since the time of Ptolemy, 2rd century BCE were held at the
School of Medicine, Salerno, an institution supported by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II.
1231, Frederick II, Holy Roman
Emperor, decreed that doctor training schools must hold a dissection of a human
body once every five years.
1230, Leprosy was brought into Europe by the Crusaders.
1208, A school of medicine was
founded at Montpelier by students from Bologna.
1167, The Council of Tours
forbade the
clergy from practising surgery, so this skill was taken over by the
barber-surgeons.
18/6/1037, Persian philosopher and physician Avicenna
died. His writings were valued sources for European doctors.
594, The Plague ended in Europe. It had killed half the population.
542, The Plague hit Constantinople, imported by rats from Egypt. In
547 it reached Britain.
219, Death of the Chinese
physician Zhang (born 152),
who compiled a large compendium of all the medical knowledge in China.
210, Death of Greek physician Galen
(born ca. 130). He promoted bloodletting as a cure for many ailments. His
thoughts dominated Wesyern medicine for the next 1500 years,until Renaissance
physicians such as Andreas Vesalius challenged his views.
265 BCE, Rome learnt of Greek
medical techniques, from Greek prisoners of war.
290 BCE, Eristratus investigated the
human nervous system. In the course of public human dissections, Eristratus
and Herophilus
noted the existence of the liver, spleen, retina, duodenum, overies, Fallopian
tubes and prostate gland. They deduced that the brain, not the heart, is the
seat of emotions.
370 BCE. Death of the great
physician Hippocrates, born ca. 460
BC.
430 – 432 BCE, The Plague in Athens.
1700 BCE, The Ebers Egyptian papyrus
(discovered in 1872 AD) records the incidence of tooth decay and ophthalmic
problems. At the same time, smallpox was recorded in China.
2595 BCE, The first Chinese medical
text, Nei Ching, was published. It detailed the use of a range of medicines,
including camphor, opium, and sodium sulphate.
2700 BCE, Acupuncture came into use in China.
2980 BCE, Imhotep,
physician and advisor to Egyptian Pharaoh Imhotep, began to research medical
as opposed to religious cures for illnesses.
3000 BCE, Autopsy techniques
developed from the Egyptian embalming and preservation methods.
3050 BCE, Date of earliest known medical
text, the Edwin Smith Papyrus.
Appendix 1 – Dentistry
1967, A 20-year study of
fluoridation of the water supply in Evanston, Illinois, showed that cavities
had been reduced by 58%.
17/11/1955. Anglesey became the first authority in Britain to introduce
fluoride into the water supply.
1945, Fluorine began to be added to the
water supply in the US.
1908, Dr Frederick McKay, a dentist in
Colorado, USA,
noticed that some of his patient’s teeth had become mottled, and that these
teeth were not so prone to decay as un-mottled teeth. Guessing that something
in the drinking water was causing this, he discovered, after studying other
regions in the US, that fluorine in the water was the cause. This gave
rise to the concept of fluoridating the
water, enough to arrest decay without causing mottling.
22/7/1878, The UK
Parliament prohibited medically-untrained people from calling themselves
‘dentists’.
26/1/1875, The
first battery electric powered dental drill
was used. Mains-powered dental drills were not used until 1908.
19/12/1846, The first dental extraction under anaesthetic was performed in Britain.
11/12/1844, Dr John M Riggs,
of Hartford Connecticut, successfully extracted a tooth painlessly from Dr Horace Wells
using nitrous oxide gas. He
performed 40 more such operations, but abandoned them after a patient nearly
died from an overdose of the gas; Dr Riggs was unaware that the nitrous oxide
should be mixed with oxygen.
1834,
Amalgam, or mercury
alloy, now used for fiulling teeth.
1790,
The dental drill
was invented by John
Greenwood, dentist to George Washington.
1771,
John Hunter
(born 13/2/1728) published The natural
history of the human teeth. This laid the foundations for the science of
dentistry
104, First mention of dentures, by the Roman poet Martial, who died in this year.
975 BCE, False teeth, for cosmetic
purposes, in use by the Etruscans.
2900 BCE, Tooth filling was
practised in Sumer.
Appendix 2 – Heart
and Blood Cirulation,
2011, A
continuous-flow artificial heart was developed that made blood flow through the
body with no heartbeat or pulse.
2/9/2001, Death of heart transplant pioneer Dr Christiaan
Barnard.
1995, In Britain, 30% of deaths were caused by coronary
heart disease, compared to just 1% of deaths in 1930. The increased prevalence
of high fat foods, previously only accessible to the very wealthy, was
blamed.
16/5/1989. The first
successful hole-in-the –heart operation on an adult was performed at the Brook
Hospital, Greenwich, London. The patient was 66-year-old Eileen
Molyneaux.
2/11/1986, Britain’s first
artificial heart transplant operation was performed at Papworth Hospital,
Cambridge.
24/6/1985, Keith
Hardcastle, Britain’s longest surviving heart transplant patient, died 6
years after his operation.
2/12/1982, At the University
of Utah, 61 year old retired dentist Barney
Clark became the first person to receive a
permanent artificial heart. He lived for 112 days with the device.
15/7/1970. An experimental pacemaker
was fitted to a 56 year old woman at the National Heart Centre in London.
3/5/1968. Britain’s first
heart transplant.
11/1/1968. The world’s fifth
heart transplant was performed in New York.
2/1/1968, Christiaan
Barnard performed a second heart transplant; the recipient
Philip
Blaiberg survived 594 days, proving the technique was feasible.
3/12/1967. Professor
Christian Barnard, born 1923, performed the
world’s first heart transplant in Cape Town. The recipient, a 53-year old
grocer called Waskansky, who received the heart of a 25 year old traffic
casualty, died 18 days later of pneumonia. The drugs given to suppress rejection compromised Waskansky’s immune system. A second heart transplant
patient (see 2/1/1968) survived much longer.
20/9/1963, The first pre-natal
blood transfusion was performed at the National Women’s hospital in Auckland,
New Zealand, by Professor George Green, on a child born to Mrs E McLeod.
1963, The first artificial heart was patented.
22/7/1960, The
implantable pacemaker was patented by Wilson Greatbach, New York, USA, for Wilson
Greatbach Inc.
31/10/1958. Ake Senning,
Swedish doctor, in Stockholm implanted the first internal heart pacemaker.
1953,
The heart
by-pass machine made open heart surgery possible.
4/10/1952. The first external
pacemaker was developed by Dr Paul Zoll of the Harvard Medical School, and was fitted
to David
Schwartz. The first internal pacemaker was not developed until 1958.
8/3/1952. The first
artificial heart was used on a 41-year old man. It kept him alive at the
Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia, for 80 minutes.
1/4/1950, Charles R Drew
(born 3/6/1904
in Washington DC) was killed in a car accident in Burlington, North Carolina.
He discovered that blood plasma, unlike whole blood, could be stored for long
periods without spoiling; this facilitated the blood transfusion system. For
this, Drew became the first Black American man in the US to be awarded a
Doctor of Science Degree.
1937,The first artificial heart was implanted in a dog.
1937, The Rhesus blood factor was discovered by Karl Landsteiner and
Alexander S Wiener.
15/3/1937. Bernard Faustus set up America’s first blood
bank at Cook County Hospital, Chicago.
1930,
Karl
Landsteiner won a Nobel Prize for his discovery of the blood groups,
making transfusions more successful.
8/11/1922, Dr Christian
Barnard, South African surgeon who
pioneered heart transplants, was born in Beaufort West, Cape Province.
27/3/1914. The first
successful blood transfusion took place, in a hospital in Brussels.
Earlier
blood transfusions had met with the problem of the blood clotting, but in 1914
it was discovered that sodium citrate could be used as an anti-coagulant. This
discovery led to the development of modern blood banks.
14/11/1900, Dr Karl Landsteiner of the Pathological and Anatomical Institute of Vienna announced the discovery of the three major blood groups.
9/9/1896. Surgery was
performed on the heart for the first time, at Frankfurt City Hospital, Germany. The 22 year old patient had been stabbed
in the heart during a pub brawl and stitches were inserted in the organ.
13/3/1886, Austin Flint,
heart research pioneer, died (born 20/10/1812)
1838,
Jons Jakob
Berzelius pioneered the understanding of haemoglobin in the blood,
realising the role of iron in oxygen transportation in the body.
25/9/1818, The first blood
transfusion using human blood, as opposed to animal blood, took place in
London, at Guys Hospital.
29/12/1816, Karl
Freidrich Wilhelm Ludwig was born in Witzenhausen, Germany. In 1847 he
demonstrated that the blood circulation is purely mechanical, due to heart
pumping action.
1675,
Dutch scientist
Anton van Leeuwenhoek, aged 43, gave the first accurate description of red blood
cells. He pioneered the development of the microscope. See also Technology and
Innovation.
1669,
Richars Lower’s Tractatus del Corde described the
properties of the heart as a muscle, and
how blood changes colour as it passes through the lungs.
12/6/1667. The first blood transfusion was made at
Montpellier University. A 15 year old boy was given 9 oz. of blood from a lamb –
surprisingly he recovered from this, and the fever he had been suffering. It
was likely that blood clotting, of the sheep’s blood, had prevented much from
actually entering the boy’s own bloodstream.
1658, Dutch naturalist Jan Swammerdam gave the first
description of red blood cells.
3/6/1657, William Harvey,
anatomist and
physician, died near Saffron Walden, Essex. He discovered and demonstrated the
circulation of the blood.
12/2/1637, Jan Swammerdam was born this day in Amsterdam.
In 1658 he became the first person to see and describe red blood cells.
1628, William Harvey showed that blood circulated in the bodies of
animals. Until then it had been assumed that arterial and venous blood,
different in colour, were separate and had different finctions. Some thought
that arterial blood carried some sort of energy from the air to the muscles,
and venous blood carried food from the liver. By dissection and logical
arguent, in his work Exercitatio
anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus ('The Anatomical
Function of the Movement of the Heart and the Blood in Animals'), Harvey
showed that
there was just one blood system, pumped around by the heart. However until
oxygen was discovered there was no known reason for the blood to circulate, and
until capillaries were discovered there was no known mechanism for this
circulation between arteries and veins.
21/5/1618, Death of Italian physician Hieronymus Fabricius ab Aquapendente,
who discovered
one-way valves in veins.
1/4/1578, William Harvey, British anatomist who discovered the
circulation of the blood, was born at Folkestone.
1540, The pulmonary circulation
of the blood was discovered by Michael Servetus, Spanish theologian and physician. He was
later burnt at the stake for heresy.
492 BCE, The Greek philosopher Empedocles
of Sicily recognised the heart as the centre of the system of blood vessels; he
wrongly attributed emotions to this organ also.
Appendix 2
– Kidneys and Bladder
16/2/1989, Harley Street kidney specialist Dr Raymond
Crockett resigned over a ‘cash for kidneys’ scandal in which organs were taken from poor Turks for
wealthy patients.
1964, Home kidney
dialysis was introduced in the USA.
23/12/1954, The first successful kidney transplant was
performed. Earlier transplant attempts had been thwarted by the problem of
rejection; the recipient in this case went on to live another 8 years.
17/6/1950. In the US, the first
kidney transplant took place. The patient, 44 year old Ruth Tucker, survived for 5
years but then died when the transplanted kidney failed.
1943, The first dialysis machine
for patients with kidney failure was invented.
24/8/1906, Kidney
transplants were carried out on dogs, at a medical conference in Toronto, Canada.
1861, The principle of dialysis
was demonstrated for the first time, by Glasgow-born chemist Thomas Graham
(1805-69). This led to the invention of the first kidney dialysis machine in 1943.
1678,
The excretory ducts of the human kidneys (Bellini’s Diucts) were discovered by
the Italian anatomist Lorenzo Bellini, 35; Bellini had taught medicine at
Pisa since 1664. Bellini also discovered the action of nerves on muscles.
Appendix 3
– Reproduction, STDs and Childbirth
31/7/2000. Cases of
sexually transmitted diseases had risen sharply among young people in the
past year, according to official UK figures.
16/11/1992. A brain-dead
woman had been artificially kept alive to allow her foetus to be born;
however she miscarried and the life support was turned off.
30/1/1990, Surgeons at Guy’s Hospital, London, performed the first surgery on
a baby in its mother’s womb.
1/10/1987, 48 year
old surrogate grandmother Mrs Pat Anthony
gave birth to triplets for her daughter
Karen Ferriera-Jorge in Johannesburg, South Africa.
15/8/1987. Septuplets, three boys and four girls,
were born to Susan Halton
in Liverpool’s Oxford Street Hospital.
Their combined weight was 9 ½ pounds. None survived; the last lived
until 31/8/1987.
29/3/1986, The first test-tube quintuplets were born, in London.
4/1/1985, Mrs Kim Cotton, believed to be the first commercial surrogate mother in
Britain, gave birth to a girl.
1983, In Australia, the first
birth from a woman without ovaries, using donated eggs, was achieved.
18/11/1983, In Liverpool Janet Walton, 31, gave birth to sextuplets, all girls.
28/12/1981, The first American test-tube baby, Elizabeth Jordan Carr, was born
in Norfolk, Virginia.
25/7/1978. The world’s first ‘test tube’ (IVF) baby was
born, in Britain.
Louise Joy
Brown was born by Caesarean section at Oldham General Hospital,
Lancashire, to Lesley
Brown. She had been conceived by combining the sperm and egg in a
Petri Dish, because her mother’s Fallopian Tubes were blocked.
1977, The first successful case
of in-vitro fertilisation. A couple, John
and Lesley
Brown had tried and failed to conceive naturally for 9 years.
Scientists Robert
Edwards and Patrick Steptoe removed an egg from Lesley’s
ovaries and injected John’s sperm into the egg. Two days later the
now 8-celled embryo was implanted back into Lesley’s uterus. A baby girl was
successfully born on 25/7/1978. By 2017, some 5 million babies had been
conceived in-vitro.
28/3/1974, In Britain, the NHS Family Planning Service was
inaugurated.
11/1/1974. The first
surviving sextuplets were born to Mrs Sue Rosenberg in Cape Town, South
Africa.
16/10/1972. Venereal Disease cases amongst under 16s in the UK
were up 10% on last year.
26/2/1971. Hammersmith Borough Council launched a lurid and
aggressive campaign against the spread
of venereal diseases such as syphilis.
13/11/1969, In London, a woman had quintuplets after fertility
drug treatment.
13/2/1969. Scientists in Cambridge announced the first
successful in-vitro fertilisation of
a human being.
1953, The first
birth using a human egg that had been fertilised using previously-frozen sperm.
17/9/1953, The first
successful separation of Siamese Twins took place, at the Ochnser Foundation
Hospital in New Orleans.
1952, Virginia Apgar developed the Apgar Score to assess the viability of
a newborn infant, in order to combat high neonatal mortality rates. Still used
today, each infant is scored 0, 1 or 2 on 5 parameters; heart rate, breathing,
reflexes, muscle tone and colour. The result is a score out of ten indicating
any need for medical intervention.
1944, In Britain the Royal
College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists recommended that 70% of births
should take place in hospitals. Previously most births took place at the
mother’s home, with the assistance of a midwife. The cost of a hospital birth,
before the inception of the NHS, was 6 guineas,but for those women who could afford it,
a hospital birth was a welcome respite from rationing, laundry and housekeeping
duties.
15/12/1942, The British Government began a campaign against venereal disease, which had increased
markedly since the war began.
26/11/1928, The first
twins to be born by Caesarean section in Britain were delivered in
Manchester.
3/11/1916, There was concern about rising rates of
sexually-transmitted diseases in Britain, with 50,000 cases reported amongst
servicemen in 1916.
1909, Paul Ehrlich, in Germany,
prepared Salvarsan as a cure for syphilis;
1900, The age of menarche in
Western girls was down to 14, from 17 in the late 1700s. By 2000 it was down to
13, and was around 12.5 by 2017.
17/1/1874. The original Siamese
Twins, Chang
and Eng
Bunker, died within three hours of each other, aged 62. Chang and
Eng meant Left and Right in Thailand, where they were born.
21/2/1866, August von Wasserman, German bacteriologist who invented a test for syphilis,
was born.
11/5/1811. The original Siamese
twins, Chang
and Eng Bunker, were born of Chinese parents in Maklong, Siam. They
were joined at the chest.
31/1/1747, The first venereal disease clinic opened at London Lock Hospital.
1741, William Smellie became the first
obstetrician to make a scientific study of childbirth. From 1741
Smellie gave midwives and medical students in London
unprecedented practical lectures on childbirth. He achieved this by offering
his services to poor women on condition that his students could attend the
birth. In 1752 he published the Treatise
on midwifery, the first scientific approach to obstetrics.
1721, Jean Palfryn introduced the use
of forceps for facilitating birth.
1502, Syphilis first appeared in China, brought to the port of Canton by
European traders.
1500, Jakob Nufer of Switzerland
performed the first recorded Caeasarian operation on a living woman.
Appendix
3a, Thalidomide
30/7/1973, Families of thalidomide victims won £20 million damages
after an 11-year court case fought on their behalf by The Sunday Times
newspaper. Babies had been born with missing or malformed limbs after their
pregnant mothers took the drug for morning sickness.
16/10/1972. Protesters demanded compensation from the makers
of the drug Thalidomide.
29/11/1971, The British Government announced a fund of £3
million for the victims of thalidomide.
23/3/1970, In the UK, the High Court awarded £370,000 damages
to 18 children born with birth defects due to thalidomide, against Distillers (Biochemicals). Five
children born with tiny ‘flipper’ arms, the worst-disabled, received £28,000
each.
27/5/1968, The trial of the executives of the Chemie-Grunenthal company,
responsible for the Thalidomide disaster that killed 80,000 babies
and maimed 20,000 more, opened in Alsdorf, near Aachen. The trail was expected
to last at least three years, but was shut down on 18/12/1970. All defendants
were granted immunity from prosecution. The German Government and Grunenthal
agreed a compensation scheme that many parents regarded as inadequate. Thalidomide
was launched as a wonder cure for morning sickness on 1/10/1957; it was
withdrawn on 27/11/1961. It was sold as Distaval in the UK, as Contergan in
Germany. It emerged that no tests were done for effects on embryos; the
executives claimed nobody in the 1950s realised that drugs taken by the mother
could affect the foetus, which claim was untrue even then. Adults who took thalidomide
as a sedative in 1959 had suffered serious nerve damage.
14/9/1962, Distillers
Company agreed to pay £14 million to the victims of thalidomide.
1961, Thalidomide was withdrawn from
sale. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the USA had been slow to
approve it, so it was little-used there. A 1964 FDA report stated that just 17
US babies were affected. However there were clinical trials of Thalidomide in
the US, and some US doctors prescribed it without waiting for FDA approval,
meaning several hundred US babies were likely affected; not all victims know
that their congenital malformations were due to the drug,
31/12/1958, There were fears that a drug prescribed for
morning sickness, thalidomide, might be causing birth defects.
Phcomelia, or ’seal-limbs’, where the long bones of the leg and arms did not
develop, appeared to be on the rise. It was later discovered that thalidomide was toxic to foetuses of between 27
and 40 days after conception. Some 10,000 babies were born woth congenital
malformations due to this drug.
1/10/1957, Thalidomide was first prescribed to pregnant
women, as a cure for morning sickness.
Appendix i,
AIDS
AIDS statistics, click here, https://www.avert.org/global-hiv-and-aids-statistics
24/11/1991. Freddie Mercury, lead singer of the rock group Queen, died of
AIDS, aged 45.
10/10/1992, Tens
of thousands rallied in Washington, D. C., calling on the government to
dedicate more funding to combating HIV/AIDS.
17/6/1991. 8,000 scientists met for an international
conference on AIDS at Florence. AIDS was now in 163 countries and especially
severe in Africa; the WHO estimated that over 1.5 million people had developed
AIDS, with a total of 8–10 million infected. WHO expected a total of 40 million
AIDS cases by 2000. In the USA, 170 had the disease, and a further 6,000
contracted it every month; in the UK 4,500 cases had been reported since 1981.
4/6/1991. The AIDS epidemic worsened in Malawi, with
37% of the population now carrying the virus.
2/5/1991. The World Health Organisation estimated that 40 million
people will have the AIDS virus by 2000.
11/12/1990, The British Government announced it would award
£42 million to haemophiliacs who
became infected with HIV after being treated with contaminated Inhibitor Factor VIII.
8/3/1990. Over 3,000 people in the UK now had AIDS.
11/1/1990. In the UK, 1,612 have died of AIDS.
8/11/1988. In the UK, the death toll from AIDS reached 1,002, with 1,862
cases reported. A government report issued on 30/11/1988 feared that up to
50,000 in the UK could be HIV+ and that by 1992 17,000 AIDS deaths might have
occurred.
5/9/1988. Britain now had 1,730 reported cases of
AIDS and 949 deaths.
11/7/1988. 8,500 people in the UK were known to be carrying the AIDS
virus.
13/1/1988. One in every 61 babies born in New York in December 1987 had
the AIDS virus. Doctors believed up to 40% of them would develop AIDS. In the UK, there were 1,277 AIDS cases; 697
had died from the disease.
10/8/1987, One person a day was dying of AIDS in
Britain.
20/3/1987, The drug AZT was launched to combat AIDS.
15/2/1987. The World Health Organisation announced that a total of
38,401 AIDS cases had been reported in 85 countries. The AIDS virus had been
discovered in the USA on 23/4/1984.
21/11/1986, The UK Government began an AIDS awareness advertising
campaign focussed on safe sex.
16/12/1985, 8,000 Americans had now died of AIDS.
2/10/1985. Hollywood actor Rock Hudson died of AIDS, aged 59.
26/9/1985, The British Government announced £1 million funding to stop
the spread of AIDS.
25/7/1985, Film star Rock Hudson was admitted to hospital suffering from AIDS.
10/5/1985. The World Health Organisation announced that AIDS cases were
doubling every year in the USA and Europe. Worldwide, 11,000 AIDS cases had
been reported since the virus was discovered on 23/4/1984.
11/4/1985. An 18-month old boy
became the first British baby to die of AIDS.
15/3/1985, In Britain, blood donors were now to be tested for
AIDS.
23/4/1984. The discovery of the AIDS virus was announced in the USA.
21/5/1983. The US made AIDS top health priority.
1/5/1983, The HIV virus that caused AIDS was identified
31/12/1981. Doctors became aware of a new disease that destroyed the
immune system and appeared to be common in homosexuals. This was to be known as
AIDS.
5/6/1981, The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention
reported that five homosexual men in Los Angeles, California, had a rare form
of pneumonia seen only in patients with weakened immune systems. These were the
first recognised cases of AIDS.
Appendix ii,
Cholera
10/1/2010, Deaths
from a cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe
now amounted to 4,293, with 98,741 cases reported.
1961, The El Tor
outbreak of cholera started in
Indonesia. Assisted by air travel, it reached Taiwan by 1963, and by 1964 was
present in Taiwan, Hong Kong, India and Egypt. By 1965 it was found in Iran and
Saudi Arabia, and by1970 had reached Libya, Lebanon and Astrakhan,
29/8/1902, A cholera epidemic in Egypt killed over 9,000.
13/2/1832. Asiatic
Cholera appeared for the first time in London.
21/6/1831, King William IV
of England, on opening the UK Parliament, announced the arrival of a
virulent strain of cholera in
Europe. Starting in the Ganges area of India in 1826, cholera had spread
through Iran and Turkey into south east Europe. It first hit the UK at
Sunderland on 19/10/1831. Thereafter it spread rapidly in the slums of the new
industrial cities, killing 3,000 in Glasgow, 700 in Leeds, 200 in York, 1,500
in Liverpool, 900 in Manchester and 6,800 in London. Britain was subsequently
hit by a further cholera outbreak in 1848/9 (450 deaths in Edinburgh, 3,800 in
Glasgow, 7,000 across the whole of Scotland). Cholera came again in 1853/4,
starting from Tyneside, and in 1854 in London. This outbreak killed 30,000
across the UK; 10,738 in London alone. The fourth and final outbreak of cholera
in Britain was in 1866, starting from Southampton; total UK fatalities amounted
to 18,000.
1817, A cholera pandemic began in India and spread to east Africa
and across much of SE Asia, from Japan to the Philippines.
Appendix iii,
Diabetes and Insulin
23/5/1977, Scientists reported using bacteria to
make insulin.
1865, Insulin was first
synthesised.
24/7/1925. Insulin (patented 12/6/1922) was first used to
successfully treat a patient, 6 year old Patricia Cheeseman, at Guy’s Hospital London.
12/6/1922, Insulin,
the treatment for diabetes, was patented by Frederick Banting. See 27/7/1921
and 24/7/1925.
11/1/1922, Leonard Thompson, aged 14, became the first
patient to be treated with insulin for his diabetes, at Toronto General. Hospital. He lived for another 13 years before dying
of pneumonia at age 27.
27/7/1921. Insulin
was isolated by Dr
Frederick Banting at the University of Toronto medical School,
helped by his assistant Charles Best, and tested
on a de-pancreatised dog the same day. It was first used successfully on a
human on 11/1/1922.
1916, The name ‘insuline’ was
first coined by English physiologist Edward A Sharpey-Schafer for the hormone
produced by the Islets of Langerhans in the pancreas.
27/1/1899, Charles Best, Canadian co-discoverer of insulin for treating diabetes, was born
in West Pembroke, Maine.
14/11/1891, Sir Frederick Banting,
Canadian co-discoverer of insulin
with McLeod
and Best
in 1922, was born in Alliston,
Ontario.
1889,
German physiologists J
von Mering and OMinkowski
removed the pancreas from a dog and noted that the animal now urinated more
frequently, and its urine attracted flies and wasps. The urine was found to
contain sugar, and the dog went into a diabetic coma and died.
1869,
The Islets of Langerhans were
discovered in the pancreas by German medical student Paul Langerhans,
aged 22. These cells produce glucagon and insulin, essential for the body to
regulate its sugar metabolism.
1860,
French physician Etienne
Lancereaux, 31, attributed diabetes to a pancreatic disorder.
25/7/1847, Physician
Paul
Langerhans was born in Berlin, Germany. In 1869 he discovered
the small groups of cells in the pancreas now known as the islets of Langerhans. They were later discovered to be the source
of insulin.
1815,
Michel
Chevreul, born Angers, France, 31/8/1786, showed that the
sugar in the urine of diabetics was glucose; an important step in understanding
the disease. See 1860.
1788,
English physician Thomas
Cawley noted abnormalities in the pancreas of a diabetic
person n whom he was conducting an autopsy. However Cawley disregarded this observation,
still believing that diabetes was a disease of the kidneys,
1683,
Swiss anatomist Johann
Conrad Brunner, aged 30, removed the pancreas of a dog and shwed
that the animal then developed a huge thirst. This was an early indication that
diabetes was due to an abnormality in the pancreas, see 1788.
11/11/1675, Death of Thomas Willis,
physician to King
Charles II and to the Duke of York. He was the first to notice an
increase in what we now know as diabetes amongst his more affluent clients – he
called it ‘the pissing evil’. He also noted the very sweet nature of this
urine. The wealthy in England were raising their consumption of sugar, now
being imported from the Caribbean, both in desserts and in tea. In fact the
issue of sweet urine and diabetes was also known to the ancient Greeks, Indians
and Chinese.
643, Death of the Chinese
physician Chen Ch’uan. He was the first to describe the symptoms of diabetes,
including thirst and sweet urine.
Appendix
iv, Influenza and other respiratory inc. Covid-19
10/8/2010, The World Health Organisation
declared the H1N1
influenza pandemic officially over.
11/6/2009, The influenza
strain H1N1 sparked fears of a global flu pandemic.
28/4/2009, The
Mexican Government confirmed an outbreak of Swine Flu in humans.
30/9/2005, The UN issued warnings that a pandemic of Avian Flu might be imminent, and kill between
5 and 150 million people.
13/3/2003, The
first case of SARS was reported, in Hanoi, Vietnam. The SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) virus killed 813 and affected 8,400
people. In Canada there were 251 cases and 41 deaths. In China there were 5,327
cases and 349 deaths. In Hong Kong there were 1,755 cases and 300 deaths. In
Taiwan there were 665 cases and 180 deaths.
9/1/1970, In Britain, Hong
Kong Flu claimed 2,850 lives in a week.
7/1921, The
last new cases of Spanish Flu were being reported
in New Caledonia.
1920, The Spanish Flu pandemic had killed 50 - 100 million people.
In the developed world, mortality was about 2%; in Britain, 250,000 died,
mostly aged between 20 and 40. Deaths in other countries included, Bulgaria
51,000, France 238,000, Germany 427,000, Italy 544,000, Portugal 136,000, Spain
252,000. However in India, where 18.5 million died, it was 6%, and in Egypt, where
138,000 died, mortality was 10%. Death rates tended to be higher in
populations which had been less exposed to the flu virus previously.
26/10/1918. In London alone, in the past week, Spanish flu claimed 2,225 lives.
21/10/1918. The
Spanish Flu epidemic began in
Britain. 150,000 died of this disease in the last quarter of 1918. It killed
twice as many as died in World War One.
4/3/1918, The
first recorded case of Spanish flu, in
a US soldier at Cape Funston, a military base in Kansas.
17/2/1900, The influenza epidemic in Britain ended.
9/1/1900, The
influenza epidemic in London was killing 50 people a day.
Appendix v,
Malaria
2016, There were 216
million malaria cases worldwide, 80% of them in India and 14 sub-Saharan
countries. 445,000 people died of malaria.
31/12/2014, During 2014, malaria killed 627,000 worldwide, 77%
of these being children under 5. In 2014 there were 207 million new cases of
malaria, and Africa lost an estimated US$ 12 million productivity due to the
disease.
1977, The number of malaria
cases in India stood at 10 million, up from 100,000 in 1965. The emergence of
resistant strains of the disease was to blame.
10/12/1902. Major Ronald Ross of the British army won the Nobel Prize
for medicine because of his work relating malaria to mosquitoes.
20/8/1897, Sir Ronald Ross
discovered that malaria was spread by mosquitoes.
Appendix,
Measles
6/12/2019, A surge in measles cases worldwide was reported,
with 10 million cases and 142,000 deaths occurring in 2018. Survivors often die
soon after because their immune system has been compromised. Anti-vacination
sympathies have been blamed for the increase, with cases in 2019 trending
towards three times that for 2018.
27/9/2017, The World Health Organisation declared that
measles had been ‘eliminated’ from the UK, Spain and Denmark for the frst time
ever; these countries had been free of the disease for 36 months. 33 of the 53
countries in Europe wree now measles-free. However doctors in the UK were still
treating 1,000 cases from overseas. Over 95% of British children had been
vaccinated woth the MMR jab, despite publicity against it. In 1961 there were 764,000 measles cases in
Britain, resulting in 152 deaths.
1963, First vaccine
for measles was licenced.
1954, The measles
virus was first isolated.
10/9/1624, Physician Thomas Sydenham was born in England. He was
the first to describe measles and identify scarlet fever. He advocated the use
of opium to alleviate pain, chinchona bark (quinine) to relieve malaria, and
iron to treat anaemia.
Appendix vi,
Mental illness
29/12/1987, Prozac made its debut in the USA. It was initially
developed as a drug to treat high blood pressure, but the success seen in
animals in this area failed to materialise with humans. However it found a role
as an anti-depressant. Before Prozac and other drugs, depression, sometimes
romantically referred to as ‘melancholy’, could lead to committal to a mental
institution in the most severe cases, so sufferers were reluctant to seek
treatment. Prozac boosts the level of serotonin in the brain by preventing its
destruction after it has delivered its message; it is a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor or SSRI. Although some
patients have alleged that it changes personality, even leading to suicide
attempts, some 35 million people (2006) take it worldwide.
13/11/1962. UK doctors estimated that 40,000 Britons were taking pep pills.
6/6/1961, Carl Gustav Jung, Swiss psychologist and
associate of Freud,
died aged 85.
9/7/1943, Clifford Beers, US mental hygiene pioneer,
died aged 67.
15/7/1940, Eugen Bleuler, Swiss psychiatrist who
introduced the term schizophrenia to describe the disorder previously known as
dementia praecox, died aged 82.
23/9/1939. Sigmund Freud,
Austrian psychiatrist, born 6/5/1856, died
in Hampstead aged 83. He had moved to
London in 1938 following Hitler’s annexation of Austria.
6/1/1938. Sigmund
Freud
arrived in London, fleeing Nazi persecution.
1937, Italian doctors Ugo Cerlutti
and Lucio
Bini developed the use of electro-convulsive
therapy (ECT) to treat schizophrenia.
1916, F W Mott developed a theory of
shell-shock.
1911, Bleuler in Switzerland coined the term
‘schizophrenia’.
17/9/1910, A London
doctor stated that if lunacy kept
increasing at the current rate, the sane would be outnumbered by the insane
within 40 years.
1906,
Alzheimers Disease was first described by Alois Alzheimer.
1/1/1906, In Britain the Lunacy Commission reported that on this date 121,979 persons were certified as insane.
1890, In Britain the Lunacy Act compelled local authorities
to provide asylum accommodation for all those who, through mental incapacity,
could not provide for themselves and who had no relatives to care for them.
23/6/1888, Edmund Gurney, English psychologist, died
(born 23/3/1847).
17/7/1887, Dorothy Lynde Dix, pioneer in the humane
treatment of the mentally disabled in the US (born 4/4/1802 in Hampden, Maine),
died in Trenton, New Jersey.
26/7/1875, Carl Jung, Swiss psychoanalyst, was born in
Kesswil.
29/11/1874, Antonio Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Moniz was
born in Avanca, Portugal. In 1935 he
developed prefrontal lobotomy as a treatment for mental illness.
7/2/1870, Birth of Alfred Adler, the psychoanalyst who introduced
the concept of the inferiority complex.
6/5/1856, Sigmund Freud,
Austrian
pioneer of psychoanalysis, was born in Freiburg, Moravia.
23/3/1847, Edmund Gurney, English psychologist, was born
(died 23/6/1888).
13/12/1840, Jean Esquirol, French psychiatrist, died (born
3/2/1772).. In 1817 he began a series of lectures on the treatment of the
insane in French asylums, exposing such mistreatment that the Government appointed a commission to
investigate.
3/2/1772, Jean Esquirol, French psychiatrist, was born
(died 13/12/1840. In 1817 he began a series of lectures on the treatment of the
insane in French asylums, exposing such mistreatment that the Government appointed a commission to
investigate.
Appendix
vii, Polio
8/2020, Africa was declared free
of polio.Nigeria was the last African country where the disease was
present..The disease was present in nature now only in Afghanistan and
Pakistan.
12/4/1955, The Salk polio vaccine was pronounced
safe.
23/2/1954, In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, the first mass inoculation of children
against polio began, using the Salk vaccine.
23/2/1954, In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, the first mass inoculation of
children against polio began, using the Salk vaccine.
11/11/1953. The polio
virus was identified.
26/3/1953. The Salk vaccine proved effective
against polio.
1927, The ‘Iron Lung’, or Drinker Respirator, was
invented by Harvard Professor Philip Drinker. It was intended for child
victims of respiratory faulire due to acute poliomyelitis.
28/10/1914. Jonas Salk, US bacteriologist who discovered the anti-poliomyelitis
vaccine, was born in New York City, to Polish-Jewish immigrant parents.
Appendix
viii, Smallpox
8/5/1980. The World Health Organisation declared that smallpox had been eradicated.
11/9/1978. The world’s
last smallpox victim died. She was a medical school photographer in
Birmingham, and had caught the virus on 30/8/1979 after it escaped from a
laboratory located on the floor below her workplace. The Head of Department
responsible for this laboratory later committed suicide by cutting his throat.
21/1/1962 . Smallpox was also a threat as an epidemic hit
Britain and other countries insisted visitors from the UK were vaccinated.
19/2/1902. France made smallpox vaccinations
compulsory.
31/1/1902, The number of smallpox
victims in London rose to 2,273.
21/1/1799. Edward Jenner
introduced the smallpox
vaccination. In the 18th century, smallpox took
over from the bubonic plague as the major killer disease. Edward Jenner worked
as a doctor in Berkeley, Gloucestershire. By observing local milkmaids, Jenner
tested the generally held belief that cowpox sufferers were immune to smallpox.
In 1796 he experimented by scraping pus from a cowpox sore on the arm of a
milkmaid and inserting it into two cuts on the arm of a young boy. On 1/7/1796
he did the same with pus from a smallpox sore. The boy caught cowpox but not
smallpox. After doing this to 23 other people, Jenner called this method
‘vaccination’, meaning ‘from a cow’. Jenner published his findings
in 1798 and despite scepticism from doctors, vaccination became widely
accepted. Even members of the Royal Family were vaccinated. Vaccination became
free for all infants in 1840 and compulsory in Britain in 1853. In 1980 the
World Health Organisation declared smallpox had been eradicated throughout the
world.
14/5/1796. Dr Edward Jenner,
born 17/5/1749, from Berkeley, Gloucestershire, carried out his first
human vaccination. He infected
an eight year old, James Phipps, with cowpox, or
‘vaccinia’ disease, having once heard a dairymaid claim that she would never
catch smallpox because she had been infected by cowpox. Then on July 1st
he deliberately exposed the boy to smallpox; he proved resistant to the disease.
17/5/1749, Edward Jenner, pioneer of vaccination, was born at Berkeley vicarage,
Gloucestershire.
13/2/1713, Dutch sailors inadvertently introduced smallpox
to the indigenous Khoisan people of South Africa. The mortality rate was 90%.
Appemdix a
– National Health Service (UK)
27/7/2000. Tony Blair’s government unveiled its national
plan for the Health Service, with a ten-year package of sweeping reforms and
restructuring. The days of dirty wards,
inedible food, and entertainment restricted to volunteer-staffed radio stations
were over, according to the proposals.
29/1/1988. Junior Health Minister (Conservative), Edwina Curry,
told people they should forego holidays
to pay for private health care.
10/6/1968, NHS prescription charges were reintroduced.
See 1/2/1965.
1/2/1965, In the UK, NHS prescription charges were removed. They
were re-introduced on 10/6/1968, see Price; 16/1/1968.
6/7/1960. Aneurin Bevan, founder of the National Health
Service in 1948, Minister of Health 1945-51, died. He was born on 15/11/1897.
7/6/1960, The first NHS hearing aids were issued.
23/4/1951. The Labour Health Minister Nye Bevan and two other
ministers resign over the introduction of charges
for NHS glasses and false teeth. The
charges were imposed to pay for defence costs.
6/10/1949, Aneurin Bevan
gave some
figures for the demand on Britain’s new NHS since its inception on 5/7/1948.
187,000,000 prescriptions had been dispensed at a cost of 2s 9d (14p) each;
5,250,000 pairs of glasses had been given out, with another 3,000,000 on order;
8,500,000 dental patients had been treated. The Government Actuary, Sir George Epps,
had
estimated that the cost of the NHS in its first year would be £170 million; the
actual figure turned out to be £242 million. Annual costs were expected to fall
as the population grew fitter; in fact annual costs rose to £384 million in
1952/3.
5/7/1948. The National Health
Service was established in the UK. Introduced under a Labour
government, it provided free medical
treatment, and free prescriptions for glasses, teeth, and wigs. In its
first year the NHS cared for 47.5 million patients, provided 5.25 million pairs
of glasses, 7,000 artificial eyes and 5,000 wigs. Doctors wrote 187 million NHS
prescriptions, and by 1950, 95% of UK citizens were using the NHS.
7/6/1948, Over half of UK doctors agreed to join the NHS.
18/2/1948. In a poll by the British Medical Association, 86% of doctors voted against joining the NHS.
27/1/1948, UK medical consultants threatened to boycott the new National Health Service.
21/3/1946. Aneurin Bevan announced Labour Government
plans for a National Health Service.to become operational in 1948. The cost per year was
expected to be around £152 million (£5,000 million in 2015 prices; actual 2015
NHS spending is more like £115,000 million).
17/2/1944, In the UK, the White Paper on the National Health
Service was published.
4/5/1910. Lloyd George introduced a National Health Insurance Bill.
Appendix b
– Hospitals, (London)
1982, The number of hospitals in
the UK had fallen from 3,000 in 1960 to 2,650. The number of psychiatric
hospitals had fallen over this period from 2,650 to 2,150.
1980, A specialist surgical team
for heart transplants was established at Harefield
Hospital, NW of London, by Magdi Yacoub (born 1935). Harefield Park was
the home of the founder of The Lancet.
1967, The first research and teaching hospice in the UK (for the care of the
terminally ill) was established at St Christopher’s Hospice, London, founded by
Cicely
Saunders.
4/9/1965. Albert Schweitzer,
French
medical missionary, died aged 90 in Lambarene, Gabon, in the village where he
had opened his hospital for natives in 1913.
He was aged 90, and won the Nobel
Prize in 1952.
1959, In Swindon the first part
of the new Princess Margaret Hospital
was opened.
1957, The reconstruction of Guy’s
Hospital, London began, at a cost of well over
£2,000,000.
15/4/1925, Sir James Barrie donated the copyright of Peter Pan to Great Ormond
Street Hospital for Sick Children in London.
1916, The Maudsley Hospital, London SE5, a psychiatric hospital, was founded.
15/8/1913, Dr. Albert Schweitzer performed major surgery
for the first time at the site of what would become the Albert Schweitzer
Hospital at Lambaréné in Gabon, at that time a part of French Equatorial
Africa.
1887, The London Skin Hospital
was founded.
1874, The Central
London Hospital for Throat, Nose and Ear was founded.
1868, The East End Hospital for
Children was founded.
1867, Queen’s Hospital for Children was founded.
1866, The Belgrave Hospital for
Children and the Grosvenor Hospital
for Children were founded.
1863, The Hospital
for Diseases of the Throat, London, was founded.
1861, The National Dental Hospital was founded.
1860, St Peter’s
Hospital for Stone, London, was
founded.
1859, The National Hospital for Paralysis and Epilepsy was founded.
1858, The Royal Dental Hospital was founded.
1857, The National Hospital for Diseases of the Heart, the Royal Eye Hospital and the Liverpool Infirmary for Children were
founded.
1855, The Poplar Hosiptal for Accidents was founded.
1854, The Royal Hospital for
Incurables, Putney, was founded,
14/2/1852. London’s famous children’s hospital, in Great Ormond Street, opened. The first
patient admitted was Eliza Armstrong.
1851, The Free Cancer Hospital,
Fulham, was founded.
1850, The London Smallpox Hospital
was founded.
1849, The London Homeopathic Hospital
was founded.
1848, The Victoria Park Hospital for
Diseases of the Heart and Lungs was founded.
1847, The Samaritan Free Hospital for Women was founded.
1840, Kensington
Children’s Hospital was founded.
1838, The Royal
National Orthopaedic Hospital, London, and the Metropolitan Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital were founded.
1836, The Metropolitan
Free Hospital was founded in east London top treat poor patients. However
it was later forced to adopt a subscription model to ensure funding, so had to
drop the word ‘Free’ from its title.
1835, St Marks Hospital for Cancer was founded.
1829, The Hospital for Children, Manchester was founded.
1818, The Charing Cross Hospital
was founded,
1816, The Royal Ear Hospital, the
Royal Westminister Ophthalmic Hospital
and the Royal Waterloo Hospital for
Children and Women were founded.
1814, The Royal Hospital for Diseases of the Chest was founded.
1806, Exeter Eye Hospital was founded.
1805, Moorflelds Eye Hospital was founded.
1802, The London Fever Hospital
was founded.
1792, The Liverpool Royal Lunatic
Asylum was founded.
1787, Wakefield Hospital was founded.
1784, Hull Royal Infirmary was founded.
1783, Kent Dispensary and Miller Hospital was
founded.
1782, Nottingham General Hospital was
founded.
1782, Hull Infirmary was founded.
1777, The York Asylum was founded.
1776, Hereford General Infirmary was founded.
1771, Leicester Infirmary was founded.
1770, Radcliffe Informary, Oxford, was
founded.
1769, Lincoln County Hospital was founded.
1767, Leeds Infirmary was founded.
1766, Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge,
opened.
1766, The Manchester Royal
Lunatic Asylum was founded.
1765, John Morgan founded the first medical school
in the USA,
at the College of Pemnnsylvania.
1752, Manchester Royal Infirmary was founded.
11/2/1752, The first hospital in what is now the USA
opened, in Pennsylvania.
1751, The first mental institution was opened in London.
29/3/1751, Thomas Coram, English philanthropist who
established the Foundling Hospital in Hatton Garden , London (17/10/1740) died
(born 1668).
1750, The City of
London Maternity Hospital was founded.
1746, Middlesex County Hospital was founded, to treat smallpox. Worcester Royal Infirmary was founded.
1745, Gloucester Infirmary was founded. Shrewsbury Infirmary was founded. Liverpool Royal Infirmary was founded
1743, Devon and Exeter Hospital was founded.
17/10/1740, The Foundling
Hospital opened in Hatton Garden, London.
17/10/1739, The Foundling Hospital (now Coram), the
UK’s first dedicated children’s charity, was created by a Royal Charter of King George II.
1738,
The Bath General Hospital
was founded, so as to make use of the curative properties of the water in the
spa town.
17/12/1724, Thomas Guy,
founder of Guys Hospital, died (born 1644).
1723,
Guys
Hospital, London, was founded by Thomas Guy, a bookseller aged 77 The
hospital opened in 1725.
14/1/1716. Westminster Hospital founded.
30/6/1696. Greenwich Hospital founded.
10/2/1623, George Heriot, founder of Heriot’s Hospital Edinburgh, died (born 1563).
26/6/1553, Christ’s Hospital London was founded on the ste of the former Greyfriars Monastery
by King
Edward VI, as a hospital for poor children.
1407, Bethlehem Hospital, London, became an institution for the insane;
later known as Bedlam. It was originally founded as a priory for the
Order of the Star of Bethlehem in 1247. Records show that some hospital
patients wer treated there as early as 1330.
5/6/1123. St Bartholomew Hospital, London, was founded.
Ca. 1085,
St Wulstan’s Hospital, Worcester,
was founded by Bishop Wulstan.
1084,
St John’s Hospital, Canterbury was
founded by Lanfranc.
977,
A hospital was founded at Baghdad. It employed 24 physicians and had a surgery
and a ward for eye disorders.
937, King Athelstan founded St Peters
Hospital at York.
794, A Saxon hospital existed
at St Albans.
1524, The Hospital of Jesus of
Nazareth, Mexico, was founded. It remains as the oldest hospital in the
Americas.
Appendix c
– Anaesthitics,
7/4/1853, Queen Victoria used chloroform to help
her through the birth of her seventh child, Prince Leopold. This established
chloroform as the favoured anaesthetic in Britain.
9/11/1847, Obstetrician Sir James Simpson, Professor of Midwifery at
the University of Edinburgh
demonstrated a new anaesthetic, trichloromethane,
better known as chloroform. Claimed
to be three times as effective as ether, it was to be of great use during
difficult childbirths; however Scottish Calvinists opposed the use of any
anaesthetic during childbirth.
21/12/1846. Anaesthetic was used in a British
hospital for the first time (see 16/10/1846).It was used by surgeon Robert Liston
during a leg amputation at University College Hospital, London.
16/10/1846. Anaesthetic was used successfully for the
first time in a major operation, at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dentist William Morton
Warren used diethyl ether before removing a tumour from a man’s jaw.
30/3/1842. The first anaesthetic, ether, was used in
an operation, in Jefferson, Georgia, USA. The surgeon was Dr Crawford Long. He removed a
cyst from the neck of a Mr James Venables. The bill for the anaesthesia was US$
2.25. Dr Long performed 9 successful operations with ether, including the
amputation of a boy’s finger, but was accused of sorcery by the older citizens
of Jefferson and threatened with lynching if he continued.
1/11/1815, Crawford Williamson Long, surgeon, was born in
Danielsville, Georgia, USA. He is credited with the first use of ether as an
anaesthetic, on 30/3/1842.
27/10/1794, Birth of Robert Lister, Scottish doctor who performed the first operation using
anaesthetic.
1500 BCE, Opium poppies
were being used to induce a form of anaesthesia in the Middle East.
1236, Dominican
Friar
Theodoric of Lucca pioneered a form of anaesthetic. He advocated the
use of sponges soaked in narcotic and held to the patient’s nose; he favoured
the use of opium and mandragora.