Medicine Through Time - Key Dates

Black Death

The Great Plague

Chadwick's 'Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population'

The 1st Public Health Act

The 2nd Public Health Act

Pasteur's Germ Theory

Pasteur's Chicken Cholera Vaccine

Harvey's 'Anatomical Account of the Motion of the Heart and Blood'

Vesalius' 'Fabric of the Human Body'

John Snow maps out deaths due to Cholera Outbreak

Bazalgette's work on London's sewerage system

London's Metropolitan Board of Works established

Jenner's Smallpox Vaccination

Smallpox completely eradicated

Snow's 'On the Mode of Communication of Cholera'

The Great Stink

Crimean War begins

Nightingale Training School for Nurses set up at St Thomas'

Nightingale's 'Notes on Nursing'

Nightingale's 'Notes on Hospitals'

Institut Pasteur established

Koch found the germ that caused Anthrax

Koch discovered the germ that caused Septicaemia

Koch found the germ causing TB

First X-Ray
(Wilhelm Rontgen)

First use of Radiotherapy
(Emil Grubbe)

First CT Scan
(Godfrey Hounsfield)

Dialysis
(Willen Kolff)

Structure of DNA discovered
(Watson and Crick)

Establishment of the NHS

Liberal Welfare Reforms

Joseph Lister noticed a bacteria called Penicillin
(no evidence)

Lister treats a nurse's infected wound with Penicillin

Fleming sent to France to study soldiers' wounds

Fleming discovers the staphylococci bacteria has disappeared from the petri dish

Fleming writes about Penicillin in a medical journal

Florey and Chain went to America to get funding for reseach

The first test of Penicillin on Albert Alexander

The USA starts mass producing penicillin

Britain mass produce Penicillin

Prescription Charges Introduced

Prescription charges abolished

Prescription charge brought back

Walter Cannon uses a Barium Meal

Henry Dale discovers Histamine

Frederick Banting and Charles Best discover Insulin

Edgar Allen discovers Oestrogen

Ernst Laqueur isolated Testosterone

Invention of the Electron Microscope

Syntex developed Norethisterone which lead to the production of contraceptive pills

Leroy Stevens discovered Stem Cells

Patrick Steptoe developed IVF

Louise Brown - The first test tube baby

Endoscopes developed

MRI scans developed

In the Visible Human project

The Human Genome project

Gunther Von Hagens performed live dissections on TV

Use of Thalidomide

Joseph Salk discovered a Polio vaccine

American surgeons implanted electrodes connected into a miniature computed into the visual cortex of a blind man

Salverson 606 developed to treat Syphilis - Paul Ehrlich

Prontosil developed by Domagk

The Printing Press developed

Martin Luther posted his 'Ninety-Five Theses' which began the Protestant Reformation

Ambroise Pare developed ligatures

Antony van Leeuwenhoek created a superior microscope that magnifies up to 200x

Inoculation first used in Europe - Lady Mary Montague

Industrial Revolution

Cholera Epidemic

Elizabeth Blackwell becomes the first woman doctor in USA

Doctors' Qualifications had to be regulated

Elizabeth Garrett-Anderson becomes the first female doctor in the UK

The UK government starts to introduce laws against the pollution of rivers, the sale of poor quality food and building regulations were enforced

Isolation hospitals were set up for patients with infectious diseases

Marie Curie discovers radioactive elements radium and polonium

Emergency hospital scheme introduced - Funded and ran by government

National Health Service Act

First kidney transplant (America)

Contraceptive pill introduced

Christiaan Barnard (South Africa) performed the first heart transplant - the patient lived for 18 days

National Organ Donor register created