People in medicine

We have various historical articles, including one for each year in which someone has picked out a significant medical and interesting item as well as medical historical entries which include people such as Hippocrates. This time line is people-centred, that at History of Medicine is event-centred.

Timeline: Pre-history - 1000

400~BCE Sushruta writes “Sushruta Samhita” on surgical procedures
420 BCE Hippocrates begins the scientific study of medicine by maintaining that diseases have natural causes.
280 BCE Herophilus studies the nervous system and distinguishes between sensory nerves and motor nerves.
250 BCE Erasistratus studies the brain and distinguishes between the cerebrum and cerebellum.
50 Pedanius Dioscorides describes the medical applications of plants in De Materia Medica.
180 Galen studies the connection between paralysis and severance of the spinal cord.
750~ Madhavacharya (Madhavakara, Madhavkar) compiles the Madhav Nidana .(also known as Nidāna, Madhava Nidana, Rugvinischay or Gadavinishchay)
920~ Al-Razi(Razis) produces the Continens Liber or al-Hawi, The Comprehensive Book

1242 Ibn al-Nafis suggests that the right and left ventricles of the heart are separate and describes the lesser circulation of blood.
1249 Roger Bacon writes about convex lens eyeglasses for treating farsightedness.
1403 Venice implements a quarantine against the Black Death.
1451 Nicholas of Cusa invents concave lens spectacles to treat nearsightedness.

1518 Thomas Linacre founds the Royal College of Physicians
1543 Andreas Vesalius publishes De Fabrica Corporis Humani which corrects Greek medical errors and revolutionises medicine.
1546 Gerolamo Fracastoro proposes that epidemic diseases are caused by transferable seedlike entities.
1553 Miguel Serveto describes the lesser circulation of blood through the lungs.
1559 Realdo Colombo describes the lesser circulation of blood through the lungs in detail.
1603 Girolamo Fabrici studies leg veins and notices that they have valves which only allow blood to flow toward the heart.
1628 William Harvey explains the vein-artery system and structure of the heart in De Motu Cordis et Sanguinis.
1661 Marcello Malpighi describes the capillary network
1701 Giacomo Pylarini gives the first smallpox inoculations/].
1747 James Lind discovers that citrus fruits prevent scurvy.
1763 Claudius Aymand performs the first successful appendectomy.
1785 William Withering reports on digitalis
1796 Edward Jenner develops a smallpox vaccination method.

1800 Humphry Davy announces the anaesthetic properties of nitrous oxide
1816 Rene Laennec invents the stethoscope
1842 Crawford Long performs the first surgical operation using anaesthesia
1847 Ignaz Semmelweis studies and prevents the transmission of puerperal fever
1870 Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch establish the germ theory of disease
1881 Louis Pasteur develops an anthrax vaccine
1882 Louis Pasteur develops a rabies vaccine
1882 Robert Koch discovers Mycobacterium tuberculosis
1890 Emil von Behring discovers antitoxins and uses them to develop tetanus and diphtheria vaccines
1897 Aspirin the first completely synthetic drug (launched 1899)
1901 Karl Landsteiner's first work on ABO grouping of blood - beginning the basis of transplantation
1906 Frederick Hopkins suggests the existence of vitamins and suggests that a lack of vitamins causes scurvy and rickets
1907 Paul Ehrlich develops a chemotherapeutic cure for sleeping sickness
1921 Edward Mellanby discovers vitamin D and shows that its absence causes rickets
1928 Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin
1932 Gerhard Domagk develops a chemotherapeutic cure for streptococcus
1944 Oswald Avery shows that DNA is the genetic material
1952 Jonas Salk develops the first polio vaccine
1961 William McBride describes teratogenicity of thalidomide
1981 Michael Gottlieb describes AIDS.
1982 Barry Marshall and Robin Warren describe role Helicobacter pylori