The practice of preventing, diagnosing, and treating disease, both physical and mental; also any substance used in the treatment of disease. The basis of medicine is anatomy (the structure and form of the body) and physiology (the study of the body's functions).
In the West, medicine increasingly relies on new drugs and sophisticated surgical techniques, while diagnosis of disease is more and more by noninvasive procedures. The time and cost of Western-type medical training makes it inaccessible to many parts of the developing world; where health care of this kind is provided, it is often by auxiliary medical helpers trained in hygiene and the administration of a limited number of standard drugs for the prevalent diseases of a particular region.
| c. 2650 BC | Egypt | The Egyptian healer Imhotep is the first to attempt to find nonreligious causes of disease. |
| c. 2650 BC | China | Chinese emperor Huang Di begins the canon of internal medicine, with the text Nei Jing/Inner Canon of Medicine, which balances ideas of yin and yang. Most subsequent Chinese medical literature is founded on it. There is some evidence, however, suggesting that the Nei Jing may actually date from only the 3rd century BC. |
| c. 2500 BC | China | The practice of acupuncture is developed in China. |
| c. 1600 BC | Egypt | The Edwin Smith papyrus is written. The first medical book, it contains clinical descriptions of the examination, diagnosis, and treatment of injuries, and reveals an accurate understanding of the workings of the heart, stomach, bowels, and larger blood vessels. The papyrus is named after US scientist Edwin Smith, a pioneer in the study of Egyptian science who acquired it in Luxor, Egypt, in 1862. |
| c. 285 BC | Egypt, Ptolemaic Kingdom | Herophilus, an anatomist working at Alexandria, dissects human bodies and compares them with large mammals. He distinguishes the cerebrum and cerebellum, establishes the brain as the seat of thought, writes treatises on the human eye and on general anatomy, and writes a handbook for midwives. |
| c. 255 BC | China | The doctrine of the pulse, which emphasizes feeling the pulse as the most important aspect of diagnosis, and that a healthy life is achieved by a balance of yin and yang, is introduced in China. It will be compiled into the Mo Jing in about AD 300 by Wang Shu-he. |
| c. 90 BC | Rome | The Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro writes that disease is caused by the entry of imperceptible particles into the body – the first enunciation of germ theory. |
| c. 400 | Greece, Roman Empire | The Graeco-Roman physician Caelius Aurelianus is practising. His De morbis acutis et chronicis/Concerning Acute and Chronic Illness, a guide to acute and chronic diseases, becomes a highly respected text in the Middle Ages. |
| c. 501 | India | The Indian medical manual Susruta is compiled. It becomes a standard text for Indian physicians. |
| 529 | Italy | St Benedict of Nurcia establishes the first Benedictine monastery and hospital at Monte Cassino, near Naples, Italy. The monastery will become a centre of medical knowledge throughout the Middle Ages. |
| c. 900 | Europe | Spices from the East Indies are introduced to Europe around this time. They are used principally for medicinal purposes. |
| 1163 | France | At the council of Tours in France, the Catholic Church issues an edict against the mutilation of dead bodies. Although primarily aimed at the stripping of crusaders' bones for transport back to Europe, it also affects medical research. |
| 1248 | Egypt | Spanish-born Muslim Al-Baytar, ‘chief of botanists’ in Cairo, Egypt, writes Kitab al-jami/Collection of Simple Drugs, which lists 1,400 different remedies and is the largest and most popular Arab pharmacopoeia. |
| 1472 | Italy | Italian physician Giovanni Matteo Ferrari, writes his Useful Repertory of the Precepts of Avicenna, a commentary on the work of the great 11th century Arab physician Avicenna. |
| 1478 | Greece | The De medicina/On Medicine of the Greek physician Galen is produced in print for the first time, giving new currency to his theories. |
| 1493 | Europe, Spain | Syphilis appears in Europe for the first time, brought back from South America by sailors returning with the explorer Christopher Columbus. The disease is first reported in Barcelona, Spain. |
| 1500 | Swiss Confederation | Swiss doctor and sow gelder Jacob Nufer performs the first recorded Caesarean operation on a living woman, helping his wife to give birth safely. |
| 1531 | Greece | A rediscovered text by the classical Greek physician Galen, On Anatomical Procedures, is published for the first time. |
| 1546 | Italy | The Italian physician Girolamo Fracastoro publishes De contagione et contagiosis morbis et curatione/On Contagion and the Cure of Contagious Disease, in which he describes typhus for the first time, and also proposes that diseases are spread through microscopic bodies. |
| March 1676 | England | English physician Thomas Sydenham publishes Observationes medicae/Medical Observations, which will be a standard medical text for two centuries. In it, he analyses fevers and suggests cooling treatment for smallpox. |
| 1678 | North America | British colonist Thomas Thatcher publishes A Brief Rule... in Small Pocks or Measles, the first medical publication in North America. |
| 1717 | UK | Lady Mary Wortley Montagu writes Inoculation Against Smallpox, reporting the method of immunization known in the East for centuries and introducing the practice of inoculation for smallpox into England; the inoculation of the Princess of Wales makes it fashionable. |
| 1721 | North America | The first smallpox inoculations are performed in America by Dr Zabdiel Boylston in Boston, Massachusetts. Smallpox epidemics are a constant threat to colonial cities, and while some fear and mistrust the inoculation, most who have it administered survive. |
| 1763 | England | English clergyman Edmund Stone describes the effective treatment of fever using willow bark, from which the active ingredient of aspirin is later derived. |
| 1796 | England | English physician Edward Jenner performs the first vaccination against smallpox. |
| 1805 | UK | The British navy's success at Trafalgar is partly due to the fact that sailors have a regular ration of lime or lemon juice, which eradicates scurvy. |
| November 1854 | Ottoman Empire | English nurse Florence Nightingale arrives in Scutari, Ottoman Empire, and introduces sanitary measures in an effort to reduce deaths from cholera, dysentery, and typhus during the Crimean War. |
| 1858 | UK | The British physician Henry Gray publishes Anatomy of the Human Body, Descriptive and Surgical (Gray's Anatomy). It remains the standard text in anatomy for over 100 years. |
| 1860 | UK | English nurse Florence Nightingale establishes the Nightingale School for Nurses. The first nursing school in England, it establishes nursing as a profession for women. |
| 1863 | France | French parasitologist Casimir-Joseph Davaine shows that anthrax is due to the presence of rodlike micro-organisms in the blood. It is the first disease of animals and humans to be shown to be caused by a specific micro-organism. |
| 1874 | Austria | The Austrian surgeon Theodor Billroth develops the study of the bacterial causes of fever associated with wounds with the publication of Untersuchungen über die Vegetationsformen von Coccobacteria septica/Investigations of the Vegetal Forms of Coccobacteria septica. |
| 1881 | Cuba | Cuban physician Carlos Juan Finlay discovers that the mosquito Aëdes aegypti is the carrier of yellow fever. His results are published in 1886 but his experiments are ignored until 1900. |
| 1889 | Germany | German physiologists Oskar Minkowski and Joseph von Mering remove the pancreas from a dog, which then develops diabetic symptoms. It leads them to conclude that the pancreas secretes an antidiabetic substance, which is now known as insulin. |
| 1893 | USA | Canadian physician William Osler, US surgeons William Stewart Halsted and Howard Atwood Kelly, and US pathologist William Henry Welch establish Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, Maryland. Associated with Johns Hopkins Hospital, and created especially for teaching and research, it excels in clinical work and surgery, and sets an example that influences medical education in the USA. |
| 1898 | Netherlands | Martinus Willem Beijerinck identifies the first virus; it is the cause of tobacco mosaic disease. |
| 1900 | USA | US army pathologist Walter Reed establishes that yellow fever is caused by the bite of an Aëdes aegypti mosquito infected with the yellow fever parasite. His discovery leads to the creation of a vaccine and makes possible the completion of the Panama Canal. |
| 1903 | | Dutch physiologist Willem Einthoven invents the string galvanometer (electrocardiograph), which measures and records the tiny electrical impulses produced by contractions of the heart muscle. He uses it to diagnose different types of heart disease. |
| 1905 | United Kingdom, Germany | Aspirin, manufactured by the German pharmaceutical company Bayer AG, is introduced in Britain. |
| 1912 | USA | Polish-born US biochemist Casimir Funk isolates vitamin B1 (thiamine) and coins the name ‘vitamines’. This proves a vital discovery in the treatment of the disease beriberi, which is caused by a deficiency of the vitamin. |
| 1915 | Germany | The German company Bayer introduces aspirin in tablet form. |
| 1921 | Canada | Canadian physiologists Frederick Banting, Charles Best, and John James MacLeod isolate insulin. A diabetic patient in Toronto, Canada, receives the first insulin injection. |
| 29 July 1927 | USA | Bellevue Hospital in New York City installs an electric respirator, a device designed to offset respiratory failure designed by Harvard University physicians Philip Drinker and Louis Shaw. |
| 1928 | UK | Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin when he notices that the mould Penicillium notatum, which has invaded a culture of staphylococci, inhibits the growth of the bacteria. |
| 1929 | | German psychiatrist Hans Berger invents the electroencephalograph, which measures and records brain wave patterns. |
| 1937 | France | The French microbiologist Max Theiler develops a vaccine against yellow fever; it is the first antiviral vaccine. |
| 24 August 1940 | Australia, UK | Australian pathologist Howard Florey and German-born British biochemist Ernst Chain develop penicillin, in Oxford, England, for general clinical use as an antibiotic, announcing their results in The Lancet. |
| 1943 | USA | Russian-born US biologist Selman Abraham Waksman discovers the antibiotic streptomycin, which is used as a treatment for tuberculosis; he coins the term ‘antibiotic’ to describe the range of antibacterial drugs developed since the discovery of penicillin. |
| 1947 | USA | The poliomyelitis virus is isolated by US physician Jonas E Salk. |
| 1 August 1956 | USA | Drug manufacturers in the USA begin to market the poliomyelitis vaccine developed by Dr Jonas E Salk. |
| 1957 | Scotland, Switzerland | Interferon, a natural protein that fights viruses, is discovered by Scottish virologist Alick Isaacs and Swiss virologist Jean Lindemann. |
| 1970 | USA | US biochemists Howard Temin and David Baltimore separately discover the enzyme reverse transcriptase, which allows some cancer viruses to transfer their RNA to the DNA of their hosts turning them cancerous – a reversal of the common pattern in which genetic information always passes from DNA to RNA. |
| 1972 | USA | US microbiologist Daniel Nathans uses a restriction enzyme that splits DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) molecules to produce a genetic map of the monkey virus (SV40), the simplest virus known to produce cancer; it is the first application of these enzymes to an understanding of the molecular basis of cancer. |
| 1973 | USA | US biochemists Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer develop the technique of recombinant DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). Strands of DNA are cut by restriction enzymes from one species and then inserted into the DNA of another; this marks the beginning of genetic engineering. |
| 1973 | USA | US medical physicist Paul Lauterbur obtains the first NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) image, in Britain. Radio waves are beamed through a patient's body while subjected to a powerful magnetic field; an image is generated because different atoms absorb radio waves at different frequencies under the influence of a magnetic field. |
| 12 July 1977 | USA | US medical researcher Raymond Damadian produces the first images of human tissues using an NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) scanner; used to detect cancer and other diseases without the need for X-rays, the scanner is based on the fact that electromagnetic fields cause some atomic nuclei to align themselves. The scanners become commercially available in the USA in 1984. |
| 1982 | USA | US researcher Stanley Prusiner discovers prions (proteinaceous infectious particles); they are responsible for several neurological diseases including ‘mad cow disease’ (first identified in 1986). |
| 1983 | USA | US medical researcher Robert Gallo at the US National Cancer Institute, Maryland, and French medical researcher Luc Montagnier at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France, isolate the virus thought to cause AIDS; it becomes known as the HIV virus (human immunodeficiency virus). |
| 1988 | France | A French company markets the abortion-inducing drug RU486, developed by Etienne Baulieu; it induces an abortion up to seven weeks after fertilization by blocking receptors for the production of the hormone progesterone; anti-abortion groups protest. |
| 1994 | USA | Trials using transfusions of artificial blood begin in the USA. The blood contains genetically engineered haemoglobin. |
| October 1994 | North America, Central America, South America | The Pan American Health Organization declares the Americas to be free of polio. |
| 9 February 1998 | USA | US scientist David Ho reports the discovery of the HIV virus in a 1959 blood sample and suggests that the transfer from ape to human occurred in the late 1940s or early 1950s. |
| 27 March 1998 | USA | The US manufacturing company Pfizer gets approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its pill Viagra, which can cure male impotence. It becomes the fastest-selling prescription drug in US history. |
| 28 April 1998 | England | UK researchers at Guy's Hospital in London, England, announce the development of a vaccine against Streptococcus mutans the bacterium that causes tooth decay. They hope it will be incorporated into toothpaste to eradicate decay. |
| 10 April 2001 | Netherlands | The Netherlands becomes the first country in the world to legalize euthanasia as the upper house of parliament gives final endorsement to legislation. |
| 19 April 2001 | South Africa | A group of 39 multinational pharmaceutical firms abandon their court action against South Africa's government over the provision of generic drugs to combat AIDS. |
| August 2001 | | The results of an international medical study indicate that a simple combination therapy involving aspirin and a blood-thinning drug could represent the biggest breakthrough against heart disease in 20 years. |
| 27 March 2007 | world | Scientists announce the world's first case of semi-identical human twins. |
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