health and medicine - events

c. 500 BC	Greece	Greek physiologist Alcmaeon is the first person to dissect the human body for research purposes. He discovers the optic nerve, describes the difference between arteries and veins, and recognizes that the brain, which he describes in detail, is the source of intelligence. He also possibly practises vivisection.
800	Arabia	Muslim scholar Al-Batriq produces Arabic translations of major works by the Greek physicians Galen and Hippocrates; they will have a lasting effect on Arab medicine.
1127	Italy	Stephen of Pisa writes Liber regius/Royal Book, which translates the work of the 10th-century Persian physician 'Ali ibn al-'Abbas' (Haly Abbas), and introduces Arab and Greek medicine into the West.
1160	Arabia	The Muslim scholar ibn-Rushd (Averroës) writes his great medical encyclopedia Kitab al-Kulliyat fi-al-Tibb/Generalities of Medicine.
1193	Italy	The Italian physician and scholar Burgundo of Pisa translates Galen's medical works from Greek into Latin, thus reintroducing much of Galen's thinking into Western Europe.
1257	Italy	The Italian physician Aldobrandon of Siena writes his treatise Le régime du corps/The Bodily Regimen on the need for good hygiene and diet, which is a new concept in Western medicine.
1302	Italy	The physician Bartolomeo de Varignana of Bologna, Italy, a strong supporter of the medical tradition of Galen, gives the first written account of a post mortem examination.
1316	Italy	The Italian physician Mondino de Liuzzi conducts the first properly recorded dissection of a human corpse at Bologna University, Italy. His book Anatomia will become the standard work on anatomy for two centuries.
1545	South America, Central America	A typhus epidemic in Spanish America kills around 500,000 people.
1563	Europe	Italian physician and anatomist Gabriele Falloppio invents the condom, made of pig intestine, as a means to prevent the spread of syphilis. He describes his design in De morbo Gallico/On the French Disease.
17 October 1604	UK	King James I writes his Counterblast to Tobacco, condemning the increasingly popular habit of smoking in Britain. It is published anonymously. He also imposes a heavy duty on the importing of tobacco.
1621	England	English scholar Robert Burton publishes The Anatomy of a Melancholy, a medical treatise on depression that brings together a wealth of curious lore and scholarship.
1625	UK	Over 40,000 people die in an outbreak of bubonic plague in London, England.
1630	Italy	An epidemic of bubonic plague kills 500,000 Venetians. The Venetian Empire will never fully recover.
1657	UK	When tea goes on sale in England it is claimed to have medicinal properties.
1665	UK	The last major outbreak of the Black Death (a form of bubonic plague) affects London, England, in an epidemic known as the ‘Great Plague’, which reaches a peak in September, and around 70,000 people die. Infected houses are shut up and marked with a red cross, and the inhabitants are left to die. Other towns, including Newcastle and Southampton, are also affected.
1892	Canada	Canadian physician William Osler publishes The Principles and Practice of Medicine, the most comprehensive and popular textbook on medicine of the time.
1902		British physiologists William Bayliss and Ernest Starling discover that a substance, which they call secretin, is released into the bloodstream by cells in the duodenum. It stimulates the secretion of digestive juices by the pancreas and is the first hormone to be discovered.
1906	England	English biochemist Frederick Gowland Hopkins is first to suggest the existence of vitamins.
1912	United Kingdom	English biochemist Frederick Gowland Hopkins publishes the results of his experiments that prove that ‘accessory substances’ (vitamins) are essential for health and growth and that their absence leads to diseases such as scurvy or beriberi. In the same year, Polish-born US biochemist Casimir Funk discovers that pigeons fed on rice polishings can be cured of beriberi, and suggests that the absence of a vital nitrogen-containing substance known as an amine causes such diseases. He calls these substances ‘vitamines’.
1932	USA	In the USA, 26 states have passed compulsory sterilization laws for those described as ‘morons, mental defectives, epileptics, illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, and dope fiends’.
1935		German chemist Gerhard Domagk uses the dye Prontosil red to cure a streptococcal infection in his youngest daughter; this is the first use of a sulfa drug on a human.
1936	USA	Rates of maternal mortality begin to drop in the USA because of antibiotics and better trained physicians; they continue to decline sharply for the next 20 years.
c. 1936	USA	Home remedies used to terminate pregnancies rely on solutions of water, Lysol, carbolic soap, iodine, and turpentine. The bark of the American slippery elm tree, rolled and inserted in the cervix, is also used to abort the fetus.
1936	Germany	Plexiglas lenses, the first plastic contact lenses, are manufactured in Germany by I G Farben.
1938	UK	The British chemist Charles Dodds creates the first synthetic oestrogen and Schering Pharmaceutical chemists create an oestrogen contraceptive pill.
1943	USA, Greece	The US medical establishment recognizes the ‘pap’ smear (named after Greek-born US physician George Nicholas Papanicolaou) for detecting cervical cancer. In 20 years cervical cancer drops from the first to the third most common cause of death among US women.
1946	USA	The US biologists Max Delbrück and Alfred D Hershey discover recombinant DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) when they observe that genetic material from different viruses can combine to create new viruses.
6 June 1960	USA	A study by the American Heart Association finds that men who smoke are 50–150% more likely to die from coronary disease than nonsmokers.
1961	USA	Jean Nidetch founds Weight Watchers in New York City. Her system for losing weight is based on a low-protein diet and setting up networks of people to give mutual support at regular meetings. Weight Watchers is later bought by the food company Heinz.
1962	Czechoslovakia	Czech ophthalmologist Otto Witcherle develops soft contact lenses.
December 1963	USA	The muscle relaxant and antidepressant Valium, developed by Roche Laboratories as a more potent alternative to Librium, appears on the market in the USA.
1964	UK	The infant mortality rate in Britain is 20 per 1,000, compared to 30 per 1,000 in 1951.
1965	USA	The first soft contact lenses are marketed in the USA.
1 August 1965	UK	Cigarette advertising is banned on British television.
March 1968	UK	In Britain, figures show a drop of 23% in road deaths since the introduction of breath tests in 1967.
1972	England	English engineer Godfrey Hounsfield performs the first successful CAT (computerized axial tomography) scan, which provides cross-sectional X-rays of the human body.
1975	India	Birth control becomes a priority in India; abortion is legalized and the government launches campaigns advocating sterilization for both sexes.
1977	England	In-vitro fertilization (IVF) is developed by the British gynaecologists Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards. The first IVF baby is born in 1978.
18 May 1978	Italy	Despite intense Vatican opposition, Italy votes to make abortion legal in the first 90 days of pregnancy.
1982	USA	Liposuction becomes available in the USA.
1984	USA	The Reagan administration in the USA withdraws funds to worldwide family-planning programs that perform or offer information about abortions; 67 nations are unable to offer help without this funding, and 200,000 women die of botched abortions as a result.
1985	UK	An epidemic of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) is reported in beef cattle in Britain; it is later traced to cattle feed containing sheep carcasses infected with scrapie; in following years there are fears that beef consumption could lead to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans.
1986	Sweden	The Swedish company Pharmacia Les Therapeutics AB develops Nicoret, a nicotine chewing gum to help people give up smoking.
25 April 1989	UK	The British Parliament reduces the legal abortion period from 28 to 24 weeks.
1990	USA	A four-year-old girl in the USA has the gene for adenosine deaminase inserted into her DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid); she is the first person to receive gene therapy.
1991	USA	US pathologist Jack Kervorkian, known as ‘Dr Death’, publishes Prescription: Medicide: The Goodness of Planned Death, a book advocating physician-assisted suicide.
1992	USA	The US biologist Philip Leder receives a patent for the first genetically engineered animal, the oncomouse, which is sensitive to carcinogens.
1992	Australia	In Sydney, Australia, Liesel Scholem becomes the first person to be awarded damages in compensation for passive smoking suffered in the workplace.
1992	Switzerland	The Swiss medical company Ciba-Geigy Pharmaceuticals launches Nicotinell, a nicotine patch for people who want to give up smoking, available over the counter.
1 November 1992	France	Smoking is banned in all public places in France. The ban is generally ignored.
1993	Netherlands	Legislation is introduced in the Netherlands to protect doctors involved in cases of euthanasia, effectively legalizing the practice.
1995	USA	Less than 25% of people in the USA smoke, compared to around 40% in the 1960s.
1996	USA	Two US dentists discover a new muscle running from the jaw to just behind the eye socket. About 3 cm/1 in long, it helps to support and raise the jaw.
1996	USA, Europe, Australia, New Zealand	The death rate from AIDS in the USA falls from 15.6 per 100,000 people to 11.6, a 26% decline. It is the first decline in the 15 years since the pandemic began. AIDS is no longer the main killer of adults between the ages of 25 and 44 but it remains so for African-Americans in that age group. The number of AIDS cases in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand also reaches a plateau or decreases.
17 October 1996	USA	US researchers from the University of Texas and the Beckman Research Institute based in Hope, California, announce the discovery that cigarette smoke alters a gene which suppresses the uncontrolled growth of cells that cause tumours. It is the first direct evidence for the statistical link between cigarette smoking and cancer.
2 October 1997	UK	The UK scientists Moira Bruce and, independently, John Collinge, and their colleagues show that the new variant form of the brain-wasting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans is the same disease as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or ‘mad cow disease’) in cows.
22 April 1998	England	Scientists at the Public Health Laboratory Service in London, England, report the discovery of a bacterium Pseudonas aeruginosa that is resistant to all known antibiotics. It causes a wide range of infections in people with impaired immune systems.
16 August 2000	UK	The British government approves its chief medical officer's proposals to allow the cloning of human embryos less than 14 days old for research purposes.
February 2001		The ‘first draft’ of the human genome sequence is unveiled by two rival teams of scientists. Results from the Human Genome Organization (an international public consortium) and Celera Genomics (a commercial organization) suggest that human beings have about 30,000 genes.
22 February 2002	UK	The use of in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment and embryo screening to create a child capable of saving the life of another is sanctioned for the first time by the UK human fertilization and embryology authority.