5500 BCE

The first recognised physician in the history of medicine was Asclepius.

3300 BCE

During the Stone Age, early doctors used very primitive forms of herbal medicine.

3000 BCE

Worldwide understanding is based on spirits and gods. No real medical care. People die very young, normally by the age of 30-35 for men, but only 15-25 for women due to the dangers of childbirth. Most people suffered osteoarthritis (painful swelling of the joints).

3000 – 1200 BCE

The origins of Ayurveda have been traced back to around 3,000 BCE. Ayurvedic Medicine sees health as happiness and harmony in the soul, mind and senses, as well as a balance of body processes. By the time it is documented in philosophical texts called the Vedas , Ayurvedic Medicine is an already-practiced ancient health care tradition of India. Literally, it means life ( ayur ) knowledge ( veda ). This “life knowledge” was discovered and taught by many Hindu Rishis or sages who meditated on the meaning of life and health.

2700 BCE

Hesyre, “Chief of Dentists and Physicians,” attends to Egyptian royalty during the third dynasty (2700 - 2625 BCE). Peseshet, “Lady Overseer of the Lady Physicians,” is the earliest known female physician, and practices slightly later (during the 4th dynasty). Most physicians believe that disease can stem from either spiritual, physical, or mind/heart causes.

2697 BCE

The first Yellow Emperor, Huang Di, is said to be the author of the first classic work on Traditional Chinese Medicine (c. 2697). The text itself is compiled by unknown authors in 200 BC. The first herbal medicine and acupuncture needles appear around 2500 BCE. Based on Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, TCM sees health as harmony within the body as well as between the body and the universe. The main disciplines in TCM are acupuncture, herbology, tui na (massage and manipulation), diet therapy and therapeutic exercises like Tai Qi and Qi Gong.

2600 BCE

Imhotep, the priest-physician deified as the Egyptian god of medicine, describes the diagnosis and treatment of 200 diseases.

2500 BCE

Iry Egyptian inscription speaks of Iry as [eye-doctor of the palace,] [palace physician of the belly,] [guardian of the royal bowels,] and [he who prepares the important medicine (name cannot be translated) and knows the inner juices of the body.

2000 BCE

Development of papyrus in Egyptian Civilisation, trade and a greater understanding of the body (based on irrigation channels from the River Nile). They believed the body had 42 blood channels and that illness was caused by undigested food blocking these channels.

1948 - 1905 BCE

Babylonian king Hammurabi was the first in history to define the concept of medical profession’s civil and criminal liability.

1900 BCE – 1600 BCE

Akkadian clay tablets on medicine survive primarily as copies from Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh.

1800 BCE

“Code of Hammurabi” sets out fees for surgeons and punishments for malpractice.

Kahun Gynaecological Papyrus, oldest known medical text in Egypt.

1600 BCE

Hearst papyrus, one of the medical papyri of ancient Egypt coprotherapy and magic.

1551 BCE

Ebers Papyrus, coprotherapy and magic, Egyptian medical papyrus of herbal knowledge dating to circa 1550 BC.

1500 BCE

Saffron used as a medicine on the Aegean island of Thera in Ancient Greece.

“Edwin Smith Papyrus”, an Egyptian medical text and the oldest known surgical treatise (no true surgery) no magic.

Many surgical instruments discovered in Thebes, Ancient Greece.

1500 – 300 BCE

Medicine is still based on religion during Greek Civilisation – Temple of Asclepius. Here, patients would get better, but mainly through the standard of rest, relaxation and exercise (like a Greek health spa).

1300 BCE

Brugsch Papyrus, similar to the Ebers Papyrus and discovered by Giuseppe Passalacqua and London Medical Papyrus, dates back to Tutankhamun. Although in poor condition, study of it has found it to focus on magical spells as remedy for disease.

900 BCE

Hesiod, Greek poet, reports an ontological conception of disease via the Pandora myth. Disease has a "life" of its own but is of divine origin.

Works of Homer (9th Century BCE) included the most ancient information about the renowned Greek physicians who were taken as models of the medical skill.

800 BCE

Homer of Greek Civilisation theorises that Polydamna supplied the Greek forces besieging Troy with healing drugs. Homer also tells about battlefield surgery. Idomeneus tells Nestor after Machaon had fallen: “A surgeon who can cut out an arrow and heal the wound with his ointments is worth a regiment.”

700 BCE

Cnidos medical school founded during Greek Civilisation, an additional one is also founded at Cos.

600 - 500 BCE

Charaka was one of the principal contributors to Ayurveda, a system of medicine and lifestyle developed in Ancient India. He is famous for authoring the medical treatise, the Charaka Samhita. Charaka was resident of Kapisthala (probably the place is now known as Kapurthala) village situated in Panchanada (Punjab). Panchanada was name of Punjab in Mahabharata. He is well known as the "Indian father of medicine".

Sushruta, an ancient Indian physician, known as the main author of the treatise “The Compendium of Suśruta”. The Mahabharata , an ancient Indian epic text, represents him as a son of Rishi Vishvamitra, which coincides with the present recension of Sushruta Samhita. Kunjalal Bhisagratna opined that it is safe to assume that Sushruta was of the clan of Vishvamitra.

The Suśruta-saṃhitā is one of the most important surviving ancient treatises on medicine and is considered a foundational text of Ayurveda. The treatise addresses all aspects of general medicine, but the translator G. D. Singhal dubbed Suśruta "the father of surgery" on account of the extraordinarily accurate and detailed accounts of surgery to be found in the work.

The Compendium of Suśruta locates its author in Varanasi.

Hippocratic treatise on Injuries of the Head, “Wounds of the Head”, De capitis vulneribus ) was considered as genuine and scientific.

600 BCE

Ayurveda was in full practice.

510 BCE

Hippocrates adopted the view of Alcmaeon, the great Greek physician who did much dissection on animals, that the brain is the centre of intellect.

Jivaka, also titled Jivaka Komarabhacca ( Jīvaka Komārabhacca ), was a famous physician in Ancient India, including personal physician of Indian King Bimbisara and Gautama Buddha. He lived in the Magadha capital of Rajagaha during late 5th century BC in the time of King Bimbisara (and later Ajatashatru). He was trained and excelled in traditional Indian medicine (e.g. Ayurveda), due to his intelligence, diligence, and selfless service. Believed to have been inspired by the teachings of the Buddha, Jivaka was also well versed in Asana and meditation practice. He is also considered the father of Siddha-Veda.

School of Cos flourishes.

Hippocratic humoral theory dominates medicine.

Bian Que becomes the earliest physician from Chinese Civilisation known to use acupuncture and pulse diagnosis.

The Sushruta Samhita, ancient Sanskrit text on medicine and surgery is published, laying the framework for Ayurvedic medicine.

The Ancient Greek are one of the sources of the most medical knowledge until (and including) the time of the Roman Empire. Early Greek medicine focuses largely on spiritual beliefs. The Greeks establish a cult and erect grand temples to worship Asclepios, the god of healing.

500 BCE

Darius I, third king of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, orders the restoration of the House of Life (First record of a (much older) medical school.

510 – 430 BCE

Alcmaeon of Croton scientific anatomic dissections. He studied the optic nerves and the brain, arguing that the brain was the seat of the senses and intelligence. He distinguished veins from the arteries and had at least vague understanding of the circulation of the blood. Variously described by modern scholars as Father of Anatomy; Father of Physiology; Father of Embryology; Father of Psychology; Creator of Psychiatry; Founder of Gynaecology; and as the Father of Medicine itself. There is little evidence to support the claims but he is, nonetheless, important.

400 BCE – 500 CE

The Romans were renowned for excellent public health facilities. The Romans introduced aqueducts, public baths, sewers and drains, etc. In the city of Rome, water commissioners were appointed to ensure good supplies of clean water.

499 - 428 BCE

Lateral ventricles were recognised and the origin of the sacred disease (epilepsy) was related to them during the Roman Empire.

496 – 405 BCE

Sophocles, Greek playwright, "It is not a learned physician who sings incantations over pains which should be cured by cutting."

Importance of veins carrying blood was recognised, as the blood is the carrier of innate heat.

490 - 435 BCE

Empedocles, Greek philosopher, originated the four elements theory (Earth, Water, Air, Fire).

484 – 425 BCE

Herodotus, a Greek Historian, tells us Egyptian doctors were specialists: “Medicine is practiced among them on a plan of separation; each physician treats a single disorder, and no more. Thus the country swarms with medical practitioners, some undertaking to cure diseases of the eye, others of the head, others again of the teeth, others of the intestines, and some those which are not local.”

460 - 370 BCE

Ibn Sīnā did not include his detailed refutation of extramission (visual-ray) theory of vision in the ophthalmology section of his medical encyclopaedia, The Canon of Medicine. In that book, the course of discussing the diseases of the eye and the abnormalities of eyesight, he mentioned the two theories, extramission (Galen) and intromission (Democritus, c. 460-370 BCE), only by their names, then wrote: “Which of those two views is correct is left for the philosophers, not the physicians, to evaluate”.

460 BCE

Birth of Hippocrates, sometimes referred to as “The Greek father of Medicine” begins the scientific study of medicine and prescribes a form of aspirin.

Hippocrates shifts Western medicine from the religious to the “rational.” He believes doctors should analyse symptoms on a case-by-case basis, instead of having “blanket” causes and/or cures for each disease. To accomplish this, he develops the practice of Clinical Observation. His observation system has four stages: Diagnosis, Prognosis, Observation and Treatment. He also believes in the prevailing doctrine of the day, that the Four Humours (four fluids in the body) are the keys to health and healing.

425 BCE

Diogenes of Apollonia, Greek philosopher born.

420 BCE

Hippocrates of Cos maintains that diseases have natural causes and puts forth the Hippocratic Oath. Origin of rational medicine.

No clear distinction between veins and arteries as shown by the description of a “hollow and important vein runs along the temple” in the Hippocratic treatise on Injuries in the Head.

The medical school of Sicily established that the heart is the seat of the soul, the main regulator of life and the central organ of pneuma.

400 BCE

Hippocrates explains the Four Humours theory. This theory stated that there were four main elements in the body – blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm. Illness was caused by having too much of one of these humours inside of you. He also wrote the Hippocratic Collection, more than 60 books detailing symptoms and treatments of many diseases.

Philistion of Locri Praxagoras, Greek Civilisation, distinguishes veins and arteries and determines only arteries pulse.

400 BCE – 1 BCE

The Huangdi Neijing (Yellow Emperor's “Classic of Internal Medicine”) is published, laying the framework for traditional Chinese medicine.

384 - 328 BCE

Aristotle, sometimes referred to as “The Greatest Scientist” was an excellent descriptive and comparative biologist who is the representative figure of biology of classical antiquity. He is said to have considered the heart rather than the brain to be the seat of intelligence.

372 - 288 BCE

Theophrastus, leader of the Lyceum in Athens, followed the Hippocratic notion that the intelligence is seated in the brain.

365 BCE

Cnidus objects to the use of purgatives and venesection.

354 BCE

Critobulus of Cos extracts an arrow from the eye of Phillip II, treating the loss of the eyeball without causing facial disfigurement.

335 - 280 BCE

Herophillus, Greek physician, was an anatomist who made his greatest contribution to medical sciences by his human dissection.

323 - 285 BCE

Intellectual centre of the world moved to Alexandria, where a great institution for scientific research, “The Museum”, was established about the middle of the 3rd Century BCE.

304-250 BCE

Erasistratus, a Greek anatomist, combined his anatomy with what appears to have been a comprehensive system of physiology. He studies the brain and distinguishes between the cerebrum and cerebellum physiology of the brain, heart and eyes, and in the vascular, nervous, respiratory and reproductive systems.

Diocles of Carystus,  well regarded Greek physician.

300 BCE

Philinus of Cos founds Empiricist school. Herophilos and Erasistratus practice androtomy (dissecting living and dead human beings). The Empirical School arose in Alexandria under the influence of Philinus of Cos, a pupil of Herophilus, as a protest against the Dogmatic School and the Anatomical School itself.

280 BCE

Greek physician, Herophilus studies dissection of the nervous system and distinguishes between sensory nerves and motor nerves and the brain. He also studies the anatomy of the eye and medical terminology such as "net like" being retiform/retina.

270 BCE

Huangfu Mi of the Eastern Han Dynasty writes the Zhenjiu Jiayijing, “The ABC Compendium of Acupuncture”, the first textbook focuses solely on acupuncture.

270 -180 BCE

Wang Shu-ho was a Chinese physician who wrote the Maijing (The Pulse Classics), an influential work describing the pulse and its importance in the diagnosis of disease. Wang also wrote an important commentary on the Huangdi neijing (The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine), a work dating to the 3rd century BCE. However, Wang’s labours over the pulse are what raised him to the highest rank of Chinese physician.

220 BCE

Serapion of Alexandria, founder of the Empirical School, rejected all medical dogmatism including physiological theorisation and even Hippocratism.

219 BCE

Zhang Zhongjing of the Eastern Han Dynasty, publishes Shang Han Lun , “On Cold Disease Damage”.

Age of relative disintegration for Alexandrian Medical School.

200 BCE

The Charaka Samhita, “Compendium of Charaka”, a Sanskrit text on Ayurveda, uses a rational approach to the causes and cure of disease and uses objective methods of clinical examination.

150 - 80 BCE

Famous teachers and physicians in the Alexandrian School of Anatomy includes Rufus of Ephesus, Greek physician. By his time, dissection of human bodies was no longer permitted, and so he dissected monkeys and pigs instead. Human bodies were no longer permitted for studying and so he dissected monkeys and pigs instead. A few of his works were preserved in Latin. However, the legacy of his studies originate from the translation of most of his books into Arabic.

124–44 BCE

Asclepiades of Bithynia, Greek physician.

116–27 BCE

Marcus Terentius Varro, Roman architect, shares his germ theory of disease that “warned against swampy locations. Tiny animals living in swamps, so small as to be invisible, might enter the body through the mouth and nose and cause illnesses. More commonly, however, epidemic diseases were associated with comets, eclipses, floods, earthquakes, or major astrological disturbances that charged the air with poisonous vapours known as miasmata [(noxious exhalations from putrescent organic matter; poisonous effluvia or germs polluting the atmosphere.)].” No one paid any attention to it.

48 BCE

During the capture of Alexandria, the main part of the Library and the Museum were badly damaged when Caesar was obliged to set fire to the Egyptian fleet in the harbour nearby.

46 BCE

Roman medicine relies heavily upon the Greek discoveries and practices. In fact, many of Rome's best-known physicians are actually Greek. Romans, however, reintroduce a religious view back into health. Roman physicians are typically self-taught craftsman. There are no formal training requirements and cure rates are low. Thus, many doctors attract more suspicion and scorn than respect.

0 - 50 BCE

Centre of the world became Rome and this period is more exactly Greco-Roman: the outstanding personalities were Roman and the Western world was becoming Roman, too, but this meant that it deteriorated.

Dark Ages

Britain and Europe return almost back to pre-historic times under Saxons & Vikings.

25 BCE – 50 CE

Aulus Cornelius Celsus, a Roman encyclopaedist, publishes his extant Medical encyclopaedia.

23 – 79 CE

Pliny the Elder, Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, a naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and friend of emperor Vespasian, writes Natural History.

50 – 70 CE

Pedanius Dioscorides, a Roman encyclopaedist, writes De Materia Medica – a precursor of modern pharmacopoeias that was in use for almost 1600 years.

98 – 138 CE

Soranus of Ephesus, a Greek physician, born and flourished.

1st century CE

Rufus of Ephesus, a Greek physician and author, wrote treatises on dietetics, pathology, anatomy, and patient care; Marcellinus, physician of the first century CE; Numisianus, an eminent Greek physician at Corinth.

129 – 216 CE

Galen – Clinical medicine based on observation and experience. The resulting tightly integrated and comprehensive system, offering a complete medical philosophy dominated medicine throughout the Middle Ages and until the beginning of the modern era.

130 CE

Birth of Galen,  anatomist, physician and philosopher, was one of the towering peaks in medical history after Hippocrates who garnered the greatest reputation of all physicians of ancient time for centuries. In him Greek medicine reached its height. His chief merit consists in having systematized and unified Greek anatomical and medical knowledge and practices on the basis of observations and experience.

140 – 208 CE

Hua Tuo, courtesy name Yuanhua, was a Chinese physician of the late Eastern Han dynasty. The historical texts “Records of the Three Kingdoms” and “Book of the Later Han” record Hua Tuo as the first person in China to use anaesthesia during surgery.

150 — 219 CE

Zhang Zhongjing, was a Chinese physician, writer and inventor of the Eastern Han dynasty and one of the most eminent Chinese physicians during the later years of the Han dynasty. He established medication principles and summed up the medicinal experience until that time, thus making a great contribution to the development of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

150 – 250 CE

Nāgārjuna is widely considered one of the most important Mahayana philosophers. Along with his disciple Āryadeva, he is considered to be the founder of the Madhyamaka school of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Nāgārjuna is also credited with developing the philosophy of the Prajñāpāramitā sūtras and, in some sources, with having revealed these scriptures in the world, having recovered them from the nāgas (water spirits often depicted in the form of serpent-like humans). Furthermore, he is traditionally supposed to have written several treatises on rasayana as well as serving a term as the head of Nālandā.

200 CE

Aretaeus of Cappadocia is one of the most celebrated ancient Greek physicians who lived and flourished during this century.

260 CE

Gargilius Martialis, third-century Roman writer on horticulture, botany and medicine.

300 CE

Magnus of Nisibis, Alexandrian doctor and professor pens a book on urine.

325 – 400 CE

Oribasius, a Greek medical writer and the personal physician of the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate, pens a 70 volume encyclopaedia.

325 - 403 CE

Medical history is concerned chiefly with the names of four industrious compilers; Oribasius (325-403), Aetius (527-565), Alexander of Tralles (525-605) and Paul of Aegina (625-690) from Greek Civilisation.

362 CE

Julian orders xenones built, imitating Christian charity (proto hospitals).

369 CE

Basil of Caesarea founded at Caesarea in Cappadocia an institution (hospital) called Basilias , with several buildings for patients, nurses, physicians, workshops, and schools.

375 CE

Ephrem the Syrian opened a hospital at Edessa. They spread out and specialised nosocomia , a person who tends for the sick, brephotrophia (children’s hospitals) for foundlings, orphanotrophia for orphans, ptochia for the poor, xenodochia for poor or infirm pilgrims, and gerontochia for the old.

391 CE

Theophilus, the Bishop of Alexandria from 385 to 412 CE, destroyed the only library left “the Serapeion ” as it was the last refuge of Pagan culture.

400 CE

The first hospital in Latin Christendom was founded by Fabiola at Rome.

420 CE

Caelius Aurelianus a doctor from Sicca Veneria (El-Kef, Tunisia) handbook “On Acute and Chronic Diseases” in Latin.

447 CE

Cassius Felix of Cirta (Constantine, Ksantina, Algeria) penned a medical handbook drew on Greek sources, Methodist and Galenist in Latin.

480 – 547 CE

Benedict of Nursia founder of "monastic medicine".

500 – 550 CE

Aetius of Amida, a Byzantine Greek physician and medical writer, pens encyclopaedia books each divided into 4 sections.

511 – 534 CE

Anthimus, a Byzantine physician at the court of the Ostrogoth king Theodoric the Great and author of De observatione ciborum ("On the Observance of Foods")

525 – 605 CE

Medical history is concerned chiefly with the names of four industrious compilers; Oribasius (325-403), Aetius (527-565), Alexander of Tralles (525-605) and Paul of Aegina (625-690).

536 CE

Sergius of Reshaina (died 536) – A Christian theologian-physician who translated thirty-two of Galen's works into Syriac and wrote medical treatises of his own.

550 CE

Building of xenodocheions/bimārestāns by the Nestorians under the Sasanians, would evolve into the complex secular "Islamic hospital", which combined lay practice and Galenic teaching.

550 – 630 CE

Stephanus of Athens, 7th-century Byzantine philosopher, astronomer and teacher.

560 – 636 CE

Isidore of Seville, a scholar and, for over three decades, Archbishop of Seville, “ Through Isidore's influence, this Council of Toledo promulgated a decree, commanding all bishops to establish seminaries in their cathedral cities along the lines of the cathedral school at Seville, which had educated Saint Isidore decades earlier. The decree prescribed the study of Greek, Hebrew, and the liberal arts and encouraged interest in law and medicine.”

620 CE

Aaron of Alexandria wrote 30 books on medicine in Syriac named the " Pandects ". He was the first author in antiquity who mentioned the diseases of smallpox and measles translated by Māsarjawaih a Syrian Jew and Physician, into Arabic approximately 683 CE.

623 - 685 CE

The Kitāb (Kināsh) Ahrūn al-Qiss    ( الكناش - أهرن القس) was the first medical book in Muslim civilisation to be translated in the time of the fourth Umayyad Caliph Marwan ibn Al-Ḥakam (623-685) ( مروان بن الحكم ) , and was made accessible and easily available to the general public by the order of Caliph ʿUmar ibn ‘Abd al-ʿAzīz (682-720)) ( عمر بن عبد العزيز ).

625 - 690 CE

Medical history is concerned chiefly with the names of four industrious compilers; Oribasius (325-403), Aetius (527-565), Alexander of Tralles (525-605) and Paul of Aegina (625-690). Paul of Aegina gives the fullest account we have of the surgery of Antiquity. He proceeded to explain the art the ancients have handed down with no claim of originality on his part. As stated by Adams, the Seven Books of Paul of Aegina contain the most complete system of operative surgery which had come down to us from Ancient times.

Ibn al-Quff, ابن القف in his book on surgery aI-ʿUmdah fī AI-Jirāḥah ) العمدة في الجراحة) (“The Mainstay in Surgery”), clearly stated that pain relief during surgery should be the responsibility of a second medical man other than the surgeon performing the operation. Hence, al-Taba’iʿī (the physician) was to look after pain relief by giving aI-Murquid (المرقد أي الدواء الذي يجلب الرقاد أي النوم) (anaesthetic) to allow al-Jarā’iḥiī (the surgeon) (الجرائحي أي الجراح) to perform the operation, which represents the first report in literature of applied anaesthesia and was a step forward to the establishment of anaesthesia as a specialty.

636 CE

When the Arabs invaded Persia and captured Jundishapur, (جنديسابور ) its school was aided and encouraged so that it became the greatest centre of medical teaching throughout the Islamic world.

700 – 800 CE

Al-Shifa الشفاء , a woman, who in the seventh century was appointed as the chief muhtasibah (a supervisor of bazaars and trade) of Madinah.

Madhava (or Madhava-kara) was a 7th-century or early 8th-century Indian physician who wrote the Rug-vinischaya , also known as the Madhava Nidana , which soon assumed a position of authority. In the 79 chapters of this book, he lists diseases along with their causes, symptoms, and complications. He also included a chapter on smallpox ( masūrikā ).

704 - 708 CE

Prince Khalid ibn Yazid (خالد بن يزيد) started the first translation movement in Islam by ordering the translation of books on Alchemy.

707 CE

First Bīmāristān (البيمارستان) (hospital) in Islam in the year 707 and kept lepers in separate wards and provided them with regular provisions.

721-815

The first pharmacological treatise was composed by Abu- Mousa Jaber ibn Hayyan, (جابر بن حيان التوحيدي), the father of chemistry.

722 CE

Jabir ibn Hayyan was a chemist, druggist, and physician who was born, lived and worked in Kufa, Iraq.

777 - 857 CE

Jundishapur medical school was based on a few ancient Greek and Syriac sources, but after the translation movement of the ancient medical knowledge from all nations (Chapter One), it flourished with the appearance of some excellent physicians, such as Yuḥannā ibn Māsawaih ( يوحنا بن ماسويه ) , Bakhtīshūʿ ibn Jibrā'īl  ( بختيشوع بن جبريل ) and Abū Zayd Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq al-ʿAbādi ( أبو زيد حنين بن اسحق العبادي ).

800 - 900 CE

ʿAlī ibn al-Abbās ( علي بن عباس الأهوازي )  writes Kamil al-Ṣīnāʿah ( كامل الصناعة الطبية ) .

801 CE

Al-Kindi born in Baghdad, Iraq. He became a mathematician, philosopher, physicist, chemist, and musician.

805 - 873 CE

Abū Bakr al-Rāzī rejects the Galenic (extramission) theory of vision raising wide controversy among scholars. As regards to the physiological concepts, the medieval Islamic scholars accepted only what is proven right by their own experiments. Proceeding Ibn al-Haytham, ed it. Al-Kindi’s treatise Kitāb fī Kayfiyyat al-ʿIbṣār كتاب في كيفية الابصار (“The Book on the mechanism of Vision”), was authored to show that vision does not occur by the emanation of rays from the eye.

The earliest known figures illustrating the anatomy of the eye appear in the "Book of the Ten Treatises on the Eye of Abū Zayd Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq" (Johannitius).

809 - 873 CE

Masāʾil fī al-Ṭibb li-l-Mutaʿllimīn (“Questions on Medicine for Beginners”)  ( مسائل في  الطب للمتعلمين ) was compiled by the renowned medical scholar and great translator, Abū Zaid Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq al-ʿAbādi (Johannitius 809-873). The treatise was completed by his student and nephew, Hubaish ibn al-Ḥasan al-‘Aʿsam the Damascene ) . ( حبيش بن الحسن الأعسم الدمشقي )  

The book is a compilation of general principles that serves as an introduction ( Madkhal ) to the craft and science of medicine presented in a question-and-answer format.

813 - 833 CE

By the time of al-Maʾmūn’s rule, pharmacy was a profession practiced by highly skilled specialists. Pharmacists were required to pass examinations and be licensed. Pharmaceutical preparations were in a variety of forms: ointments, pills, elixirs, tinctures, confections, suppositories and inhalants.

815 - 865 CE

Yūḥanna Ibn Māsawayh يوحنا بن ماسويه (known to Latin translators as Mesue Senior or Janus Demascenus) was an enlightened Christian from Jundishapur. He served as director in a Baghdadi hospital - the only known hospital of its time. For half a century, he was the personal physician and eye doctor  ( Kaḥḥal )  of  a  few  Caliphs  including: Al-Ma’mūn المأمون  , Al-Mutaṣim المعتصم  ,Al-Wāthiq بالله الواثق , and Al-Mutawakkil المتوكل.

He wrote two books on ophthalmology:

1. Daghal Al-‘Ayn , “The Alteration of the Eye”, العين   دغل
2. “Knowing the Ophthalmology Profession: Questions and Answers”, الكحالين مھنة معرفة
السؤال و الجواب

Max Meyerhof mentioned  in  the  introduction  of  his  book, “Ten  Treatises  on  the  Eye”, that two copies  of each  book exist in Cairo  (Taymour) and in Leningrad, yet  the numbers of the said manuscripts have not been stated.

820 CE

Benedictine hospital founded, School of Salerno would grow around it.

823 - 900 CE

Thābit Ibn Qurrah Al-Ḥarrānī (211-288 AH/823-900 CE) wrote a book titled ثابت بن قرة الحراني
البصر و البصیرة  “  vision and Perception "

839 CE

Al-Tabari is born in Tabaristan (modern Northern Iran). He was a prolific writer on the subjects of theology, literature, history, ethics, and Arabic poetry, he is best known for his commentary on the Quran, as well as his commentary on the world’s universal history from creation until his own time.

850 – 923 CE

Abū Bakr Moḥammad Ibn Zakriyā Al-Rāzī:

1. Treatise about the Advantage of the Eye Over the Other Senses
2. A Book about the Mechanism of Vision

3. Treatise about the morphology of the eye

4. Treatise about the Surgical Management of the Eye Diseases

5. A Book about the Eye Drugs and its Treatments
6. Treatise about Why the Pupil Constricts in Light and Dilates in Darkness

7. A Book of Medical Poetry

838 – 870 CE

Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari, (علي بن سهل ربن الطبري ) writes an encyclopaedia of medicine in Arabic titled “Paradise of Wisdom”,   فردوس الحكمة) )

864 – 925 CE

Al-Razi (Rhazes) is born. A physician, chemist, and medical teacher, he is considered the “father of clinical and experimental medicine.” Abū Bakr al-Rāzī passed medicine from the period of translation to the period of originality and the formulation of a medical system of its own. He is regarded as the greatest clinician and most original thinker of Islamic medicine. He infused medicine with clinical precision and excelled in distinguishing diseases from one another in a precise manner and with proper attention to their constitution and identity. Also, he criticised Galen in his book Al-Shukūk ʿAlā Gālīnūs ( شكوك على الفاضل جالينوس )  (“Doubts on Galen”).
Al-Rāzī  allocated the whole of Volume 22 of his encyclopaedic work Kitāb al-Ḥāwī fī al-Ṭibb ( Rhazes’s Liber Continens ) to ‘ Ṣaidalat al-Ṭibb ’ (Pharmacy), beginning with an introduction to the general principles of the craft of pharmacy, followed by a section on “deduction of the unknown names, weights and makāyīl (measures) of medicines mentioned in medical texts”. Other than the 25 pages of the Introduction the rest of the volume (275 pages) is all in tabular form. Also makes the first clear distinction between smallpox and measles in his al-Hawi.

872 CE

In Cairo, the teaching hospitals were: the Bīmāristān of Aḥmad ibn Tulūn,  ( البيمارستان الطولوني بناه السلطان أحمد بن طولون عام259ه = 87 ) which was built in 872 CE close to his mosque, where behind it was a pharmacy ( khizanat Sharab )  ( خزانة الشراب ) which Ibn Tulūn provided with a physician on Friday for any medical emergencies among worshippers ; al-Bīmāristān al-Naṣīrī ( البيمارستان الناصري ) , built by Salahuddin in 1171 CE in the palace of the Fatimid rulers; and al-Bīmāristān al-Manṣūrī ,  ( البيمارستان المنصوري ) established in 1284 by al-Manṣūr Qalāwun al-Sālihī al-Alfī, the Sultan of Egypt (1279-1290). This is in addition to hospitals in several other parts of the Muslim world. In each teaching hospital there was a library rich in books on various sciences, a place where the chief physician used to give lectures in medicine for the benefit of the students and wards for medical, surgical, ophthalmic and mental diseases, in addition to providing services for out-patients. Also, these hospitals provided the clinical teaching sessions and the attendance of surgical procedures for the medical students, in addition to the treatment of patients.

880 CE

Sinan ibn Thabit ibn Qurra, physician and inspector of Baghdad hospitals, is born. He started mobile hospital services for rural and Bedouin areas.

895 CE

Ibn al-Jazzar al-Qayrawani  ابن الجزار القيرواني (Aljizar) is born. He wrote the first independent book on paediatrics and social paediatrics:” A Treatise on Infant and Child Care and Treatment.” ( رسالة في سياسة الصبيان و تدبيرهم

898 - 980 CE

A special treatise was devoted to the medicine and health of the elderly رسالة في طب المشايخ و المساكين by Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad Ibn al-Jazzār al-Qayrawānī.   أبو جعفر أحمد بن الجزار  القيرواني )

900 CE

Muwaffaq al-Dīn Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad Ibn Al-Qāsim Ibn Khalīfa Ibn Abī ʿUṣaybiʿah, (موفق الدين أبو العباس أحمد بن القاسم بن خليفة بن أبي أصيبعة) in his book of medical biographies ʿUyūn al-‘Anbā’ fī-Ṭabaqāt aI-Aṭibbāʾ (عيون الأنباء في طبقات الأطباء) , documented a case of an unconscious person who was still responding to painful stimuli. So, the physician, Saleh Ibn Bahla ( صالح بن بهلة ) , insufflated air and soap root powder into his nose by using a small bellows, and the person was successfully resuscitated. According to Jaser, this clinical case report documented the use of bellows for respiratory resuscitation 900 years before it was first reported in Europe.

During the 10th Century, Ibn Sīnā recommended the introduction of a “tube made of gold, silver, or similar metal into the pharynx to assist breathing” in the event of suffocation due to upper airway obstruction. In addition, before attempting intubation, Ibn Sīnā tried conservative measures, including clearing the secretions using a wicker stick covered with a piece of cotton-wool. Most probably this tube acted as an oropharyngeal airway which, according to Brendt & Georig, represents the first reported use of an endotracheal tube. When such measures failed and the patient's life was threatened, Ibn Sīnā recommended making an opening in the windpipe (tracheotomy).  Meanwhile, al-Rāzī had previously spoken in favour of this operation. Then, al-Zahrāwī reported from his own experience the successful management of a suicidal cut wound of the trachea and concluded that tracheotomy is not a dangerous procedure. However, Abū Marwān ʻAbd al-Malik ibn Abī al-ʻAlāʼ ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar, 1093-1162) ( أبو مروان عبد الملك بن أبي العلاء بن زهر )  reported that he has not seen the operation done.

900 - 1000 CE

Al-Zahrāwī (Abulcasis) wrote al-Taṣrīf.

Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) wrote al-Qānūn.

901 CE

Thābit Ibn Qurrah  Al-Ḥarrānī penned "Vision and Perception".

908 - 932 CE

In the Medieval Islamic Era, there were two types of hospitals which showed prominent development. The first type, the small mobile hospitals, which provided services to the patients in rural areas, prisons and army camps, started from the time of Caliph al-Muqtadir Billāh. The second type were permanent hospitals including the large teaching hospitals, such as al-Bīmāristān al-ʿAḍudī built in 981 by Aḍud al-Dawlah (936-983) in Bagdad, which lasted until its destruction in 1258 by the Mongol invasion and siege of Bagdad. The Bīmāristān al-Fariqī in Diyarbakr was established by Prince Naṣīr al-Dawlah ibn Marwān (1011-1161) and al-Bimāristān al-Nūrī al-Kabīr in Damascus, which was built by Sultan Nūriddīn Zangī in 1154 and remained functioning till 1899 CE.

914 CE

Abū 'Alī Khalaf Al-Ṭūlūnī penned  ( أبو علي خلف الطولوني ) “The Book about the Final Objectives and the Composition of the Two Eyes and Their Constitution, Treatment, and Medications” ( كتاب النهاية و الكفاية في تركيب العينين و خلقتهما و  علاجهما و أدويتهما )

930 - 1013 CE

Abū al-Qāsim Khalaf ibn ʿAbbās al-Zahrāwī (930-1013) (أبو القاسم خلف بن عباس الزهراوي) was the landmark in the development of surgery as a science, and the year 2013 was the millennium anniversary of the death of this distinguished surgeon.

935 CE

Yūḥanna Ibn Ṣarabyūn was a prominent physician, born in Damascus, Syria, where he also practiced medicine. Although he was not as famous as Al-Rāzī, his book Practica (الكناش الكبير), which was written in Syriac and was later translated into Arabic by an anonymous author, was quoted repeatedly and extensively ‐ even by Al-Rāzī. The eleven chapters of his book that deal with ophthalmology are excellent and comprehensive. Gerard De Cremona translated the book into Latin and then Andreas Alpago did the same.

936 CE

Surgeon Al-Zahrawi (Abulcasis) is born in Córdoba. He was inventor of numerous surgical instruments and author of the novel illustrated voluminous surgical book, Al-Tasrif.

955 CE

Isaac Judaeus ) Isḥāq ibn Sulaymān al-Isrāʾīlī, سليمان الاسرائيلي ( Egyptian born Jewish physician.

965 - 1040 CE

Al-Hasan Ibn al Haytham (الحسن بن الهيثم) created a new optical tradition and established the aims and criteria of optics which would prevail. Also his establishment of punctiform analysis of the visible object and the need for one to one correspondence between points in the visual field and points in the eye as permanent and essential element of his theory thus providing the basic frame work that has prevailed until the present.

976 CE

Abū Al-Ḥasan Aḥmad Ibn Moḥammad Al-Ṭabarī's ( أبو الحسن أحمد بن محمد الطبري ) original contributions include:

1. Remaining in dark places for long periods of time, like prison, could lead to total blindness.

2. He was one of the first to state, “The cataract is a thick humidity that affects the crystalline lens and makes it opaque.” He was, therefore, 800 years ahead of Hermann Borhaff (1668-1738 CE), who is accredited for being the first to state that the cataract is the disease of the lens. Although Al-Rāzī and others insinuated something similar vaguely, the exact anatomical location was not disclosed until Al-Ṭabarī mentioned it in his works.

3. He gave a description of ocular migraine signs and symptoms.

4. He uniquely stated, “There is a true congenital type of squint which is not curable because it represented an organic disease, which originates in the womb and is hereditary.” He advocated wrapping the baby’s head with a black thick cloth with two openings in front of the eyes to realign and straighten them.

5. He is the first to relate eye diseases to contact with animals and described the entrance of gnat-like flies in the eye.

6. Al-Ṭabarī may have been the first to describe snow blindness as “extensive exposure of the eye to reflected sunlight.”

7. He pioneered the description of biconvex lenses, calling it the burning pebble.

8. He described the solar eclipse and related it to the passing of the moon between the sun and the earth. Subsequently, the warned from looking at the eclipsed sun to avoid permanent blindness.

9. He described in detail the ability of the patient to see his own ocular circulation after rubbing the eyes and pressing on them.

10. He attempted to describe the “black water” which is now known as glaucoma and stated, “No treatment can be successful.”

980 CE

Abū 'Abdullāh Moḥammad Ibn Sa’īd Al-Tamīmī Al-Maqdesī ( أبو عبد الله محمد بن سعيد التميمي المقدسي ) was a  famous physician who practiced in  his hometown, Jerusalem, around 980 CE. He later moved to Egypt where he remained for the rest of his life. Though he mainly treated diseases of the digestive system, he wrote a book on Ophthalmology  entitled, “Treatise  about  the  Essence  of Ophthalmia, Its Types,  Causes, and Treatment”. ( مقالة في ماهية الرمد و أنواعه و أسبابه و علاجه )

980 -1037 CE

Avicenna (or Ibn Sina or al-Shaykh al Rais) ( الشيخ الرئيس ابن سينا )  is renowned for his medical skills and is also a scholar of philosophy, metaphysics and religion. He wrote “The Book of Healing” and “The Canon of Medicine” (القانون في الطب), a multi-volume treatise that compiles and organises all known Islamic medical knowledge of the era. It becomes the standard medical text in Europe through the 17th century.

Avicenna builds on Galen’s teachings and incorporates Aristotle-style logic into medical diagnosis and treatment. Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd-Allāh Ibn Sīnā made it clear that, if the medical treatment for a bladder stone fails and the cutting operation was to be done, one must choose the one who “knows the dissection of the bladder, the places where it is joined at its neck by the semen channels, and the related vessels so that he could prevent what he should keep away from, such as causing an inability to reproduce or heavy loss of blood or a fistula that does not heal.”

Ibn Sina devoted a section of his Canon of Medicine to the ‘drawbacks of excessive obesity’ in medicine, the poem of Ibn Sīnā, al-Urjūzah fī al-Ṭibb , was the most notable example of this genre. The name ‘ Urjūzah ’ is given to Arabic didactic poems. Ibn Sīnā was a talented and prolific poet, as Ibn Abī Uṣaibiʿah, in his celebrated Classes of Physicians, narrated twenty excerpts from Ibn Sīnā’s poetry covering different genres and following various meters. Also, according to Qaṭṭayah, Ibn Sīnā composed several other medical Urjūzahs , on anatomy, on health preservation during the four seasons, on tried medicaments and on clinical evidence derived from pulse and urine, but his Urjūzah fī al-Ṭibb is the longest and most famous of them.

Ibn Sina wrote 26 books on physics, 31 on theology, 23 on psychology, 15 on mathematics, 22 on logic, and several influential works of philosophy.

988 - 1061 CE

Kitāb Dafʿ Maḍār al-Abdān bi-Ard Miṣr (“On the Prevention of Bodily Ills in Egypt”) ( كتاب دفع مضار الأبدان في أرض مصر ) by ʿAlī ibn Riḍwān

( علي بن رضوان )

990 CE

Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Baladī, ( أحمد بن محمد البلدي ) was later on the author of one of the first independent books on antenatal care and paediatrics: Kitāb Tadbīr al-Ḥubalā wa-al-‘Aṭfāl wa-al-Ṣibiān wa-Ḥifẓ Ṣihhatihim wa-Mudāwāt al-‘Āmrāḍ al-ʿāriḍah lahum ( كتاب تدبير الحبالى و الأطفال و الصبيان و حفظ صحتهم و مداواة الأمراض العارضة لهم ) (“The Book of Care Regimens for Pregnant Ladies, Infants and Children and Preservation of their Health and Treating the Illnesses They May Suffer From”).

Alī Ibn Al-'Abbās Al-Ahwāzī ( علي بن عباس الأهوازي ) penned “The Royal Book (The Complete Art of Medicine) ( كامل الصناعة الطبية ) ( الكتاب الملكي )

995 CE

 A'yan Ibn A'yan Al-Maṣrī ( أعين بن أعين المصري )  penned “The Book about Eye Diseases and Their Treatment” ( كتاب في أمراض العيون و مداواتها )

998 - 1075 CE

Abū Al-Muṭarref 'Abdul Raḥmān Ibn Moḥammad Ibn Wāfid Al-Lakhamy ( أبو المطرف عبد الرحمن بن محمد بن وافد اللخمي ) “Close Observation in the
Diseases of the Visual System” ( تدقيق النظر في علل حاسة البصر )  

1000 CE  

Al-Muntakhab fi ʿIlm al-ʿAyn wa-ʿIlalihah wa-Mudāwātihā bil-Adwiyah wa al-Ḥadid ( كتاب المنتخب في علم العين و عللها و مداواتها بالأدوية و الحديد )  (The Selected Book of Diseases of the Eye and its Treatment with Medicaments and Surgery), by the famous ophthalmologist ʿAmmār al Mūṣlī, ( عمار بن علي الموصلي )  included a number of detailed surgical case reports for patients he operated upon for cataract.

Physician, Zāhid al-‘Ulamā Manṣūr ibn Naʿisa ( زاهد العلماء منصور بن عيسى بن ناعسة )   the Nestorian, penned a book of aphorisms, questions and answers, in two parts; the first part contains questions and answers which al-Ḥasan ibn Sahl had recorded from notes, scrolls and other material found in the author's library. The second part was in the form of aphorisms and questions, together with their answers that he gave during the scientific sessions, which were regularly held at the al-Fāriqī Hospital established by Prince Nasīr al-Dawlah ibn Marwān ( ناصر الدولة بن مروان )  in Mayāfāriqīn in Diyarbakr. Two other works of Zāhid al-‘Ulamā are Kitāb al-Bīmaristānāt (“The Book on Hospitals”) and Kitāb fīmā Yajib alā al-Mutaʿallimīn Liṣinā’ at al-Ṭibb Taqdīm ʿīlmih (“On What Students of the Craft of Medicine Ought to Learn First”), it seems that they are related to his practice and teaching experience at the above-mentioned hospital.

'Alī Ibn 'Isā Al-Kaḥḥāl (D 400 AH/1010 CE) - علي بن عیسى الكحال البغدادي تذكرة الكحالين “Memorandum Book for Ophthalmologists”

1013 CE

Abū Al-Qāsim Khalaf Ibn 'Abbās Al-Zahrāwī pens “The Explanation for He Who Is Unable to Write Books” (  التصريف لمن عجز عن التأليف )

1019 CE

Aḥmad Ibn 'Abdul-Raḥmān Ibn Mandwayh Al-Aṣfāhānī أحمد بن عبد الرحمن بن مندويه الأصفھاني
This author is not mentioned by pre 20th century historians other than Uṣaybi'ā, who wrote about him briefly. Uṣaybi'ā mentioned  that Al-Aṣfāhānī wrote two books on ophthalmology: “Treatise about  the  construction  of  the eye’s  coats’” في تركيب طبقات العين ) رسالة (  and  “Treatise about  the  treatment  of Mydriasis” ) ( رسالة في علاج انتشار العين. Samarrai, however, wrote a more detailed biography of Al-Aṣfāhānī, listing thirty three books and treatises in almost all aspects of medicine. Among these treatises are two books concerning eyes mentioned by Uṣaybi'ā. Al Aṣfāhānī was the first to write about paediatric ophthalmology in his book, “Treaties about Illness in Children”.  This effectively makes it one of the earliest books on paediatric ophthalmology.

1045 - 1102 CE

Saʿīd ibn Hibat Allāh سعيد بن هبة الله , the teacher of Ibn Jazlah and many others who practiced at al-Bīmāristān al-ʿĀḍuḍī البيمارستان العضدي   , also authored a book containing answers to medical questions addressed to him.

1062 CE

Petrus Alphonsi is born in Huesca, Aragon, Spain. He was a leader in the transmission and assimilation of 362 texts and ideas Arabic scientific, literary, and religious to Latin Europe in the early 12th century. A Spanish Jew, he converted to Christianity.

1066   CE

Taqwīm al-Ṣiḥḥah ) تقويم الصحة) (“straightening of Health”) was also known in translation as “Rectification of Health” or “Regulation of Health”. In some of its manuscripts the full title is Ibn Butlān's Taqwīm al-Ṣihhah bi-al-Asbāb al-Sittah ( تقويم الصحة بالأسباب الستة ). The author was Abū al-Ḥasan al-Mukhtār ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ‘Abdūn ibn Sa‘dun ibn Buṭlān (d. 1066), ( ابو الحسن المختار بن حسن بن عبدون بن سعدون بن بطلان )  a Christian of Baghdād, who, according to Ibn Abī Uṣaibiʿah, was a disciple of Abū al-Faraj ‘Abd Allāh ibn al-Tayyib. He studied a great number of philosophical and other works assiduously, and was also a prolific poet. He also associated himself with the physician Abū al-Ḥasan Thābit ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Zahrūn al-Ḥarrānī, who taught him a great deal about medicine and its practical application.  The book Taqwīm al-Ṣiḥḥah (“Rectification of Health”), a treatise on hygiene and dietetics, the best-known of Ibn Buṭlān’s works, presented a guide to medical regimen in tabular form, easy to understand and use, identifying the foods, drinks, environments and activities (including breathing, exercise and rest) necessary for a healthy life. The book further illustrates the emphasis laid on preservation of health and prevention of disease during the Medieval Islamic Era, and in general it connects vegetables and fruits with human health and well-being, similar to modern medicine.

1067 CE

Alī Ibn Ibrāhīm Ibn Bakhtyashu' Al-Kafarṭābī (1067 CE)) علي بن ابراهيم بن بختيشوع الكفرطابي ) “Anatomy of the Eye, Its Shape, and Treatment of
Its Diseases” ( تشريح العين و أشكالها و مداواة أعلالها )

Abū Al-Faraj 'Abdullāh Ibn Al-Ṭayyeb ( أبو الفرج عبد الله بن الطيب ) “Comments about the Eye” ( تعاليق في العين )

Zarrin-Dast/Abu Ruh Moḥammad Ibn Manṣūr Ibn 'Abdullāh Ibn Manṣūr Al-Yamani ( زارين داست , أبو روح محمد بن منصور بن عبد الله بن منصور اليماني ) “The Light of the Eyes” ( كتاب نور العيون )

  1091 - 1162 CE

Abū Marwān ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Abī al-ʿAlāʼ ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar)   ( أبو مروان عبد الملك ابن أبي العلاء ابن زهر ) emphasised the great importance of practical knowledge of dissection in the following warning in his book al-Taysīr ( كتاب التيسير في المداواة و التدبير  ) , in the course of discussing the management of inflammatory swellings of the neck when ripe and ready for bursting or drainage: “And in case you have mastered the science of dissection, then drain by the scalpel in the way that you will not come across a vein, artery, nerve or anything whose injury will lead to an extra harm to the patient”. In addition, he insisted on an adequately supervised and structured training program for the surgeon-to-be, before allowing him to operate independently.

1100 CE

Montpellier, Bologna and Salerno had famous medical schools - lectures on anatomy were rudimentary. They consisted simply of a butcher pointing to the different parts of a body, while the lecturer read a text by an authority such as Galen.

Taqwīm al-Abdān fī Tadbīr al-Insān (تقويم الأبدان في تدبير الانسان) was another landmark in the scholarly tradition of tabular-form medical writing, and also is titled as Taqwīm al-Abdān Bi-tadbīr al-Amrāḍ wa-Maʿrifat al-Asbāb wa-al-Aʿrāḍ ( تقويم الأبدان بتدبير الأمراض و معرفة الأسباب و الأعراض ). It was authored by another 11th Century Baghdadite: Yahyā ibn ‘Isā ibn ʿAlī ibn Jazlah (d 1100), ( يحيى لبن علي ابن جزلة ) a pupil of Abū al-Ḥasan Sa`īd ibn Hibat Allāh, ( أبو الحسن سعيد ابن هبة الله ) who was famous for his medical knowledge and skill. He lived in the reign of the Abbasid Caliph al-Muqtadī bi-Amr Allāh (1075-1094) ( المقتدر بأمر الله ) , to whom he dedicated many of his books. In addition, Ibn Jazlah was a convert interested in literature and wrote a missive to Elias the Priest in justification of his conversion.
In the Introduction to Taqwīm al-Abdān , Ibn Jazlah stated that he wanted to include in his book the essential amount of medical knowledge about diseases, their causes, symptoms and regimens of treatment. He also added that he arranged the book in such a way to be easy to read, full of useful knowledge and presented it in the form of tables.

Al-Biruni wrote a valuable work in the field called “The Book of Pharmacology”, giving detailed knowledge of the properties of drugs and outlining the role of the pharmacy and the functions and duties of the pharmacist.

1100 - 1150 CE

Baklārish ( ابن بكلاريش) was a great Jewish medical scholar in Muslim Spain who possessed vast experience and knowledge in the field of simple medicines.  He is the author of Kitāb al-Mujadwalah fī al-Adwiyah al-Mufradah (كتاب المجدولة في الأدوية المفردة) (“The Tabulated Book on Simple Medicaments”) composed in Almeria in a tabular form for al-Mustaʿīn bi-Allāh Abū Jaʿfar Ahmad ibn al-Muʿtamin bi-Allāh ibn Hūd (  المستعين بالله أبو جعفر أحمد بن المؤتمن بالله بن هود ). The book, also known as the Kitāb al-Musta‘īnī ( كتاب المستعيني ) in honour of its above-mentioned dedicatee (ruler of Saragossa 1085–1110), sets out in tabular form the properties and uses, and alternative names in several  languages, of over 700 medicinal substances, drawing on a wide range of Greek and Arabic authorities and local knowledge. A recently acquired manuscript belonging to the Arcadian library, scribed in 1130 is the earliest surviving witness to the text, and provides unique information about the state of medicine in medieval Muslim Spain at the time. To the practical advantage of rapid consultation — the reader can look up the names of the simple drugs alphabetically — is added the great diversity of the material presented, particularly where the substances of mineral and animal origin are concerned. The Tables, moreover, are preceded by an Introduction in four chapters containing the theories of simple and compound medicines. In this Introduction, Ibn Biklarish says: “I mentioned all that I could gather from different books about each drug whenever I found it necessary to enlighten people about it in case they come across unknown names in prescriptions. A prescription would become useless if its compounder were ignorant of that drug”.

1100s – 1200s CE

When Europeans went on crusades to Palestine in the 12th and 13th centuries, their doctors gained first-hand knowledge of “Arab” medicine, which was advanced by Western standards.

1114 - 1200 CE

Knowledge about human physiology was equally valued and admired by the general public, as it was included in many religious-guidance and health-education books addressed to them. An example of this genre is Kitāb Ṣayd al-Khātir , ( كتاب صيد الخاطر )  authored by Ibn al-Jawzī ( ابن الجوزي )  in three volumes containing aphorisms and wise counsels that includes general knowledge about human physiology, describing functions such as digestion, respiration and reproduction in simple but varied eloquent style.

1117 CE

Muhadhdhab al-Dīn al-Baghdādī ( أبو الحسن علي ابن أحمد ابن علي  مهذب الدين البغدادي )  was the learned physician Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī, who lived and practiced in Baghdād where he was born and spent his early life studying arts, medicine and perfected memorising of the whole of the Holy Qur’an. He also reported on the predisposition of obese persons to falling ill quickly.

1125 - 1198 CE

In the al-Kulliyyāt fī l-Ṭibb (the Colliget ( ( الكليات في الطب ) , Abū al-Walīd Muḥammad Ibn Rushd ( أبو الوليد محمد ابن رشد ) discusses the functional anatomy of the eye. He stated that: “Vision is, certainly, not due to something that emanates from the eye, as beheld by Galen; but the eye receives the colour by the clear structures inside it, as in the case of a mirror”.

1126 CE

Ibn Rushd (Averroes) is born. An accomplished Andalusian polymath, philosopher, physician, jurist, mathematician, and scientist, his ideas influenced European philosophy.

1127 CE

Stephen of Antioch (اسطفان الانطاكي ) translated the work of Haly Abbas ( علي بن عباس الأهوازي )

1135 CE

Musa bin Maymun (Maimonides) is born and raised in Córdoba, Al-Andalus. Philosopher, theologian, and physician studied in Fez. In Cairo he was appointed head rabbi of the Jewish community and court physician to Sultan Saladin.

1147 - 1187 CE

Gerard of Cremona (جيرارد الكريموني) spent a few years of his life in Toledo studying Arabic, and upon instructions from Emperor Friedrich II, he translated into Latin several major Arabic books, such as Al-Ḥāwī by Al-Rāzī, Al-Qānūn by Ibn Sīnā, and Al-Taṣrīf by Abu Al-Qāsim Al-Zahrāwī.

1149 CE

Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar ibn al-Ḥusayn Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (أبو عبد الله محمد ابن عمر ابن الحسين فخر الدين الرازي) wrote a book of the titled Masā’il fi al-Ṭibb (مسائل في الطب) (“Questions on Medicine”). He is reputed for his great commentary on the Qur'ān, entitled Mafātīḥ al-Ghaib. .( مفاتيح الغيب ) He gave much thought and insight to medicine and its various studies.

1152 CE

Ibrāhīm ibn Abī Saʿīd al-ʿAlā’ī al-Maghribī (ابراهيم ابن أبي سعيد العلائي المغربي) authored a book titled Al-Fatḥ fī al-ṭadāwī li Jamīʿ al-Amrāḍ wa al-Shakāwīʿ ) ( الفتح في التداوي لجامع الأمراض و الشكاوي) (“The Breakthrough in Therapy for all Illnesses and Complaints”). The book is also known as Al-Munjih Fī al-ṭadāwī li-Jamīʿ al-Amrāḍ wa al-Shakāwī ʿ ( المنجح في التداوي لجامع الأمراض و الشكاوي )  and Taqwīm al-adwiya fi al-ṭadāwī li-Jamīʿ al-Amrāḍ wa-al-Shakāwīʿ ( تقويم الأدوية في التداوي لجامع الأمراض و الشكاوي ) It included in a tabular form data on 550 simple medicines spread transversely in 16 columns stretching over two pages. The data for each drug include its name, description, type, selection, temperament, action, usefulness for the head organs, usefulness for the instruments of breathing, in verso side of the double-page table, and the usefulness for the instruments of nutrition, usefulness for the body as a whole, mode of use, amount to be used, its harm, offsetting the harm, substitute and the count in the recto side of the table.

1154 CE

Nur al-Din Zangi establishes Al-Nuri Hospital in Damascus, a large teaching hospital.

1162 -

1231 CE

The celebrated physician scholar, Muwaffaq al-Dīn al-Baghdādī, ( موفق الدين البغدادي ) who was famous for his detailed study of more than 2000 human skeletons which led him to refute Galen’s anatomical dogma of the lower jaw. He confirmed the unitary nature of the lower jaw by experimentation in order to check the validity of his predecessor’s knowledge.

1163 CE

Abū al-Qāsim Hibat Allāh ibn al-Faḍl (أبو القاسم هبة الله ابن الفضل) was born and bred in Baghdād, where he practiced medicine and treated eye diseases as well, but poetry got the better of him. In addition to an Anthology of Poetry, he also authored a book on Medical Notes and another on Questions and Answers in Medicine. Likewise, Abū Nasr Sa`īd ibn Abū al-Khayr ibn `Isā ibn al-Masīhī, who was a prominent physician and notable teacher, wrote Kitāb al-ʿīqṭiḍāb ʿalā ṭarīq al-masʾalah wa-al-jawāb fī al-ṭibb ( كتاب الاقتضاب على طريق المسألة و الجواب ) (“The Book of Extemporization on Medicine in the Form of Questions and Answers”).

1165 CE

Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad Al-Ghāfiqī (أبو جعفر أحمد بن محمد الغافقي) was the greatest expert of his time on “Simples”. His description of the plants was the most precise ever made in Islam: he gave the name of each in Arabic, Latin and Berber.

1180 CE

Ibn al-Nafīs writes book Muhadhdhab fī al-kuḥl al-mujarrab, كتاب المهذب في الكحل المجرب.

1181 CE

Abul Al-Faḍāil Ibn Al-Nāqed  أبو الفضائل بن الناقد  penned “The Experienced in Ophthalmology كتاب المجربات في العين ".

1186 – 1249 CE

Song Ci was a Chinese physician, judge, and forensic medical scientist active during the Southern Song Dynasty who wrote a groundbreaking book titled Collected Cases of Injustice Rectified (Xi Yuan Ji Lu). He is often considered to be the Founding Father of Forensic Science in China.

1197 CE

Muḥammad ibn Qassūm ibn Aslam al-Ghāfiqī the Andalusian (محمد بن أسلم ابن قسوم الغافقي ) (died after 1197) utilised the question-and-answer format in writing one chapter only of his voluminous Kitāb al-Murshid fi Ṭibb al-ʿAyn  ( كتاب المرشد في طب العين ) (“The Guide Book On The Medicine of the Eye”).

1197 - 99 CE

Constantine the African translated into Latin at the end of the 11th Century under the title Viaticum peregrinantis , becoming before long the most influential medical books in Medieval Europe. It was translated three-time times into Hebrew: twice from Latin, in 1197-99 by anonymous translator under the title Sefer ya ’ir nativ , and later by Abraham ben Isaac as Sedah la-orehim; and once from the Arabic, by Moshe ibn Tibbon in 1259 under the title Sedat ha-derachim.

1197 - 1248 CE

Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdllāh Ibn Aḥmad Ibn al-Bayṭār (1197-1248)  ( ضياء الدين أبو محمد عبد الله بن أحمد ابن البيطار ) was the greatest pharmacist of medieval times and was considered to have written the best work on Simples with the description of more than 1400 medical drugs.

1200 - 1208 CE

The Experts' Examination for All Physicians or; Questions and Answers for Physicians is a study guide for students of medicine prepared by ʿAbd al-Azīz al-Sulāmī, (عبد العزيز السلامي) who was Chief of Medicine to the Ayyubid sultan (السلاطين الأيوبيين) in Cairo. It is composed of ten chapters on ten fields of medicine: the pulse, urine, fevers and crises, symptoms, drugs, treatment, ophthalmology, surgery, bone setting, and fundamentals. Each chapter contains twenty questions on the respective subject with the answer to each question. In addition, an authority is cited for each answer. This work sheds light on medical education in the Medieval Islamic Era and is an epitome of the medical knowledge of the time.

According to Leiser and Khalidy, contrary to what may be understood from the book’s title, it was not a formal “examination” that was given to students after they had completed their studies, nor was it given to certify practicing physicians, but it was used simply as a teaching aid.  The questions and answers in this book were derived from the material found in about twenty five cited well-known and readily available medical texts authored by some seventeen writers, including Galen, al-Rāzī, Qusṭā ibn Lūqā, Ibn Sīnā, Isḥāq ibn Sulaimān al-Isrāʾīlī, ʿAlī ibn al-ʿAbbās al-Mājūsī, Ibn Jumayʿ, Ibn Wāfid, ʿAlī ibn ʿĪsā al-Kaḥḥāl, Ibn al-Tilmīdh, Ibn Ridwān and others.

1203 - 1270 CE

Muwaffaq al-Dīn Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad Ibn Al-Qāsim Ibn Khalīfa Ibn Abī ʿUṣaybiʿah (موفق الدين أبو العباس أحمد بن القاسم ابن خليفة بن أبي أصيبعة) (1203-1270), in his book of medical biographies ʿUyūn al-‘Anbā’ fī-Ṭabaqāt aI-Aṭibbāʾ , (عيون الأنباء في طبقات الأطباء) documented a case of an unconscious person who was still responding to painful stimuli. So, the physician, Saleh Ibn Bahla, (صالح بن بهلة) insufflated air and soap root powder into his nose by using a small bellows, and the person was successfully resuscitated. According to Jaser, this clinical case report documented the use of bellows for respiratory resuscitation 900 years before it was first reported in Europe.

1210 - 1288 CE

Alāʾ al-Dīn Abū al-Ḥasan Alī ibn Abī al-Ḥazm al-Qarshī Ibn al-Nafīs was born in the year 1210 at al-Qarsh near Damascus. He studied medicine in Damascus under the supervision of the distinguished professor Muhadhdhab al-Dīn al-Dakhwār in al-Bīmāristān al-Nūrī’s medical school, and then moved to Cairo where he practiced and taught medicine in al-Bīmāristān al-Naṣirī built by Salāh al-Dīn al-Ayyūbī. In 1285, he became the Chief Physician of the Manṣūrī hospital until he died 1288 at the age of 80. Historians described him as a great physician and a prolific writer, the best among his contemporaries and the most distinguished scholar of his time in the medical profession. Ibn al-Nafīs was also a distinguished authority on Qur’anic studies, Prophetic tradition, Islamic jurisprudence, Islamic philosophy and Arabic language studies. He wrote famous authoritative works in almost all of those sciences allocated a special chapter in his book, ) Sharḥ Tashrīḥ al-Qānūn ( شرح تشريح القانون ) (  titled “On the Benefits of Studying the Science of Anatomy”, and showed how essential this study is for reaching diagnoses and for practicing medicine and performing different surgical, orthopaedic or ophthalmological procedures. Furthermore, in this book he wrote a special chapter on the best mode for dissecting the following parts: bones, peripheral vessels and internal organs of the chest (heart, lung, big vessels and the diaphragm). He stated that: “The form of the visible objects does not fall and impress on the glacial humour (crystalline humour, lens)”. In addition, he said: “In our opinion, the need for the humours of the eye (the albuminous or aqueous, the crystalline and the vitreous) is not for the forms to fall and impress on any of them, but to render the inside of the eye humid enough so that its temperament becomes close to that of the brain; thus, when the visual spirit (pneuma) enters into the eye, it will not undergo a change in temperament”.

1222 CE

Abū Ḥamid Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿUmar Najīb al-Dīn al-Samarqandī (d. 1222) ( أبو حميد محمد بن علي بن عمر نجيب الدين السمرقندي )  in his work “The Book of Food and Drink for the Healthy People”, defined the proper nutritive food as that which is able to replace what disintegrates off the constituent elements of the body parts.

1233 -1286 CE

Abū al-Faraj ibn al-Quff (1233-1286) ) أبو الفرج بن القف )   ( an Arab Christian surgeon and author, he continued Al-Zahrawi’s efforts to develop surgery as an independent medical specialty. Al-Quff is well known for his encyclopaedic independent work on surgery Kitāb al-ʿUmdah Fī Ṣināʿat Al-Jirāḥah ) ( العمدة في صناعة الجراحة )  (“The Mainstay in the Craft of Surgery”), authored in two volumes and described by Ibn Abī Uṣaibiʿah as “a twenty Maqālāt (treatises) of theory and practice in which is mentioned all of what is needed by the jara’iḥi (surgeon) in such a way that he will have no need for anything else".  In addition to the nineteen “ Maqālāt ” (treatises), which consist of definitions on anatomy and physiology (usefulness) of simple and compound organs, causation of surgical diseases, general surgical principles, and surgical management in various parts of the body and with various methods, he completed the book by a special treatise in the form of an “ Aqrabāzīn ” (pharmacopeia) of drugs used by surgeons.

1249 CE

Roger Bacon writes about convex lens spectacles for treating long-sightedness.

Abdullāh Ibn Qāsim Al-Ḥarīrī Al-Ishbīlī Al-Baghdādī  عبد الله بن قاسم الحريري الاشبيلي البغدادي “The End of Thoughts and the Joy of Vision”( نهاية الأفكار و نزهةالأبصا )

1258 CE

Baghdad was destroyed by the Mongols, and much ancient knowledge that had been retained in the east but lost to the west was carried back to the west by fleeing scholars.

1260 CE

Louis IX established Les Quinze-vingt; originally a retreat for the blind, it became a hospital for eye diseases, and is now one of the most important medical centres in Paris.

1259 CE

Abū Al-'Abbās Aḥmad Ibn Uthmān Ibn Hibatullāh Al-Qaysī ( أبو العباس أحمد بن عثمان بن هبة الله القيسي ) “Final Thoughts about the Treatment of Eye Diseases” ( نتيجة الفكر في علاج أمراض البصر )

1296 CE

Ṣalāh Al-Dīn Al-Kaḥḥāl Al-Ḥamwī ( صلاح الدين الكحال الحموي )  penned Nūr Al-'Uyūn Wa Jāmi Al-Funūn ( نور العيون و جامع الفنون )

1299 - 1369 CE

Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī ibn Khātima al-Anṣārī, ( أبو جعفر أحمد بن علي بن الخاتمة الأنصاري )  the Andalusian physician and scholar in Qur’anic studies, did not leave his city Almeria when it was hit by the ill-reputed black death epidemic ( La peste noire ) in June 1347. He not only fled from the epidemic, but also started an investigation about its nature, mode of spread and course, besides actively attending to patients and doing all that he could do for them. He recorded all his observations and findings in his book titled: Taḥṣīl Gharaḍ al-Qāṣid fī Tafṣīl al-Maraḍ al-Wāfid (تحصيل الغرض القاصد في تفصيل المرض الوافد ) (“The fulfilment of the Inquirer’s Aim Concerning All About the Invading Epidemic”).

1300 CE

Manṣūr ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf Ibn Ilyās (منصور بن محمد ابن أحمد بن يوسف بن الياس)  (flourished around 1390) penned his book Tashrīḥ-i badan-i insān ( تشريح بدن الانسان )  (“The Anatomy of the Human Body”). The treatise, in Persian, consists of an introduction followed by five chapters on the five systems of the body: bones, nerves, muscles, veins, and arteries, each illustrated with a full-page whole-body anatomical diagram.

1300 – 1521 CE

The Aztecs held that treatment of any illness could be approached from quite a few different angles including, physical treatment, drugs, or a spiritual cure. The herb knowledge was extensive and effective. The spiritual, or magical cures, were just as important and deserve equal study and consideration as they apply to general medical treatment.

Some fifteen hundred different plants, pastes, potions, and powders were catalogued soon after the conquest by a variety of historians. The Mexica were sophisticated enough to wrap flower petals around certain medicines to form a type of capsule, or "pill" for easy consumption. Many of these medicinally used plants and herbs are still in use today and can be found in sidewalk drugstores. Photographs of the disease are often posted along with the various jars, bags and other containers displayed, depicting the ailment the drug is intended to cure or provide some sort of relief.

1320 CE

Al-Ṣafadī, 'Alī Ibn 'Abdul Karīm Ibn Ṭurkhan Al-Ḥamwī Al-Ṣafadī ( علي بن عبد الكريم ابن طورخان الحموي الصفدي “The Law in Eye Diseases”

( القانون في طب العيون )

1327 CE

Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Shaqqurī al-Lakhmī, who witnessed the black death epidemic of 1347, and also authored a separate piece of advice as a health-education guide to the authorities as well as to the public on how to limit the spread of the epidemic.

1347 - 1348 CE

Black Death  ( الطاعون ) – across Europe more than 25 million people die. Two main types of plague: 1.  Bubonic ( دبيلي )  – 50-75% chance of death. Carried by fleas on rats. Death usually within 8 days. 2.  Pneumonic ( رئوي ) – airborne disease. 90-95% chance of death within only 2-3 days. People had no idea how to stop the plague. People thought it was caused by various factors, i.e. the Jews, the Planets, the Gods, etc.

1348 CE

Ibn Al-Akfānī, Moḥammad Ibn Ibrāhīm Ibn Sā'ed, ( ابن الأكفاني , محمد بن ابراهيم بن صاعد ) Kashf Al-Rayn Fī Aḥwal Al-'Ayn. ( كشف الرين في أحوال العين )

1368 CE

Guy de Chauliac, French physician and surgeon, wrote a lengthy and influential treatise on surgery in Latin, titled Chirurgia Magna.

1371 CE

Kitāb al-Wuṣul Liḥifz al-Ṣihhah fī al-Fusūl ( كتاب الوصول لحفظ الصحة في الفصول ) (“The Attainment of Health Preservation during the Seasons of the Year”) by Lisān al-Dīn ibn al-Khaṭīb. ( لسان الدين بن الخطيب )

1383 CE

Chemist Maryam al-Zanatiyeh  مريم الزناتية dies in Al-Qayrawan, in Tunisia.

1385 CE

Serafeddin Sabuncuoglu  شرف الدين صابون أوغلو is born. An Ottoman surgeon, he continued the work of Al-Zahrawi and Ibn al-Quff by writing an independent surgical textbook.

1389 -1402 CE

Yildirim Dâr al-shifa in Bursa, built in 1399 by Yildirim Bayezid (1389-1402). A view of the lecture hall.

1424 CE

Hajji Pasa حاجي باشا , Turkey studied at a madrasa in Egypt and after a while he developed an interest in medicine. He became a physician and in time he was promoted to the post of head-physician of Kalavun Hospital البيمارستان القلاووني.

1432 –1522 CE

Ahi Çelebi  آخي جلبي , an Ottoman physician.

1443 – 1502 CE

Antonio Benivieni, Florentine physician who pioneered the use of the autopsy, a postmortum dissection of a deceased patient's body used to understand the cause of death.

1452 – 1519 CE

The chronologically next famous gravid-uterus anatomical drawing was sketched a hundred years later by Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519). Da Vinci’s drawing is obviously more sophisticated, realistic and artistic; however, it still shows the foetus in a breech presentation.

1455 CE

The Printing Press was invented by Johannes Gutenberg. This allowed for the massive reproduction of works without using the Church as a medium.

1460 CE

Heinrich von Pfolspeundt describes nose reconstruction surgery in his 'Buch der Bündth-Ertznei '.

1461 – 1554 CE

Tan Yunxian, female physician during the Ming dynasty in China.

1489 CE

Leonardo da Vinci, an Italian Renaissance polymath whose areas of interest included invention, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history, and cartography. He has been variously called the father of palaeontology, ichnology, and architecture, and is widely considered one of the greatest painters of all time. Amongst his works, he dissected corpses.

1490 – 1567 CE

Moses Hamon was physician to Sultan Sulaiman I.

1493 – 1541 CE

Paracelsus, a Swiss physician, alchemist and astrologer of the German Renaissance, pens “On the Relationship Between Medicine and Surgery book”.

1497 CE

A translation of Al-Tasrif by Al-Zahrawi is published in Venice, Italy. Basel, Switzerland and Oxford, England follow suit.

1505 – 1561 CE

Pierre Franco born and flourished. He was the creator of suprapubic lithotomy cataract operation and surgical repair of hernia with preservation of the testis, is considered to be one of the greatest surgeons of the Renaissance and a forerunner of urology.

1518 – 1593 CE

Li Shizhen, courtesy name Dongbi, was a Chinese polymath, physician, scientist, pharmacologist, herbalist and acupuncturist of the Ming dynasty. His major contribution to clinical medicine was his 27-year work, which is found in his scientific book Compendium of Materia Medica. He is also considered to be the greatest scientific naturalist of China, and developed many innovative methods for the proper classification of herb components and medications to be used for treating diseases.

1520 CE

Andreas Alpago travelled to Cyprus, Syria, and Egypt to learn Arabic. He became a great admirer of Ibn Sīnā. His improved translation of Al-Qānūn served as a primary reference to medical students and practitioners until the late 18th century. We shall mention that his translation in Latin, which he brought back with him to Padua in 1520, after working in Damascus.  His works was published after his death by about 25 years.

1540s CE

Andreus Vesalius proved Galen wrong regarding the jawbone and that blood flows through the septum in the heart. He published “The Fabric of the Body” in 1543 CE. His work encouraged other to question Galen’s theories.

1543 CE

Vesalius publishes findings on human anatomy in De Fabrica Corporis Humani.

1564 – 1627 CE

Ahmad Baba as-Sudane, the final Chancellor of Sankore University, penned over 60 books on various subjects including law, medicine, philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, etc.

1570s CE

Ambroise Paré developed ligatures to stop bleeding during and after surgery. This reduced the risk of infection. He also developed an ointment to use instead of cauterising wounds.

1571 CE

Johannes Kepler is born. He improved upon the work of Ibn al-Haytham in his work on optics.

1575 CE

Molla Kasim served as Head physician at Topkapi Palace.

1579 CE

Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-ʿUlfī  أحمد ابن محمد الألفي  (from ‘Ūlfah near Ṣan’ā’ ألفة: قرية قرب صنعاء ( اليمن) , d. 1579) authored a book titled Kifāyat al-Arīb ʿan Mushawarat al-Ṭabīb  كفاية الأريب عن مشاورة الطبيب (“The Clever Person’s Sufficient Substitution for a Doctor’s Consultation”).

1580 CE

Isa Celebi  عيسى جلبي served as Head Physician at Topkapi Palace.

1590 CE

Zacharius Jannssen, a Dutch spectacle-maker from Middelburg, Amsterdam, invents the microscope.

1593 CE

The Canon of Ibn Sina and Al-Hawi of Al-Razi are printed in Rome.

1600 CE

Paracelsus, an alchemist by trade, rejects occultism and pioneers the use of chemicals and minerals in medicine. Burns the books of Avicenna, Galen and Hippocrates.

Hieronymus Fabricius, His "Surgery" is mostly that of Celsus, Paul of Aegina, and Abulcasis citing them by name.

Caspar Stromayr, ophthalmologist and hernia surgeon, or Stromayer Sixteenth Century.

1604 CE

Edward Pococke is born. He spent five years in Aleppo learning Arabic; he also translated Hayy ibn Yaqzan  حي ابن يقظان  , a precursor to Robinson Crusoe.

1606 CE

Edmund Castell is born. He lectured on the use of Avicenna’s medical work. For more than 18 years, he compiled a dictionary of seven Asian languages.

1620s

William Harvey proved that blood flows around the body, is carried away from the heart by the arteries and is returned through the veins. He proved that the heart acts as a pump recirculating the blood and that blood does not “burn up”.

1621 CE

A department of surgery and anatomy was initiated at the University of Mexico.

1627 CE

Robert Boyle, England’s most famous chemist, is born. He sought Arabic manuscripts and had them translated.

1628 CE

William Harvey publishes “An Anatomical Study of the Motion of the Heart” and of the “Blood in Animals” which forms the basis for future research on blood vessels, arteries and the heart.

1642 CE

With the outbreak of civil war, UK Parliament recognises its duty of care towards soldiers for the first time.

Isaac Newton is born. He kept a copy of the Latin translation of Ibn al-Haytham’s “Book of Optics” in his library.

1653 CE

First casualty reception stations.

During the First Dutch War, a network of casualty reception stations is established by Dr Daniel Whistler and nurse Elizabeth Alkin.

1656 CE

Sir Christopher Wren, English anatomist, astronomer, geometer, and mathematician-physicist, as well as one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history, experiments with canine blood transfusions

1660 CE

Military hospitals closed

The closure of Parliament's military hospitals leaves the Army without a dedicated hospital.

1665 CE

The Great Plague happens with little improvement since 1348. There is still no idea what is causing it and still no understanding of how to control or prevent it. In London, almost 69,000 people died that year.

1668 CE

Antony van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch businessman, scientist, and one of the notable representatives of the Golden Age of Dutch science and technology, creates a superior microscope that magnifies up to 200 times. This is a huge improvement on Robert Hooke’s original microscope.

1670 CE

Anton van Leeuwenhoek discovers blood cells.

1683 CE

Anton van Leeuwenhoek observes bacteria.

1685 CE

Hieronymus Fabricius, anatomist and surgeon.

1692 CE

First field hospitals established

Mobile field hospitals (hospitals on the battlefield) are established by William III during the Nine Years' War.

1701 CE

Giacomo Pylarini, Venetian physician and consul for the republic of Venice in Smyrna, gives the first smallpox inoculations.

1702 CE

Flying hospitals on battlefields

Flying hospitals accompany the Duke of Marlborough's armies to war and are used to treat and transport casualties.

1721 CE

Inoculation first used in Europe, brought over from Turkey by Lady Montague.

1729 CE

Tripoli ambassador in England Cassem Aga writes about the widespread practice of smallpox inoculation in North Africa and is elected a fellow of the Royal Society in London.

1747 CE

James Lind, Scottish physician, publishes his “Treatise of the Scurvy” stating that citrus fruits prevent scurvy.

1752 CE

Causes of disease revealed.

A major scientific report on disease prevention by Sir John Pringle, Scottish physician who has been called the "father of military medicine, gives innovative ways to reduce illness and disease among soldiers.

1763 CE

Claudius Aymand, French born surgeon, performs the first successful appendectomy.

1789 CE

First permanent military hospital.

The first permanent hospital for the Standing Army is established by leading surgeon John Hunter in Chelsea.

1790 CE

Homeopathy is developed in Germany by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann and becomes an alternative to reigning, invasive medical procedures. Hahnemann believes that, in healthy people, drugs create symptoms similar to the diseases they effectively treat. For instance, to treat a fever, a homeopath uses extremely low doses of a substance that, under normal circumstances, would cause a fever. (Today this principal is known as the "Law of Similar”) The American Institute of Homeopathy is later founded in 1844.

As of this site's publication, research reviews have not found homeopathy to be a proven treatment for any medical condition. It should also be noted that several scientific controversies are associated with homeopathy.

1791 CE

Barely two hundred and twenty one surgeons and barbers (surgeons, or the common official medical practitioner, was also a barber) in Mexico to service the native population.

1796 CE

Edward Jenner, English physician and scientist, discovered vaccinations using cowpox to treat smallpox. Jenner published his findings in 1798. The impact was slow and sporadic. In 1805 Napoleon had all his soldiers vaccinated. However, vaccination was not made compulsory in Britain until 1852.

1799 CE

Humphrey Davy, Cornish chemist and inventor, discovers the pain-killing attributes of Nitrous Oxide (Laughing Gas). It would become the main anaesthetic used in Dentistry. Horace Wells would try and get the gas international recognition. He committed suicide the day before it got the recognition it deserved.

Benjamin Waterhouse, physician, co-founder and professor of Harvard Medical School, introduces the smallpox vaccine to the United States and helps gain acceptance for the new procedure.

1800 CE

Sir Humphry Davy discovers the aesthetic properties of nitrous oxide.

Nana Asma’u wrote on works such as law, medicine and education.

1803 CE

Disease the biggest killer in war.

Poor hygiene means disease is the main cause of death among soldiers in the Napoleonic Wars.

1800s - 1900s CE

Allopathy is the type of medicine most familiar to westerners today. Allopathy is a biologically based approach to healing. For instance, if a patient has high blood pressure, an allopathic physician might give him/her a drug that lowers blood pressure.

In 1848, the allopathic rationalists create the American Medical Association (AMA) and gain a strong organizational edge. Even though many American clinics once relied on homeopathy and naturopathy, allopathic medicine quickly rises to dominance. Allopathy’s popularity is due to successful scientific progress including the production of certain vaccines and development of specific drugs that treat disease.

During this same era, the discovery of antibiotics triggers rapid growth of the pharmaceutical industry. Pharmacy evolves as an enabling discipline to allopathic medicine, helping it to achieve and maintain its dominance through many successful treatments and cures.

1816 CE

Rene Laennec, French physician, invents the stethoscope.

1818 CE

James Blundell, English obstetrician, performs the first successful transfusion of human blood.

1829 – 1878 CE

Dr. Wong Fun was the first Chinese person to study in Europe. After completing his medical degree at the University of Edinburgh, he returned to China and disseminated what he had learned.

1830 CE

Naturopathy combines prevalent European treatments and a holistic, natural form of medicine formulated by Samuel Thomson, M.D. This practice is more formally established in 1892, when the term naturopathy is coined in Europe. Naturopathy is a system of therapy and treatment that uses natural remedies to stimulate the body’s natural healing abilities. These remedies focus on purity, sunlight and fresh air, and feature hydrotherapy, special diets and therapies such as massage. Rather than trying to attack specific diseases, natural healers focus on cleansing and strengthening the body.
At the time of this site's publication, virtually no studies on naturopathy's effectiveness as a complete system of medicine have been published.

1830s CE

The Industrial Revolution had a dramatic effect on public health. As more and more families moved into town and cities, the standards of public health declined. Families often shared housing, and living and working conditions were poor. People worked 15 hour days and had very little money.

1831 CE

Cholera Epidemic occurred; people infected with cholera suffered muscle cramps, diarrhoea, dehydration and a fever. The patient would most likely be killed by dehydration. Cholera returned regularly throughout the century, with major outbreaks in 1848 and 1854.

1842 CE

Edwin Chadwick, English social reformer, reports on the state of health of the people in cities, towns and villages to the “Poor Law Commission” (fore-runner to the Public Health Reforms). He highlights the differences in life-expectancy caused by living and working conditions. He proposes that simple changes could extend the lives of the working class by an average of 13 years.

Crawford W. Long, a north Georgian physician, uses ether as a general anaesthetic.

1843 CE

Oliver Wendell Holmes, American physician, poet, and polymath based in Boston, identifies the cause and prevention of puerperal fever, also known as childbed fever.

1844 CE

Dr. Horace Wells, American dentist, uses nitrous oxide as an anaesthetic.

1846

First successful use of Ether as an anaesthetic in surgery. The anaesthetic had some very severe drawbacks. In particular, it irritated the lungs and was highly inflammable.

William Morton, a dentist, is the first to publish the process of using anaesthetic properties of nitrous oxide.

John Collins Warren, the School’s first dean, provides the first public demonstration of anaesthesia in surgery.

1847 CE

James Simpson, Scottish obstetrician and a significant figure in the history of medicine, discovers Chloroform during an after dinner sampling session with friends. He struggles to get the medical world to accept the drug above Ether. Doctors were wary of how much to give patients. Only 11 weeks after its first use by Simpson, a patient died under chloroform in Newcastle. The patient was only having an in-growing toenail removed (non-life threatening). It took the backing of Queen Victoria for chloroform and Simpson to gain worldwide publicity.

Ignaz Semmelweiss, Hungarian physician, orders his students to wash their hands before surgery (but only after they had been in the morgue) and discovers how to prevent the transmission of puerperal fever.

Navy first to use anaesthetic.

The first recorded use of anaesthetic in the British services is in the Navy for a dental extraction by Thomas Spencer Wells.

1848 CE

First Public Health Act in Britain – It allowed local authorities to make improvements if they wanted to & if ratepayers gave them their support. It enabled local authorities to borrow money to pay for the improvements. It was largely ineffective as it was not made compulsory for Councils to enforce it. This was an element of the “Laissez-Faire” style of government.

1847 –1924 CE

Wong Fei-hung or Huang Feihong was a Cantonese martial artist, physician, and folk hero, who has become the subject of numerous martial arts films and television series. He was considered an expert in the Hung Ga style of Chinese martial arts. As a physician, Wong practised and taught acupuncture and other forms of traditional Chinese medicine in Po Chi Lam, a medical clinic in Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province. A museum dedicated to him was built in his birthplace in Foshan City, Guangdong Province.

1849 CE

Elizabeth Blackwell is the first woman to gain a medical degree from Geneva Medical College in New York and becomes the first woman doctor in USA.

1853 CE

Charles Gabriel Pravaz, French orthopaedic surgeon and Alexander Wood, Scottish physician develop the syringe.

1854 CE

Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole contribute majorly to the improvements in Hospitals during the Crimean War.

John Snow, English physician, proves the link between the cholera epidemic and the water pump in Broad Street, London. Unfortunately, he was unable to convince the government to make any substantial reforms.

1857 CE

Queen Victoria publicly advocates use of Chloroform after birth of her eighth child.

1858 CE

Doctors’ Qualifications had to be regulated through the General Medical Council.

1861 CE

Germ Theory developed by Louis Pasteur, French biologist, microbiologist and chemist, whilst he was working on a method to keep beer and wine fresh – changed the whole understanding of how illnesses are caused.

1862 CE

Edwin Smith papyrus

1863 CE

Royal Victoria Hospital opens.

The Royal Victoria Hospital is the first purpose-built military hospital and appoints its first professor of military hygiene.

1865 CE

Elizabeth Garrett-Anderson – first female doctor in the UK.

1867 CE

Joseph Lister, British surgeon and a pioneer of antiseptic surgery, begins using Carbolic Spray during surgery to fight infection. It reduces the casualty rate of his operations from 45.7% of deaths to just 15.0 % dying.

1870 CE

Robert Koch, German physician and microbiologist, and Louis Pasteur establish the germ theory of disease.

1872 CE

England’s Daniel Hack Tuke, a physician and expert on mental illness, publishes one of the first books on the science of mind/body medicine. It is titled Illustrations of the Influence of the Mind Upon the Body in Health and Disease, Designed to Elucidate the Action of the Imagination.

1874 CE

Osteopathic medicine is founded on the philosophy that all body systems are interrelated and dependent upon one another for good health. Dr. Still, founder of osteopathy and osteopathic medicine, believes that by correcting problems in the body's structure, through manipulative treatment, the body's ability to function and to heal itself is greatly improved. He also promotes the idea of preventive medicine and endorses the philosophy that physicians should focus on treating the whole patient, rather than just the disease. Based on this philosophy, Dr. Still opens the first school of osteopathic medicine in Kirksville, Missouri in 1892.

1875 CE

Second Public Health Act, UK – now made compulsory. Major requirement is that sewers must be moved away from housing and that houses must be a certain distance apart.

1876 CE

Public Health improvements, UK, the government introduced new laws against the pollution of rivers, the sale of poor quality food and new building regulations were enforced.

1879 CE

First vaccine developed for cholera.

1881 CE

Robert Koch discovers the bacteria that causes anthrax. He establishes a new method of staining bacteria. Using Koch’s methods, the causes of many diseases were identified quickly:
1880 – Typhus
1882 – Tuberculosis
1883 – Cholera
1884 – Tetanus
1886 – Pneumonia
1887 – Meningitis
1894 – Plague
1898 – Dysentery

First vaccine developed for anthrax by Louis Pasteur.

Nursing service established.

Nursing staff are organised in the first major step towards a regular, uniformed nursing service for the British Army.

1882 CE

First vaccine for developed for rabies by Louis Pasteur.

Koch discovers the TB bacillus.

1886 CE

Reginald Heber Fitz, American physician, provides the first clinical description of appendicitis; he also advocates performing appendectomies.

1887 CE

First contact lenses developed.

1889 CE

Isolation Hospitals were set up to treat patients with highly infectious diseases.

1889 –1981 CE

Buwei Yang Chao was an American Chinese physician. She was one of the first women to practice Western medicine in China.

1890 CE

Emil von Behring, German physiologist, discovers antitoxins and develops tetanus and diphtheria vaccines.

American philosopher, psychologist, and physician William James claims that emotions are tied to perception. In other words, how we “see” or interpret an event creates the reaction we call emotion. What actually happens to us is relatively unimportant, but our emotional reaction to events has a far-reaching impact on our memory and perception. James is probably best known for his book Varieties of Religious Experience, which some still consider a classic today.

Studies in Hysteria is a seminal work on the mind/body connection, and establishes Freud as “the father of psychoanalysis.” Freud theorizes that when the mind is fearful, and overly emotional (i.e. hysterical), a person might imagine experiencing disease symptoms. Freud also develops techniques of free association and dream interpretation, which are core tenets of psychoanalysis and establishes psychoanalysis as a legitimate clinical science.

1890s – 1910 CE

Theobald Smith, pioneering epidemiologist and pathologist, identifies the mechanism of insect-borne disease transmission, discovers the cause of scurvy and develops the concept of heat-killed vaccines.

1892 CE

Dr. William Osler’s, Canadian physician, book emphasises patient/physician relationships and the importance of good bedside manner. Osler revolutionizes the medical curriculum of the United States and Canada by teaching medical students at bedside. He believes that students learn best by closely observing and interacting with patients. Books and lectures are supportive tools, but hands-on interaction is of highest importance. Osler also introduces the German postgraduate training system. The system requires one year of general internship followed by several years of residency with increasing clinical responsibilities.

1895 CE

William Röntgen, German mechanical engineer and physicist, discovers X-Rays. Though it is an important discovery, it is only WW1 and the treatment of soldiers that propels it into the medical spotlight.

Marie Curie, Polish and naturalized-French physicist, discovers radioactive elements radium and polonium.

Daniel David Palmer, a horticulturist, farmer, and entrepreneur, develops chiropractic care based on a systematic study of anatomy physiology, and healing arts from around the world. Chiropractic care seeks to restore balance to the nervous system through manipulation of the spinal column and other body structures.

1896 CE

First vaccine developed for typhoid fever.

1897 CE

First vaccine developed for Bubonic plague.

Typhoid breakthrough in Army.

Sir Almroth Wright, British bacteriologist and immunologist, develops the typhoid vaccine at the British Army Medical School in Netley.

1898 CE

First X-ray machines used.

Transportable X-ray machines are used for the first time in the Greco-Turkish War.

New medical corps set up.

The creation of the Royal Army Medical Corps leads to improved efficiency as a single organisation is now responsible for delivering medical services.

1899 CE

Felix Hoffman, chemist and pharmacist, develops aspirin.

1901 CE

Scientists discover that there are different blood groups - this leads to the first 100% successful blood transfusions.

Karl Landsteiner, an Austrian biologist and physician and immunologist, introduces the system to classify blood into A, B, AB, and O groups.

1901 –1983 CE

Lin Qiaozhi or Kha-Ti Lim was a Chinese obstetrician and gynaecologist. In 1948, she returned to Union Hospital and worked there till her death. She did research in the fields of foetal breathing, female pelvic diseases, gynaecologic oncology and neonatal haemolytic disorders. She revolutionised modern Chinese gynaecology and oncology. As an obstetrician, she delivered over 50,000 babies in her career. She never married or had children of her own, but always wrote "Lin Qiaozhi's Baby" on the new-borns’ name tags. She died in Beijing on April 23, 1983.

1902 CE

Re-organisation of nursing.

The Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve (QAIMNS) is formed in response to the deficiencies in care highlighted during the Anglo-Boer War.

1905 CE

Paul Ehrlich, German Jewish physician and scientist, discovers first “magic bullet” – Salvarsan 606 to treat Syphilis. The problem was it was based on arsenic and so could kill the patient too easily.

1907 CE

Military medical college opens.

A new medical institution for research and teaching, The Royal Army Medical College, officially opens.

1908 CE

New voluntary forces set up.

The Territorial Force and Territorial Force Nursing Service are created.

1910 CE

American physician Walter B. Cannon proposes that emotions and bodily arousal are both organized by the brain. This is commonly known as the fight-or-flight response, the body’s first line of defence against danger. Blood rushes to the skeletal muscles and chemicals are dumped into the nervous system. Also well documented is Cannon’s research on the sympathetic nervous system and neurochemical transmission of nerve impulses.

1911 CE

National Health Insurance introduced in Britain.

1913 CE

Dr. Paul Dudley White, American physician and cardiologist, pioneers the use of the electrocardiograph - ECG.

1914 CE

Paul Dudley White introduces the electrocardiograph to the United States.

1914 -1918 CE

World War One – development of skin grafts to treat victims of shelling.

1915 CE

New splint reduces deaths.

The introduction of a new splint by Robert Jones dramatically reduces soldier deaths from upper leg fractures.

1915 – 2002 CE

Dr. Ngeow Sze Chan was a prominent Chinese physician based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, during the mid to late 20th century. Because of his impact on the practice of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), he was known in the region as “The Father of Modern Traditional Chinese Medicine”.

1917 CE

Advances in plastic surgery.

A new hospital devoted to soldiers' facial injuries opens in Sidcup, Kent, with over 1,000 beds available.

First plastic surgery patient.

Naval officer Walter Yeo, injured in the Battle of Jutland, is the first person in the world to undergo plastic surgery.

Advances in storage of blood.

The first successful attempts to store human blood for transfusion are made by the Allies on the battlefields of northern France.

1921 CE

Edward Mellanby, nutrition scientist and medical research, discovers that lack of vitamin D in the diet causes rickets.

Earle Dickson, American inventor, invented the Band-Aid.

Creation of Army Dental Corps.

The creation of the Army Dental Corps is prompted by the number of face and jaw injuries and dental problems in the First World War.

1922 CE

Insulin first used to treat diabetes.

Elliott Joslin, first doctor in the United States to specialise in diabetes, introduces insulin to the United States and subsequently founds Joslin Diabetes Center. The centre is situated in Boston, and still functioning until present. It is considered the centre of excellence for the management of Diabetes.

1923 CE

First vaccine developed for diphtheria.

Eliot Cutler performs the world’s first successful heart valve surgery at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, today part of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston.

1924 CE

Wang Zhenyi, Chinese pathophysiologist, haematologist, and a Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Pathophysiology at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) in Shanghai, China.

1925 CE

Marius Smith-Petersen, Norwegian-born American physician and orthopaedic surgeon, devises a three-flanged nail to secure the bone in hip fractures.

1926 CE

First vaccine developed for whooping cough.

1927 CE

First vaccine developed for tuberculosis.

First vaccine developed for tetanus.

Philip Drinker, industrial hygienist, invents the iron lung to help polio-paralyzed patients breathe.

William Hinton, American farmer and prolific writer, develops a blood test for the detection of syphilis.

1928 CE

Alexander Fleming – discovers Penicillin. The mould had grown on a petri dish that was accidentally left out. Fleming writes articles about the properties of Penicillin, but was unable to properly develop the mould into a drug.

1929 CE

The newly developed Drinker Respirator (iron lung) saves a polio patient at Peter Bent Brigham in collaboration with Children's Hospital Medical Centre, today Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Harvard School of Public Health.

1930 - 1939 CE

Mind-body study officially begins. The writings of psychoanalyst Franz Alexander and physician Helen Flanders Dunbar launch the field of "psychosomatic" medicine. Helen Flanders Dunbar publishes a scholarly paper in 1935 called Emotions and Bodily Changes: A survey of Literature on Psychosomatic Interrelationships. In it, she coins the word "psychosomatic" from a combination of the Greek words psyche (mind) and soma (body). Dunbar establishes the journal Psychosomatic Medicine in 1938 and helps found the American Psychosomatic Society in 1942, effectively launching the field.

1930s – 1940s CE

Fuller Albright, American endocrinologist, recognises the disease of overactive parathyroid develops an effective treatment for vitamin D-resistant rickets and provides insights into the treatment of osteoporosis.

1932 CE

Gerhardt Domagk, German pathologist and bacteriologist, discovers Prontosil (the second magic bullet). Slight problem is that it turns the patient red.

1933 CE

James Gamble, British soap maker and industrialist, and colleagues give the first demonstration of the need to replace intracellular fluid and electrolytes in those subjected to extreme loss of food and water.

1935 CE

First vaccine developed for yellow fever.

Percy Lavon Julian, African American research chemist and a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants, synthesised the medicines physostigmine for glaucoma and cortisone for rheumatoid arthritis.

1937 CE

First vaccine developed for typhus.

Bernard Fantus, Hungarian Jewish-American physician, pioneers the use the first blood bank in Chicago.

1937-45 CE

Florey, Chain & Heatley work on producing penicillin as a drug. Their success will make the drug the second most funded project by the USA in WW2. They fund it to the tune of $800 million and every soldier landing on D-Day in 1944 has Penicillin as part of his medical kit.

1938 CE

Robert Gross, medical researcher and American surgeon, performs the first successful closure of the patent ductus arteriosus, a congenital heart defect of infants, ushering in an era of corrective heart surgery for children.

1939 CE

Emergency hospital scheme introduced – Funded and ran by Government.

The Second World War starts.

The advent of mobile medical units leads to a reduction in the number of fatalities compared with previous wars.

Fatalities from disease drop.

Immunisation programmes and the widespread availability of antibiotics are significant in the fight against disease among Allied Forces.

1942 CE

William Beveridge, British economist who was a noted progressive and social reformer, publishes the Beveridge Report. The report was the blueprint for the NHS.

Doctor Karl Theodore Dussik, pioneer in ultrasound, publishes the first paper on medical ultrasonics - ultrasound.

While treating victims of the Coconut Grove fire in Boston, Massachusetts General Hospital physicians demonstrate the efficacy of a new approach to burn treatment and the value of new blood bank and emergency-response plans.

1943 CE

Selman A. Waksman, Ukrainian-born, Jewish-American inventor, biochemist and microbiologist, discovers the antibiotic streptomycin.

1943 - 1934 CE

Encyclopaedia of Muhadhdhab al-Dīn al-Baghdādī  مهذب الدين البغدادي , Kitāb al-Mukhtar fī al-Tibb  كتاب المختار في الطب , described as a comprehensive all-embracing great book consisting of theory and practice is published in four volumes by Da'irat al-Ma‘arif al-‘Uthmaniyah دائرة المعارف العثمانية , 1943-4 in Hyderabad, India, under the title al-Mukhtarat fi al-Tibb (“The Selections in Medicine”).

1944 CE

Motorised ambulances used.

Evacuation of casualties improves with the widespread use of ambulances and aeroplanes.

1945 CE

First vaccine developed for influenza.

A Mass General researcher in the General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, perfects the use of Pap smear to detect cervical cancer.

1946 CE

National Health Service Act – provides for a free and comprehensive health service. Aneurin Bevan convinces 90% of the private doctors to enrol.

Rehabilitation centre for (Royal Air Force) RAF.

A dedicated rehabilitation centre opens at Headley Court in Surrey, for RAF pilots and aircrews.

At Boston Children’s, Louis Diamond describes Rh disease, a condition resulting from incompatibility of a baby’s blood with the mother’s, and develops a transfusion procedure that replaces the blood of new-borns affected by Rh disease.

1947 CE

Carl Walter, John Merrill and George Thorn perfect the Kolff-Brigham artificial kidney for clinical use.

Working at Boston Children’s, Sidney Farber is responsible for the first successful paediatric remission of acute leukaemia.

1948 CE

First day of the NHS. Hospitals were nationalised, health centres were set up and doctors were more evenly distributed around the country. However, the popularity and costs of the NHS would rapidly spiral out of control. The £2 million put aside to pay for free spectacles over the first nine months of the NHS went in six weeks. The government had estimated that the NHS would cost £140 million a year by 1950. In fact, by 1950 the NHS was costing £358 million.

The first series of successful operations is performed at Peter Bent Brigham, a Hospital in Boston, for repair of stenotic mitral heart valves.

1949 CE

QARANC is established.

Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps (QARANC) is formed.

John Enders, Thomas Weller and Frederick Robbins grow poliovirus in culture, paving the way for polio vaccines. Their technique also leads to vaccines against measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox.

Doctors at Robert Breck Brigham Hospital, now part of Brigham and Women’s, become the first to administer cortisone, a steroid treatment, to patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

Helping women with diabetes who wish to have children, Joslin physician Priscilla White introduces the White Classification of Diabetic Pregnancies, a widely used method to categorise patients’ risk and tailor treatments accordingly.

1950 CE

William Bigelow (Canadian), American physician and collector of Japanese art, performed the first open-heart surgery to repair a 'hole' in a baby's heart, using hypothermia.

John Hopps, biomedical engineer, invented the first cardiac pacemaker.

Helicopters used in evacuations.

The first co-ordinated use of helicopters for evacuation of casualties takes place in the Korean War.

1950s CE

In a landmark study published in 1950, Dr. Hans Selye, a neuroendocrinologist, argues that stress is a normal part of life. He believes that adapting to stress is a natural mechanism. He proposes that over time, harsh environments (including the stress of modern living) can cause increasing levels of stress adaptation, eventually resulting in physical exhaustion and even death.

After an academic career of teaching and counselling, Carl Rogers, a humanistic psychologist, emerges as a prominent figure in the humanistic school of psychology. Rogers is best known for his client-centred therapy, which suggests that the client should have as much impact on the direction of the therapy as the psychologist. His works include Client-Centred Therapy (1951) and On Becoming a Person (1961).

Sidney Farber, American paediatric pathologist and colleagues at what is now Dana-Farber Cancer Institute achieve the first remissions in Wilms tumour of the kidney, a common form of childhood cancer. By prescribing the antibiotic actinomycin D in addition to surgery and radiation therapy, they boost cure rates from 40 to 85 percent.

1951 CE

McLean Hospital, Boston researchers discover brain proteolipids, a new class of molecules necessary for brain structure and function. This discovery provides a basis for understanding normal brain development and abnormalities underlying psychiatric illness.

1952 CE

First kidney transplant in Boston, America.

Charges introduced in NHS - 1s for a prescription.

Paul Zoll, Jewish American cardiologist, develops the first cardiac pacemaker

Jonas Salk, American medical researcher and virologist, develops the first polio vaccine.

Rosalind Franklin, English chemist and X-ray crystallographer, uses X-ray diffraction to study the structure of DNA.

Surgeon Joseph Murray, American plastic surgeon, performs the first successful kidney transplant on identical twins at Peter Bent Brigham.

1953 CE

Description of the structure of DNA.

James Watson, American molecular biologist, geneticist and zoologist, and Francis Crick, one of Britain's great scientists, work on the structure of the DNA molecule.

New limb-saving technique.
New surgical techniques to repair damaged blood vessels in field hospitals dramatically reduces the need for amputation.

1954 CE

Gertrude Elion, American biochemist and pharmacologist, patented a leukaemia-fighting drug.

The first clinical trials of oral contraceptives get underway at Boston Lying-In Hospital, now part of Brigham and Women’s.

1955 CE

At Massachusetts General Hospital, anaesthesiologist Beecher announces that 30 percent of a drug’s or a doctor’s success is due to the patient’s expectation of a desired outcome, or the “placebo effect” The American Society of Psychosomatic Medicine is founded, which further explores the placebo effect.

1956 CE

Observations show that social deprivation has a direct impact on how the body functions. George Engel & Franz Reichsman publish a description of depression in ‘Monica’, an infant whose malformed digestive tract required that she have a drainage tube in her stomach.

While the infant is in the hospital waiting for surgery, Engel and his colleagues take careful observations of her behaviour and measure her gastric secretions during different moods. They find that when the child appears happy and relaxed and is surrounded by familiar people, her gastric secretions flow copiously. When she is alone in a sterile, deprived environment or with strangers and appears sad, anxious and withdrawn, her gastric secretions stop.

This is the first time a measurable physiological function is shown to change in relation to deprivation and a mental state. This deprivation research is the counterpart to Hans Selye’s research on stress and over-stimulation.

1957 CE

In a key advance toward the improved understanding of brain structures, McLean researchers develop a procedure for extracting and identifying brain lipids.

1960 CE

Mass General clinicians become the first to use proton beam therapy to treat tumours of the eye, neck and brain.

The first implantable cardiac pacemaker is developed at Beth Israel Hospital, today part of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston.

1960s CE

Dana-Farber researchers develop the means to collect, preserve and transfuse platelets to control bleeding.

1960s and 1970s CE

Researchers focus on new biofeedback techniques, in which patients learn to control unconscious processes. Patients watch monitoring devices that track things like heart rate or blood pressure. By observing how their different actions affect data readouts, patients can start to voluntarily regulate certain body functions. For instance, a person can be trained to lower his own blood pressure. Some controversy exists regarding the efficacy of biofeedback methods.

1961 CE

Contraceptive pill introduced.

1962 CE

A surgical team, led by Ronald Malt, at Mass. General performs a replantation of a severed arm, thus achieving the first successful reattachment of a human limb.

Bernard Lown, original developer of the DC defibrillator and the cardioverter, becomes the first to use direct electric current to restore the rhythm of the heart.

1963 CE

Thomas Fogarty, American surgeon, invented the balloon embolectomy catheter.

Krueger provided the first complete English translation for Ibn Sina’s medical poem, together with a thorough historical study both for the poem and the poet. As his translation was mainly based on the French, German and Latin versions the meanings of the original Arabic text were not fully conveyed in few places.

1964 CE

First vaccine developed for measles.

Mass. General innovators make practical for the first time the long-term storage of human blood.

1965 CE

Working at Joslin, William Beetham and Lloyd M. Aiello pioneer pan-retinal coagulation, a treatment that uses lasers to halt the sight-stealing proliferation of blood vessels in people with diabetes.

1967 CE

Christiaan Barnard (South Africa), South African cardiac surgeon, performed the first heart transplant - the patient lived for 18 days.

First vaccine developed for mumps.

1968 CE

Mass. General clinicians pioneer telemedicine, the practice of medicine over closed-circuit television.

1969 CE

Mass. General cardiac surgeons collaborate in the development of an intra-aortic balloon catheter.

1970 CE

First vaccine developed for rubella.

1970s CE

Dana-Farber researchers develop a combination therapy program for soft-tissue sarcomas, resulting in a 50 percent response rate.

Dana-Farber researchers clone the gene ras and demonstrate that, when mutated, this gene—the first known human oncogene—helps spur the development of many common human tumours.

Mass. General researchers pioneer the positron emission tomography (PET) scan, an imaging technique that made possible one of the first non-invasive looks at functional changes within the brain and other organs.

1973 CE

Clinicians at the Boston Hospital for Women, now part of Brigham and Women’s, develop non-invasive foetal heart monitoring, enabling a safer and more accurate way to detect foetal distress during labour.

1974 CE

First vaccine developed for chicken pox.

Mass. General dermatologists Thomas Fitzpatrick and John Parrish introduce the field of photochemotherapy, which uses light and special medications to treat disorders such as psoriasis.

1974 - 1988 CE

Opiates such as morphine have long been known to effectively reduce pain. In 1974, Candace Pert and Saul Snyder discover that the brain has its own receptors for opiates. This provides evidence that the brain must produce something, on its own, that is akin to drugs like morphine.

Pert's and Snyder’s discovery enables other researchers to find opiate-like molecules produced by the brain – endorphins. Today, it is widely known that endorphins, such as those produced during exercise, are the body’s own natural mood enhancers and/or painkillers.

Together, receptor site and endorphin discoveries lead Pert and others to later theories that receptor sites (and the peptides released from nerves that bind to them) form the biochemical basis of emotion.

1975 CE

Robert S. Ledley, Professor of Physiology and Biophysics and Professor of Radiology at Georgetown University School of Medicine, invents CAT-Scans.

Herbert Benson of Harvard publishes a landmark book on transcendental meditation (TM) called The Relaxation Response. The book outlines a simple method for lowering heart rate, decreasing blood pressure, affecting metabolism, and controlling pain.

1975 -1988 CE

A string of scientists prove that the brain and immune system can talk to each other. They show that hormones and molecules released by the nervous system can affect the immune system and vice versa. Prior to this research, it was believed that the brain and immune system could not communicate directly.

In 1975, neuroendocrinologist Hugo Besedovsky shows that activation of the body’s immune response also increases stress hormones in the blood. In 1984, immunologists Adriano Fontana and Jean-Michel Dayer show that the brain makes immune molecules when the body is exposed to bits and pieces of bacteria. Also in 1984, neuroanatomists David and Suzanne Felten and Karen Bulloch show that immune organs like the spleen contain a rich network of adrenalin-like nerves that affect immune cell function. In 1987, three teams of neuroendocrinologists led by Robert Sapolksy; Frank Berkenbosch, Hugo Besedovsky and Edward Bernton prove that an immune molecule called interleukin-1 stimulates nerve cells as well as the brain’s stress centre. In that same year, neuroscientists Candace Pert and Henry Arimura show that the brain has receptor sites for these very immune molecules.

1976 CE

C. Ronald Kahn, American physician and scientist, recruited to clinic, discovers alterations in the receptors associated with insulin resistance, found in obesity and Type 2 diabetes.

1977 CE

First vaccine developed for pneumonia.

Stephen C. Harrison, professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology, in the Harvard Medical school (HMS). Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology is the first to determine the structure of an intact virus particle, leading to the understanding of the mechanisms of viral entry and assembly.

1978 CE

First test tube baby.

First vaccine developed for meningitis.

Stuart Orkin and his team at Boston Children’s develop new DNA sequencing techniques for the reliable prenatal diagnosis of several genetic defects that cause thalassemia, a deadly form of anaemia.

1979 CE

Mass. General radiologists pioneer the use of MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, to diagnose illness and injury.

1980 CE

Smallpox is eradicated.

PTSD recognised for first time.

American psychiatrists recognise post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a diagnosable psychiatric disorder.

1980s CE

Present Researchers at Harvard Medical School and affiliated institutions make numerous key discoveries in the HIV/AIDS field.

1980's - 1997 CE

In the 1980's, David B. Larson, Jeff Levin, and Harold G. Koenig begin studying the impact of spirituality on mental and physical health. This work culminates in 1997 with the establishment of Duke's Center for the Study of Religion, Spirituality and Health. In 2005, the Centre joins forces with Duke's Divinity School to form the Centre for Spirituality, Theology and Health. The focus of the new Center is to conduct research, train researchers, create a dialogue between researchers and theologians, and integrate religion/spirituality into the clinical care of patients. Healthcare Providers are taught to take a spiritual history of patients and communicate with them using a patient-centred approach.

1981 CE

First vaccine developed for hepatitis B.

Researchers at Mass. General, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Shriner’s Burns Institute create the first artificial skin made from living cells.

Mass. General researchers develop a technique for reversing the premature onset of puberty in girls.

1982 CE

While studying taste aversion in mice, Ader, American psychologist and academic and Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Microbiology and Immunology and of Psychiatry discover that the immune system can be conditioned in the same way Pavlov’s dogs learned to salivate in response to a bell. In their study, mice prone to Lupus are offered a saccharin-flavoured drink at the same time they are injected with a potent immune-supressing drug to treat their Lupus. Once the association is learned, the taste alone (with no injection at all) reduces inflammation and symptoms of Lupus almost as much as the drug alone.

Jack Szostak, Biological Chemistry and Genetics researcher and collaborators show that the telomeres at the ends of chromosomes are maintained by a widely conserved mechanism, paving the way for the discovery of telomerase, a critical enzyme in aging and cancer.

1983 CE

HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is identified.

Using a pulsed dye laser, Mass. General researchers become the first to treat the congenital birthmarks known as port-wine stains without scarring.

James Gusella, American molecular biologist leads the HMS Genetics team that finds a genetic marker for Huntington’s disease, a fatal inherited condition. This same gene-finding technique later enables scientists to find genetic markers for other inherited diseases.

1984 CE

Alec Jeffreys, British geneticist devises a genetic fingerprinting method.

Genetics scientists, led by Philip Leder, create the first genetically engineered mouse model of cancer, subsequently dubbed the “oncomouse.”

Howard Green, Cell Biology researcher and colleagues become the first to grow human skin in large quantities in the laboratory, allowing skin replacement in patients with extensive burns.

Brigham and Women’s researchers launch a series of national clinical studies known as the Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction (TIMI) trials, which demonstrate that new clot-busting drugs can save heart muscle and improve patients’ chances of surviving a heart attack.

1985 CE

Willem J. Kolff, pioneer of haemodialysis as well as in the field of artificial organs invented the artificial kidney dialysis machine.

1986 CE

Boston Children’s researchers identify a retrovirus as the probable cause of Kawasaki disease, an infectious illness occurring predominantly in children under five.

Investigators at Boston Children’s isolate and locate on chromosome 21 the gene for the brain protein found in the degenerative nerve tissue of people with Alzheimer’s disease.

1987 CE

Mass. General researchers contribute to the discovery of the first gene associated with inherited early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.

Louis Kunkel, American geneticist and colleagues at Boston Children’s discover the gene that causes Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

1988 CE

Mass. General researchers develop laser treatment for removal of pigmented lesions and tattoos.

1988 - 1990's CE

Scientists prove that brain-immune system communication is crucial for health. They show that a communication breakdown between the brain and immune system is associated with autoimmune/inflammatory diseases such as arthritis and multiple sclerosis. This research provides the evidence needed to convince the scientific community of the brain-immune connection's importance.

When this research was first published, up until the mid-1990s, many scientists and physicians were still sceptical that the brain-immune communication was real and questioned whether it had any relevance to human disease. In response to this, one of the field’s key researchers, Esther Sternberg, set out to convince academics that there was substantial research proving that the brain and immune systems do communicate and that this communication plays a very important part in health and disease.

Sternberg's 2000 book The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions explores the science of the mind-body connection, the reasons this field was at first rejected by the academic scientific community and how it has come full circle to acceptance. Many textbooks now feature chapters on the brain-immune connection in health and disease.

1989 CE

Judah Folkman, American medical scientist and his research team at Boston Children’s produce a synthetic compound that inhibits the growth of blood vessels associated with tumours.

1990s CE

Increasing use of keyhole surgery, using endoscopes and ultrasound scanning, allowed minimally invasive surgery.

David Eisenberg, a doctor at Harvard Medical School, publishes a historic study on alternative and complementary therapies. He estimates that alternative medicine is a $13 billion out-of-pocket industry in the United States annually. In a 1997 repeat of this study, Eisenberg finds that the amount spent on these therapies rises to approximately $30 billion.

Alfred Goldberg, Professor of Cell Biology at Harvard University and HMS colleagues conduct basic investigations that lay the foundation for the first proteasome-inhibiting cancer therapy.

1992 CE

First vaccine developed for hepatitis A.

The structure of diphtheria toxin is discovered, which leads to the discovery of a safer, more economical vaccine.

Brigham and Women’s researchers discover that a protein (amyloid beta) thought to be an early, causative feature of Alzheimer's disease is also present in healthy individuals and that patients with Alzheimer's produce too much of this protein or cannot break it down properly.

1993 CE

Massachusetts Eye and Ear clinicians pioneer the use of photodynamic therapy for neovascular macular degeneration.

Gary Ruvkun, HMS Genetics researcher codiscovers small regulatory RNAs called microRNAs, revealing a new world of RNA regulation at an unprecedented small scale.

Innovators at Mass. Eye and Ear develop a surgical method to restore speech, swallowing and normal breathing in patients with paralyzed vocal chords.

Dana-Farber scientists identify the gene that causes an inherited form of colon cancer, which leads to diagnostic screening to determine whether people are predisposed to contract the disease.

Mass. Eye and Ear researchers discover VEGF, a molecule implicated in diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration, the most common forms of blindness.

1994 CE

National Organ Donor register created.

Closure of military hospitals.

The phased closure of military hospitals is announced as part of a re-organisation of military healthcare.

National clinical trials, led by Beth Israel Deaconess investigators, demonstrate that a new oral drug called zileuton effectively improves lung function after an asthma attack and reduces asthma symptoms over a month-long period.

In studies of wound repair, HMS researchers at Boston Children’s find a key molecule, known as PR-39, that binds growth factors and proteins necessary for the mending process.

1994 - 1995 CE

For years, scientists believed that the brain couldn’t talk to the immune system (or vice versa). They believed immune molecules were too big to pass through the brain, because of the brain’s tight security system known as the blood-brain barrier. It has long been known that sick people often acted similarly, turning inward and sleeping a lot. Scientists Robert Dantzer and Linda Watkins and Steven Maier theorised that the immune system might be triggering these responses. These observations led to the discovery that the immune system can signal the brain through the Vagus nerve. In turn, these signals cause specific “sickness” behaviours.

1995 CE

Brigham and Women’s surgeons perform the nation's first triple-organ transplant, removing three organs from a single donor—two lungs and a heart—and transplanting them into three individual patients, giving each a new lease on life.

Joslin clinical researchers identify blood glucose levels that limit kidney disease.

1996 CE

Dolly the sheep becomes the first clone.

McLean scientists discover the first evidence of a chemical abnormality in nerve-cell function in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s, a finding that ultimately leads to the first treatments for the disease approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Building on insights into the functioning of the human immune system, Dana-Farber researchers, led by Lee Nadler, devise a way to neutralise immune system cells responsible for graft-versus-host-disease, a potentially dangerous side effect of organ and tissue transplants.

1997 CE

An HMS Cell Biology team discovers a novel gene, p73, which resembles the powerful tumour-suppressor gene p53, but unlike its counterpart, p73 is found on only one chromosome and acts in ways quite different from its famous relative.

Investigating how aspirin reduces inflammation, Brigham and Women’s scientists discover that aspirin targets COX, an enzyme involved in the formation of prostaglandins and thromboxanes, compounds that are part of the inflammatory response.

1998 CE

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) was established by Congress in 1998. NCCAM is one of the 27 institutes and centres that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH) within the United States Department of Health and Human Services. NCCAM is dedicated to exploring complementary and alternative healing practices in the context of rigorous science, training complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) researchers, and disseminating authoritative information to the public and professionals.

Surgeons at Beth Israel Deaconess perform the first adult live-donor liver transplant in New England.

1999 CE

Drs. Jan Kiecolt-Glaser and Ron Glaser of Ohio State University show that chronically stressed people take twice as long to heal as those in less stressful situations.

Ushering in a powerful new way to detect nascent cancers, Ralph Weissleder and colleagues at Mass General develop molecular probes that fluoresce upon contact with tumour enzymes, allowing the detection of minute clusters of tumour cells.

2000 CE

McLean researchers identify four types of brain abnormalities associated with abuse and neglect experienced in childhood.

2000s CE

Mainstream medical institutions begin to recognise the importance of physician communication abilities (or "bedside manner"). Training on these skills is incorporated into medical school curricula. Some states add a communications portion to licensure testing.

2001 CE

New unit for seriously wounded.

The Royal Centre for Defence Medicine (RCDM) opens and becomes the main receiving unit for casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Studying a tiny cluster of nerve cells behind the eye, HMS Neurobiology researchers discover a pathway involved in how the brain’s circadian clock sends signals that control the body’s daily rhythms.

2002 CE

Researchers at HMS and Joslin identify a pathway linked to the cartilage deterioration and bone attrition of rheumatoid arthritis.

Paul Ridker and colleagues at Brigham and Women’s find that C-reactive protein predicts the chances of developing heart disease, leading to new guidelines for predicting cardiovascular disease.

2003 CE

Research conducted in resource-limited nations by the HMS Department of Social Medicine, now Global Health and Social Medicine, provides the first hard evidence that people infected with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis can be treated successfully by developing community-based outpatient treatment models.

Beth Israel Deaconess researchers pinpoint the source of preeclampsia, a life-threatening complication of pregnancy and one of the leading causes of maternal and infant mortality worldwide.

2004 CE

In one of the largest trials of its kind, researchers find that acupuncture can provide significant pain relief and improved functioning for people with osteoarthritis of the knee. Led by Dr. Brian Berman and funded by NCCAM and NIAMS, this randomized, double blind, controlled study is ground-breaking. It is the first large-scale, scientific evidence that acupuncture (an “alternative treatment”) is effective.

Led by Stuart Orkin, Boston Children’s scientists identify the first regulatory molecule that puts the brakes on the proliferation of blood stem cells and also preserves the integrity of those stem cells, enabling them to produce functional blood cells over a long period of time.

HMS Cell Biology researchers discover the architecture of the first transmembrane protein-conducting channel, paving the way for an understanding of how proteins are transferred.

2004 -2005 CE

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) reports that 36 percent of U.S. adults aged 18 years and over use some form of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). When prayer (specifically for health reasons) is included in the definition of CAM, the number of U.S. adults using CAM in the past year rises to 62 percent.

2005 CE

Mary-Elizabeth Patti and colleagues at Joslin show that poor prenatal nutrition permanently damages the function of insulin-producing cells in the embryo’s pancreas, raising the risk that the child will later develop Type 2 diabetes.

In studies to combat the herpes simplex virus type 2, the most common form of genital herpes, David Knipe in HMS Microbiology and Immunobiology develops a replication-deficient vaccine called dl5-29, which stimulates the immune system from inside host cells, a quality other vaccines lack, and becomes a leading candidate in human vaccine trials.

2006 CE

First vaccine to target a cause of cancer.

Dana-Farber researchers identify a molecular mechanism in the liver that explains how eating foods rich in saturated fats and trans-fatty acids causes elevated blood levels of "bad" cholesterol and triglycerides, increasing the risk of heart disease and certain cancers.

George Church, HMS Genetics researcher introduces revolutionary "next generation" DNA sequencing technologies.

Soldiers fitted with bionic limbs.

Amputee soldiers are fitted with the latest in artificial limb technology at Headley Court, the UK's main military rehabilitation facility.

Investigators, led by Donald Ingber, director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, demonstrate how to turn cells on and off using magnets, leading to potential ways to correct cellular functions that diseases interrupt.

Researchers at Brigham and Women’s and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard discover a gene involved in rheumatoid arthritis, a painful inflammation that affects 2.1 million Americans and can destroy cartilage and bone within afflicted joints.

Dana-Farber scientists, led by Bruce Spiegelman, identify a molecular switch in mice that turns on the development of beneficial brown-fat cells, which generate heat and counter obesity.

2008 CE

HMS Cell Biology researchers discover necroptosis and its inhibition by small-molecule inhibitors of RIPK1, which leads to clinical studies of RIPK1 inhibitors as potential therapies for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Alzheimer’s disease.

Dana-Farber scientists achieve a medical first by using a targeted drug to drive a patient's metastatic melanoma into remission.

2009 CE

Boston Children’s stem-cell researchers, led by George Q. Daley, finds that LIN28, a protein abundant in embryonic stem cells, is aberrantly expressed in about 15 percent of all cancers, revealing a possible new target for drug development.

An HMS Genetics team, led by Stephen Elledge, uses a technique called RNA interference (RNAi) to dial down the production of thousands of proteins and determine which are required for cancer cells to survive, exposing a hidden set of drug targets for possible new cancer therapies.

Joan Brugge and HMS Cell Biology colleagues discover that in addition to cancer cells’ perishing via cell suicide, or apoptosis, they also can die of starvation by losing their ability to harvest energy, findings that point toward new tumour-killing strategies.

Joslin scientists, headed by Aaron Cypess, demonstrate that adults still have energy-burning brown fat as adults, a discovery that paves the way for new treatments for obesity and Type 2 diabetes.

2010 CE

New state-of-the-art facilities.

The Royal Centre for Defence Medicine (RCDM) will move to new, purpose-built facilities in Birmingham.

An HMS Neurobiology team, led by Michael Greenberg, find that environmental stimuli activate certain sections of DNA, enhancing the process by which messenger RNAs are created, and that these “enhancer regions” play a role in driving gene expression, the first evidence of widespread enhancer transcription.

2011 CE

Andrzej Krolewski, Head of the Section on Genetics and Epidemiology and colleagues at Joslin identify two novel markers that, when elevated in the bloodstream accurately predicts the risk of kidney failure in patients with Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.

Challenging a half-century-old theory that chemotherapy works by targeting fast-dividing cells, Dana-Farber researchers report that cancer cells on the verge of self-destructing are especially vulnerable to chemotherapy.

2011 – 2016 CE

Michael Chernew and J. Michael McWilliams, HMS Health Care Policy faculty, demonstrate that global budget models can lower health care spending while improving quality in commercially insured populations and Medicare.

2012 CE

HMS Systems Biology researchers, led by Galit Lahav, use a combination of mathematical models and experiments to show that the tumour suppressor gene p53 uses pulsed signals to trigger DNA repair and cell recovery, and that the rhythm of these pulses carries crucial information.

Analysing more than 300,000 DNA sequence variations from Native American and Siberian populations, HMS Genetics researcher David Reich and colleagues reveal that North and South America were populated in three ancient waves of migration.

Scientists, led by Deborah Hung in the HMS Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology and at Mass General and Brigham and Women’s, show that a detailed RNA signature of specific pathogens can identify a broad spectrum of infectious agents, forming the basis of a diagnostic platform to earlier determine the best treatment option for infectious diseases.

2013 CE

In studies of aging factors, Amy Wagers and Richard T. Lee, HMS researchers in Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, discover that a substance called GDF-11 reverses cardiac hypertrophy, or thickening of the heart muscle, an important contributor to heart failure.

Roland Baron, of Harvard School of Dental Medicine and Mass General, reveals pathways by which the gene cathepsin K promotes bone resorption and formation, pointing to potential new therapies for osteoporosis.

2014 CE

Scientists in the HMS Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, led by Derrick Rossi, reprogram mature blood cells into blood-forming hematopoietic stem cells, thereby extending the possibility of transplantation to patients for whom a histocompatible donor cannot be identified.

Stem Cell and Reproductive Biology researchers, led by Douglas Melton, successfully generate mature human insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells from stem cells in vitro, which, when transplanted into mice, secrete insulin appropriately in response to glucose levels.

2015 CE

A team at Mass General takes the first steps in creating a bioartificial replacement forelimb suitable for transplantation in humans.

HMS Microbiology and Immunobiology scientist Arlene Sharpe and Dana-Farber researcher Gordon Freeman show that cancer cells hijack the PD-1 pathway, turning off the immune system. These findings translate into new treatments that free the immune system to fight tumours.

Spearheaded by faculty in the HMS Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, a report by The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery reveals that 5 billion people are unable to access safe, timely and affordable surgery, leading to 18.6 million preventable deaths each year worldwide. The report also presents a blueprint for developing properly functioning surgical systems globally.

Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess discover that a pseudogene, an RNA subclass that has lost the ability to produce proteins, has a role in causing cancer.

HMS Systems Biology scientists, led by Marc Kirschner, reveal the molecular processes involved in the disposal of malfunctioning or damaged proteins. These proteins are tagged with ubiquitin, which signals a cellular machine called the proteasome to pulverise the defective protein.

In neurologic studies, Brigham and Women’s researchers discover a gene variant that may help patients with multiple sclerosis better respond to a certain medication.

Peter Park, in the HMS Department of Biomedical Informatics, leads a study demonstrating for the first time that a large number of somatic (non-inherited) mutations are present in the brain cells of healthy people and occur more frequently in the genes that neurons use most.

Studying genes that cause deafness, researchers at Boston Children’s take key steps toward developing gene therapies to restore hearing.

2016 CE

Andrew Kruse, an HMS scientist in Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, is the first to reveal the molecular structure of the sigma-1 receptor, a cellular protein implicated in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a discovery that opens the door to potential therapeutic targets.

Virologists at Beth Israel Deaconess find two candidate vaccines that provide complete protection from the Zika virus in animal models, suggesting a vaccine for humans may be feasible.

McLean scientists link abnormalities in circadian rhythms to specific neurochemical changes in the brains of people with bipolar disorder that coincide with increased severity of symptoms in the morning.

In studies of the microbiome, HMS Microbiology and Immunobiology researchers find an array of individual bacterial species in the human gut that work together to influence immuno-inflammatory responses.

2017 CE

Studying cell samples from patients with rheumatoid arthritis at a level of detail not achieved in earlier studies, Brigham and Women’s scientists discover a striking subset of T cells that collaborate with other immune cells, a finding that helps illuminate a path toward more precise treatments focused only on the most relevant immune cells.