Timeline of medicine and medical technology


This is a timeline of the history of medicine and medical technology.

Antiquity

  • c. 12000 BC – The earliest known example of dental caries manipulation is found in a Paleolithic man in Northern Italy.
  • 7300 - 6200 BC – First evidence of trepanation, with signs of healing suggesting survival, identified in a skull in Ukraine.
  • 3350 - 3105 BC - Ötzi dies with a parasitic whipworm infection while carrying Piptoporus betulinus, a type of birch fungus that contains toxic resins against whipworm and induces diarrhea. It has been likely used an anthelmintic medication.
  • 3000 BC – The origins of Ayurveda traced back to around 3,000 BCE.
  • c. 2600 BC – Imhotep the priest-physician to be later deified as the Egyptian god of medicine.
  • 2500 BC – 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 and knows the inner juices of the body.
  • 1900–1600 BC Akkadian clay tablets on medicine survive primarily as copies from Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh.
  • 1800 BC – Code of Hammurabi sets out fees for surgeons and punishments for malpractice
  • 1800 BC – Kahun Gynecological Papyrus
  • 1600 BC – Hearst papyrus, coprotherapy and magic
  • 1551 BC – Ebers Papyrus, coprotherapy and magic
  • 1500 BC – Saffron used as a medicine on the Aegean island of Thera in ancient Greece
  • 1500 BC – Edwin Smith Papyrus, an Egyptian medical text and the oldest known surgical treatise no magic
  • 1300 BC – Brugsch Papyrus and London Medical Papyrus
  • 1250 BC – Asklepios
  • 9th century – Hesiod reports an ontological conception of disease via the Pandora myth. Disease has a "life" of its own but is of divine origin.
  • 8th century – Homer tells that Polydamna supplied the Greek forces besieging Troy with healing drugs. Homer also tells about battlefield surgery Idomeneus tells Nestor after Machaon has fallen: A surgeon who can cut out an arrow and heal the wound with his ointments is worth a regiment.
  • 700 BC – Cnidos medical school; also one at Cos
  • 500 BC – Darius I orders the restoration of the House of Life
  • 500 BC – Bian Que becomes the earliest physician known to use acupuncture and pulse diagnosis
  • 500 BC – The Sushruta Samhita is published, laying the framework for Ayurvedic medicine, giving many surgical procedures for first time such as lithotomy, forehead flap rhinoplasty, otoplasty and many more.
  • – – Empedocles four elements
  • 500 BC – Pills are used. They have been presumably invented so that measured amounts of a medicinal substance could be delivered to a patient.
  • 510–430 BC – Alcmaeon of Croton scientific anatomic dissections. He studies the optic nerves and the brain, arguing that the brain was the seat of the senses and intelligence. He distinguishes veins from the arteries and has 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 Gynecology; and as the Father of Medicine itself. There is little evidence to support the claims but he is, nonetheless, important.
  • fl. 425 BC – Diogenes of Apollonia
  • – 425 BC – Herodotus 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.
  • 496 – 405 BC – Sophocles "It is not a learned physician who sings incantations over pains which should be cured by cutting."
  • 420 BC – Hippocrates of Cos maintains that diseases have natural causes and puts forth the Hippocratic Oath. Origin of rational medicine.

Medicine after Hippocrates

After Galen 200 AD

1200–1499

1500–1699

Image:Acquapendente - Operationes chirurgicae, 1685 - 2984755.tif|thumb|Hieronymus Fabricius, Operationes chirurgicae, 1685

18th century

19th century

20th century

1900s

1910s

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

21st century

2000s

2010s

2020s