8000 BC
8000 BC Shamans are first using trepanation with success. Some patients did not even survive but they came back for more. The reasons trepanations were performed in Neolithic are unknown.
400 BC
400 BC The Greek Hippocrates from Kos started his school of medicine. He had 7 brothers all physicians named Hippocrates who contributed to his school. He invented the Hippocratic bench still used for orthopedic issues that was also used for torture in middle ages.
1543
1543 The Italian Andreas Vesalius publishes his first book on human anatomy. Up to this date dogma was that soul lied in the heart and the brain was a useless organ.
1615
1615 The Italian Doctor Santorio Santorio invents the thermoscope and based on his invention one can measure patients’ temperature.
1683
1683 The Dutch Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek discovers bacteria. He was a draper. While running his draper shop, van Leeuwenhoek wanted to see the quality of the thread. He developed an interest in lens making, and so he invented his microscope. He is the first to see sperm cells under the microsocope.
1796
1796 The British Physician Edward Jenner makes the first vaccine anti smallpox. He did not find volunteers for his vaccine, and he tried it on his own son.
1816
1816 The French doctor René Laennec invents the stethoscope. Laennec has seen schoolchildren playing with long, hollow sticks. The children held their ear to one end of the stick while the opposite end was scratched with a pin, the stick transmitted and amplified the scratch. His skill as a flautist may also have inspired him.
1842
1842 The American Surgeon Crawford Long first operates using general anesthesia.
1847
1847 The Austro Hungarian Physician Ignaz Semmelweis introduced anti sepsis measures. He discovered that hand washing reduced mortality in childbed fever. His ideas were rejected by the medical community. Some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands and mocked him for it. He then suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to an asylum by his colleagues. In the asylum he was beaten by the guards. He died 14 days later from a wound on his right hand that may have been caused by the beating.
1895
1895 The German Physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovers the X rays . He was unfairly expelled from high school, and he did not graduate high school. Later on he was granted Nobel Prize.
1898
1898 The Polish Scientist Marie Skłodowska Curie and her husband the French Scientist Pierre Curie discover radium used for cancer therapy and she died of cancer due to manipulating radioactive materials in her research.
1928
1928 The Scottish Bacteriologist Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin. That was an incidental discovery.
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