3000 BC – Ayurveda The origins of Ayurveda have been traced back to around 3,000 BCE.[2]
c. 2600 BC – Imhotep the priest-physician who was later deified as the Egyptian god of medicine.[3][4]
2500 BC – 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.[5]
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.[7]
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 had fallen: A surgeon who can cut out an arrow and heal the wound with his ointments is worth a regiment.[5]
500 BC – Pills were used. They were 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 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.[5] 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.[9] There is little evidence to support the claims but he is, nonetheless, important.[8][10]
c. 484 – 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.[5]
496 – 405 BC – Sophocles "It is not a learned physician who sings incantations over pains which should be cured by cutting."[11]
420 BC – Hippocrates of Cos maintains that diseases have natural causes and puts forth the Hippocratic Oath. Origin of rational medicine.
354 BC – Critobulus of Cos extracts an arrow from the eye of Phillip II, treating the loss of the eyeball without causing facial disfigurement.[14]
3rd century BC – Philinus of Cos founder of the Empiricist school. Herophilos and Erasistratus practice androtomy. (Dissecting live and dead human beings)
280 BC – Herophilus Dissection[10] studies the nervous system and distinguishes between sensory nerves and motor nerves and the brain. also the anatomy of the eye and medical terminology such as (in Latin translation "net like" becomes retiform/retina.[8]
270 – Huangfu Mi writes the Zhēnjiǔ jiǎyǐ jīng (The ABC Compendium of Acupuncture), the first textbook focusing solely on acupuncture.
250 BC – Erasistratus 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.
129 – 216 AD – Galen – Clinical medicine based on observation and experience.[13] 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.[18]
375 – Ephrem the Syrian opened a hospital at Edessa[17] They spread out and specialized nosocomia for the sick, brephotrophia for foundlings, orphanotrophia for orphans, ptochia for the poor, xenodochia for poor or infirm pilgrims, and gerontochia for the old.[17]
400 – The first hospital in Latin Christendom was founded by Fabiola at Rome[17]
420 – Caelius Aurelianus a doctor from Sicca Veneria (El-Kef, Tunisia) handbook On Acute and Chronic Diseases in Latin.[13]
447 – Cassius Felix of Cirta (Constantine, Ksantina, Algeria), medical handbook drew on Greek sources, Methodist and Galenist in Latin[13]
536 – 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[24]
second half of 6th century 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[24]
c. 620 Aaron of AlexandriaSyriac . He wrote 30 books on medicine, the "Pandects". He was the first author in antiquity who mentioned the diseases of smallpox and measles[26] translated by Māsarjawaih a Syrian Jew and Physician, into Arabic about A. D. 683
d. 857 – Mesue the elder (Yūḥannā ibn Māsawayh) Syriac Christian[18]
c. 830 – 870 – Hunayn ibn Ishaq (Johannitius) Syriac-speaking Christian also knew Greek and Arabic. Translator and author of several medical tracts.[18]
1257 – 1316 Pietro d'Abano also known as Petrus De Apono or Aponensis[35]
1260 – 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 centers in Paris[17]
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.[49]
Bartholomeo Maggi at Bologna, Felix Wurtz of Zurich, Léonard Botal in Paris, and the Englishman Thomas Gale (surgeon), (the diversity of their geographical origins attests to the widespread interest of surgeons in the problem), all published works urging similar treatment to Paré's. But it was Paré's writings which were the most influential.[56]
1518 – College of Physicians founded now known as Royal College of Physicians of London is a British professional body of doctors of general medicine and its subspecialties. It received the royal charter in 1518[57]
1803 – 1841 – Morphine was first isolated by Friedrich Sertürner, this is generally believed to be the first isolation of an active ingredient from a plant.
1849 – Elizabeth Blackwell is the first woman to gain a medical degree in the United States.
1850 – Female Medical College of Pennsylvania (later Woman's Medical College), the first medical college in the world to grant degrees to women, is founded in Philadelphia.[99]
^Hamilton, William (1831). The history of medicine, surgery and anatomy. p. 358. Retrieved 24 December 2013. As a proof of his ignorance and his arrogance, he commenced his very first lecture by publicly consigning to the flames the works of Galen and Avicenna, impudently declaring that his cap contained more knowledge than all the physicians, and the hair of his beard more experience than all the universities in the world. "Greeks, Romans, French, and Italians," he exclaimed, "you Avicenna, you Galen, you Rhazes, you Mesne; you Doctors of Paris, of Montpellier, of Swabia, of Misnia, of Cologne, of Vienna, and all you through out the countries bathed by the Danube and the Rhine; and you who dwell in the islands of the sea, Athenian, Greek, Arab, and Jew! you shall all follow and obey me. I am your king; to me belongs the sceptre of physic."
^M.D., FREDERIC S. DENNIS (1895). SYSTEM OF SURGERY. pp. 56–57. Retrieved 7 December 2012.
^Schumpelick, Volker (2000). Hernien. Georg Thieme Verlag. ISBN9783131173645. Retrieved 7 December 2012.
^Dran, Henri-François Le (1768). The operations in surgery. printed for Hawes Clarke and Collins, J. Dodsley, W. Johnston, B. Law and T. Becket. Retrieved 7 December 2012.
^London, Hunterian Museum; curator.), Elizabeth Allen (George Qvist; England, Royal College of Surgeons of (1993). A guide to the Hunterian Museum: John Hunter, 1728–1793. Royal College of Surgeons of England. Retrieved 7 December 2012.
^Desault, Pierre-Joseph (1794). Parisian Chirurgical Journal. Printed for the translator. Retrieved 7 December 2012.
^Barold, S. Serge (January 2003). "Willem Einthoven and the birth of clinical electrocardiography a hundred years ago". Cardiac Electrophysiology Review. 7 (1): 99–104. doi:10.1023/a:1023667812925. PMID12766530.
^Louis, Erik K. St; Frey, Lauren C.; Britton, Jeffrey W.; Frey, Lauren C.; Hopp, Jennifer L.; Korb, Pearce; Koubeissi, Mohamad Z.; Lievens, William E.; Pestana-Knight, Elia M.; Louis, Erik K. St (2016). "Appendix 6. A Brief History of EEG". Electroencephalography (EEG): An Introductory Text and Atlas of Normal and Abnormal Findings in Adults, Children, and Infants. American Epilepsy Society.
Matapurkar B G. (1995). US international Patent 6227202 and 20020007223.medical use of Adult Stem cells. A new physiological phenomenon of Desired Metaplasia for regeneration of tissues and organs in vivo. Annals of NYAS 1998.
Bynum, W. F. and Roy Porter, eds. Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine (2 vol. 1997); 1840pp; 72 long essays by scholars excerpt and text search
Conrad, Lawrence I. et al. The Western Medical Tradition: 800 BC to AD 1800 (1995); excerpt and text search