Medicine Timeline Outline

The Earliest Known Fermented Beverage
(Circa 7,000 BCE)

The Wooden Panels of Hesy-Ra: Government Official, Physician, and Scribe
(Circa 2,600 BCE – 2,500 BCE)

One of the Earliest Medical and Mathematical Documents
(Circa 2,000 BCE)

The Largest Surviving Medical Treatise from Ancient Mesopotamia
(Circa 1,600 BCE)

The First Auto-Bibliography
(Circa 190 CE)

A Sarcophagus Showing a Greek Physician in His Library
(Circa 320 CE)

One of the Earliest Treatises on Indian Medicine, Written on Birch Bark
(350 CE – 550)

Possibly the World's First University
(Circa 350 CE)

The Only Ancient Manual of Roman Military Instructions that Survived Intact
(Circa 390 CE)

The Plague of Justinian
(541 – 542)

Perhaps the First Library in Japan
(Circa 550 – 645)

The First Western Medical School
(Circa 950)

Perhaps the Oldest State-Supported University
(June 5, 1224)

A Venetian Ordinance on the Production of Eyeglasses
(April 2, 1300)

The First Known Medical or Scientific Work to be Printed, Surviving in Only One Copy
(1456)

The First Medical or Scientific Treatise to be First Published as a Printed Book Rather than a Manuscript
(April 21, 1472)

The First Technical Dictionary
(1473 – 1474)

Possibly the Earliest Physician's Library Preserved Intact
(1474)

The First Printed Herbal
(May 9, 1477)

The First Printed Edition of Dioscorides
(July 1478)

The First Printed Book on Wine
(October 1478)

The First Printed Herbal with Illustrations and Probably the First Series of Illustrations on a Scientific Subject
(Circa 1481 – 1482)

The Earliest Medical Work Printed in English
(Circa 1483)

Leonardo's Anatomical Drawings
(Circa 1485 – 1516)

"A Horse, A Horse, My Kingdom for a Horse."
(August 1485)

The First Separately Printed Treatise on Diet
(March 23, 1487)

Handbook for Witch-Hunters and Inquisitors
(April 1487)

The First Medical Book with Anatomical Illustrations
(July 26, 1491)

The First Work Since the Time of Galen to Show Original Anatomical Information Based upon Personal Investigation and Observation
(1521)

A Condensation of his Commentaria
(1522)

The Aesthetic Anatomy of Human Proportion
(1528)

First Accurate, Detailed Woodcuts of Plants Taken Directly from Nature
(1530 – 1536)

The First Printed Book to Set Out Rules for a Healthy Diet
(1542)

A Condensation or Road-Map to the Fabrica
(June 1543)

Erotic Images Made Acceptable by their Adaptation for Medical Purposes
(1545 – 1546)

Renaissance Surgery and Graphic Arts
(1545)

The First Edition of Vesalius Published in England
(October 1545 – 1553)

First Attempt to Formulate Methods of Identification of an Exotic Drug and Methods of Detecting its Adulteration
(October 1546)

Who Discovered the Pulmonary Circulation?
(1559)

The Earliest Effort to Systematize Botanical Description; Discovery of Sulfuric Ether
(1561)

The Fallopian Tubes and Numerous Other Anatomical Discoveries
(1561)

The Earliest Surviving Books Printed in India from Movable Type
(July 2, 1561 – April 10, 1563)

The First Bio-Bibliography
(1562)

The Eustachian Tube and Many Other Discoveries
(1563)

In an Expose of the Witchcraft Delusion, One of the First Scientific Approaches to the Study of Mental Illness
(1563)

The First Medical Book Printed in the Western Hemisphere with the Earliest Illustrations of Plants Printed in the Western Hemisphere
(1570)

One of the First Physicians to Draw the Illustrations for his Own Publications
(1572 – 1573)

The Medici Press
(1584)

The First Systematic Medical Bibliography
(1590)

The First Medical Subject Bibliography
(1591)

The Beginning of the Collection of Medical Statistics
(1592 – 1593)

The First Book Devoted Exclusively to the Structure of an Animal Other than Man
(1598)

Literary and Medical Classic on One of the Most Common Human Ailments
(1621)

The First Color-Printed Medical Illustrations
(1627)

Discovery and Experimental Proof of the Circulation of the Blood
(1628)

Precursor of the Royal Society
(August 23, 1633 – June 10, 1641)

Demography & Vital Statistics
(1662)

Mechanistic View of the Human Body
(1662)

Graphic Portrayal of the Hitherto Unknown Microcosm
(1665)

The Oldest Continuous Journal of an Academy of Science
(March 6, 1665)

The First Medical or Scientific Publication in North America, Known from a Single Surviving Copy
(1667)

The Foundation of Obstetrics as a Science
(1668)

De bibliothecae incendio
(1670)

Aristotle's Masterpiece
(1684)

Anatomy in the Style of Dutch Still-Life Painting
(1685)

Baroque Anatomy and Plagiarism (?)
(1698)

The Structural Relationships between the Body of Man and the Anthropoid Ape
(1699)

The Foundation of Occupational Medicine and Ergonomics
(1700)

Reflecting Surrealism Centuries Before Surrealism Became Fashionable
(1701 – 1725)

Possibly the First Color-Printed Mezzotint Published
(1721)

One of the Earliest Applications of Statistics to a Socio-Medical Problem
(1723)

The First Use of Full Color Printing by the Three-Color Process in a Medical or Scientific Book
(1736 – 1741)

Proving the Need for a Healthy and Industrious Population
(1742)

The Cool, Elegant Aesthetic of Anatomy
(1747)

The Copiale Cipher is Decrypted: Initiation into a Secret Society of Oculists
(Circa 1760 – 1780)

Probably the First Color-Printed Illustrations in a Major Scientific Periodical
(1761 – 1762)

Probably the Earlest Illustrated Medical Book Published in the American Colonies
(1766)

The First Book on Western Medicine and Science Published in Japanese
(1774)

The First Chemistry Journal
(1778)

An Anatomy for Artists including Fantastical Elements
(1779)

Proof of the Clinical Value of Digitalis
(1785)

Phasing Out Latin as the International Language
(1800)

Foundation of the Birth Control Movement
(1822)

The Double Publication of the Double Elephant Folio of Anatomy
(1823 – 1826)

Animal Ecology
(1824)

Discovery of the Mammalian Ovum
(1827)

The First Great American Contribution to Physiology
(1833)

Origins of the National Library of Medicine
(1836)

The First American Book with Chromolithographed Illustrations
(1841)

The First Book Typeset by a Mechanical Typesetting Machine
(1842)

The Doppler Principle
(1842)

Foundation of Microphotography; Landmark in Hematology, Oncology, and Pathology
(1844 – 1845)

Discovery of Surgical Anesthesia
(October 16 – November 18, 1846)

The Introduction of Anesthesia in Obstetrics
(December 1, 1846)

The First Scientific Instrument to Record Scientific Information in Real Time
(1847)

The First Modern Institution of Learning in Iran
(1851)

Splendid Monograph Describing "Addison's Disease"
(1855)

Physiological Optics, Published Over 11 Years
(1856 – 1867)

Florence Nightingale's Rose Diagram
(1858 – January 1859)

Foundation of the National Museum of Health and Medicine
(1862)

The First Instance of a Printing Calculator Used Extensively to do Original Work
(1864)

Discovery of the Mendelian Ratios
(1865)

The Library and Museum Moved to the Site of Lincoln's Assassination
(1867)

Discovery of DNA
(1869 – 1871)

"Poisonous Papers," and a Poisonous Book Published in an Edition of 100 Copies
(1873 – 1874)

Recording Scientific Results Graphically
(1878)

Index Medicus Begins
(1879)

A Landmark in Efforts to Organize Information and Make it Searchable
(1880)

A Physician-Librarian Suggests the Idea for Electric Punched Card Tabulating
(1882)

Richard Owen Calls Darwin the "Copernicus of Biology"
(November 5, 1882)

The First Scientific Study of the Effects of Cocaine
(1884)

The Origin of Psychoanalysis
(1895)

Rontgen Discovers X-Rays
(November 8, 1895)

The Last Great Original Work in Science to be Published First as a Monograph Rather than in a Scientific Journal
(November 4, 1899)

A New Standard for Descriptive Bibliography in the History of Science
(1906)

The First Large-Scale Investigation of Species Differences at the Molecular Level
(1909)

Napoleon's Penis, and Other Napoleon Memorabilia
(1916 – 1924)

The Basis for Computed Tomography
(1917)

The Literature and Culture of Suicide
(1927)

A Portion of a 15th Century Medical Library for Sale in 1929
(1929)

Invention of the Sociogram: Some of the Earliest Graphic Depictions of Social Networks
(April 3, 1933 – 1934)

DDT is Discovered, and Eventually Banned
(1939 – 1972)

The Fitzwilliam Museum Exhibition of Printing: Precursor to "Printing and the Mind of Man"
(May 6 – May 16, 1940)

"Waldo" : Imagining Remote Manipulators and TeleRobotics
(August 1942)

The First Mathematical Model of a Neural Network
(1943)

"The Program has to Build the Machinery to Execute Itself"
(March 1943 – 1944)

Origins of NLM's Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)
(December 1947)

The First Application of an Electronic Computer to Molecular or Structural Biology
(July 9 – July 12, 1951)

Applying Computer Methods to Library Cataloguing and Research
(June 24 – June 27, 1952)

The Idea of a Genetic Code
(1953 – 1954)

The Beginning of Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
(1953)

The Double Helix
(April 25, 1953)

Discovery of DNA's Method of Replication
(May 30, 1953)

The Beginning of Medical Ultrasonography
(October 29, 1953)

Probably the First Widely-Accepted Controlled Vocabulary
(1954 – 1960)

The First Amino Acid Sequence of a Protein
(1955)

Beginning of Doppler Ultrasound
(1957)

On Protein Synthesis
(September 1957)

The First Obstetrical or Gynecological Sonograms
(1958)

The First Solution of the Three-Dimensional Molecular Structure of a Protein
(1958 – 1960)

Early Expert Systems for Medical Diagnosis
(July 3, 1959)

The First Self-Contained Internally Powered Artificial Pacemaker Implanted in a Human
(1960)

Invention of the First Working Laser
(1960)

Bionics
(September 13 – September 15, 1960)

The Genetic Code
(1961)

Changes in Tissue Density Can be Computed
(1963 – 1964)

The Printing and the Mind of Man Exhibition
(July 16 – July 27, 1963)

The First Large Scale Computer-Based Retrospective Search Service Available to the General Public
(January 1964)

Smoking and Health
(January 11, 1964)

The Invention of Digital Image Processing
(1966)

First System for Interactive Display of Molecular Structures
(1966)

Invention of Three-Dimensional Image Processing
(January 1968)

CT
(1971)

Medline is Operational
(October 1971)

The First Patent for MRI
(March 17, 1972)

The First Practical Method for Cloning a Gene
(1973)

The Beginnings of Magnetic Resonance Imaging
(1973)

The First Whole-Body CT Scanner
(1973)

The Brain-Computer Interface
(1973)

Foundation of the Biotechnology Industry
(1974)

The Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA
(February 1975)

Genetech is Founded
(April 7, 1976)

A Technique for Sequencing DNA
(1977)

The Sanger Method of Rapid DNA Sequencing
(1977)

Making MRI Feasible
(1977)

The First Whole Genome Shotgun Sequence
(1982)

Defining a General Framework for Studying Complex Biological Systems
(1982)

Origins of the Human Genome Project
(December 1984 – April 1987)

The First Semi-Automatic DNA Sequencer
(1986)

The First Map of the Functioning Structure of an Entire Brain
(November 12, 1986)

The First DNA Sequencing Machine
(1987)

Proposals to Sequence the Human Genome
(1987)

The National Center for Biotechnology Information is Founded
(November 4, 1988)

Expressed Sequence Tags
(1991)

Venter Founds TIGR
(1992)

Cyberpsychology
(January 1996)

Virtual Medical Worlds
(November 1997)

Venter Founds Celera Genomics
(May 1998)

IBM's Blue Gene
(December 1999)

The Most Extensive Computation Ever Undertaken in Biology
(June 26, 2000)

Publication of the Human Genome Sequence
(February 15 – February 16, 2001)

ECHO (European Cultural Heritage Online) is Founded
(December 1, 2002)

Privacy of Medical Records and Electronic Data
(April 14, 2003)

The Index-Catalogue Goes Online
(May 1, 2004)

Image Manipulation in Scientific Publications
(July 6, 2004)

Connectomes
(September 30, 2005)

The Genetic Code of Avian Flu Virus H5N1 is Deciphered
(October 5, 2005)

Molecular Animation
(July 30, 2006 – August 3, 2007)

The Royal Society Digital Journal Archive
(October 29, 2006)

Watson's Genome
(May 31, 2007)

The First Healthcare Course Taught in Second Life
(September 2007)

Brainbow: A Colorful Technique to Visualize Brain Circuitry
(November 2007)

Game-Based Learning for Virtual Patients
(March 2008)

Discovery of a Set of Mutations that Might Have Caused a Cancer
(November 6, 2008)

Analysis of Web Search Queries Track the Spread of Flu Faster than Traditional Surveillance Methods
(November 11, 2008)

Using Air Traffic and Currency Tracking Data in Epidemiology
(May 3, 2009)

The Human Connectome Project
(July 2009)

The Cost of DeCoding a Human Genome Drops to $50,000
(August 10, 2009)

The First Brain-Computer Interface Product Offered for Sale
(March 2 – March 6, 2010)

NCBI Introduces Images, a Database of More than 2.5 Million Images in Biomedical Literature
(October 2010)

The First MRI Video of Childbirth
(November 2010 – June 2012)

Construction of the Francis Crick Institute Begins
(July 2011)

How Search Engines Have Become a Primary Form of External or Transactive Memory
(July 14, 2011)

The First Commercial Application of the IBM Watson Question Answering System: Medical Diagnostics
(September 12, 2011)

The Cost of Sequencing a Human Genome Drops to $10,500
(November 30, 2011)

IBM's Watson Question Answering System to Team with Cedars-Sinai Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute
(December 16, 2011)

The Cost of Sequencing a Human Genome Drops to $1000
(January 10, 2012)

Using a Densitometer to Measure Usage of Medieval Books of Hours
(April 23, 2012)

The First Functioning Brain-Computer Interface for Quadriplegics
(May 16, 2012)

The First Book Stored in DNA and then Read
(August 16, 2012)

The Human Genome is Packed with At Least 4,000,000 Gene Switches
(September 6, 2012)

Titian's Portrait of Girolamo Fracastoro is Rediscovered
(January 7, 2013)

The FDA Approves the First Medical Robot for Hospital Use
(January 26, 2013)

"The Human Brain Project" is Launched, with the Goal of Creating a Supercomputer-Based Simulation of the Human Brain
(January 28, 2013)

Drone Pilots Experience Stress Possibly Greater than Actual Combat Pilots
(February 23, 2013)