People
Ebola
Other Epidemics
Vaccines and antibiotics,
Smoking – see Morals and Fashion
For
advances in cloning, see Science and
Technology.
Bovine Spingiform
Encelopathy
and CJD– see Farming
Dentistry, see Appendix 1
Heart and Blood Circulation,
see Appendix 2
Reproduction, STDs and
Childbirth – see Appendix 3
Thalidomide –
see Appendix 3a
AIDS, see Appendix i
Cholera, see Appendix ii
Diabetes and Insulin, see
Appendix iii
Influenza, see Appendix iv
Malaria, see Appendiox v
Mental illness, see Appendix
vi
Smallpox, see Appendix vii
National Health Service
(UK), see Appendix a
Hospitals, see Appendix b.
Anaesthetics, see Appendix c
15/5/2019, The number of Ebola cases
in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo now exceeded 1,600
since the current outbreak began in August 2018. In April 2018 the rate of new
cases suddenly accelerated from around 30 to around 100 per week,
27/9/2017, The World Health
Organisation declared that measles had been ‘eliminated’ from the UK, Spain and
Denmark for the frst time ever; these countries had been free of the disease
for 36 months. 33 of the 53 countries in Europe wree now measles-free. However
doctors in the UK were still treating 1,000 cases from overseas. Over 95% of
British children had been vaccinated woth the MMR jab, despite publicity
against it. In 1961 there were 764,000
measles cases in Britain, resulting in 152 deaths.
2/2/2016, The World Health Organisation
declared Zika to be a global emergency, on a par with Ebola, as Brazil
mobilised 220,000 troops to fight the disease, spraying against mosquitoes and
checking for stagnant water where the mosquito might breed. However the Rio
carnival went ahead and Brazil said it would not cancel the Olympics.
Cases of microcephaly, which first appeared in Polynesia in 2014, rose in
Brazil to 3,700 since October 2015, compared with fewer than 200 in 2014. An
estimated 1.5 million Brazilians now carry the Zika virus, which usually causes
very little illness in adults, so they may be unaware of any risk to their
unborn baby.
27/1/2016 , Concerns grew about the
Zika virus, which if contracted by pregnant women could cause the baby to have
microcephalus. The virus is spread by mosquitoes and may affect all the
Americas except Canada and Chile, also much of Africa and southern Asia.
29/12/2015, For the first time since March 2014, Guinea was declared free from Ebola virus transmissions by
the World Health Organization.
26/7/2015, Ebola continued in Guinea and Sierra Leone, albeit at much lower
levels than the peak of the late-2014 outbreak. The Lancet reported on a
vaccine with a 1005 success rate, as total cases from February 2014 now stood
at: Guinea, 3,786 cases, 2,520 deaths; Liberia, 10,672 cases, 4,808 deaths;
Sierra Leone, 13,290 cases, 3,951 deaths. There had also been 1 case in Italy,
8 cases and 6 deaths in Mali, 20 cases and 8 deaths in Nigeria, 1 case in
Senegal, 1 case in Spain, 1 case in the UK, and 4 cases, 1 death in the USA.
21/1/2015, Confirmed Ebola cases in Guinea reached 2,806 cases with 1,814 deaths.
In Liberia cases eached 8,331 cases with 3,538 deaths. In Sierra Leone cases
reached 10,124, with 3,062 deaths.
9/1/2015, Confirmed Ebola cases in Sierra Leone reached 7,718, with early 3,000
deaths. However the epidemic seemed to be abating, with many areas free of new
cases for over a month.
22/10/2014, Total Ebola cases now stood at 9,936, with 4,877 deaths. Mali reported
its first case.
18/10/2014, The total Ebola toll was as follows. Guinea, 1,519 cases, 7788 deaths.
Liberia, 4,076 cases, 2,316 deaths. Nigeria, 20 cases, 8 deaths. Senegal, 1
case, 0 deaths. Sierra Leone, 3,410 cases, 1,200 deaths. Overall total, 9,191
cases, 4,546 deaths.
11/10/2014, The number of Ebola deaths in West Africa passed 4,000.
26/9/2014, The total Ebola toll was as follows. Democratic Republic of Congo, 70
cases, 42 deaths. Guinea, 1,074 cases, 648 deaths. Liberia, 3,458 cases, 1,830
deaths. Nigeria, 20 cases, 8 deaths. Senegal, 1 case, 0 deaths. Sierra Leone,
2,021 cases, 605 deaths.
20/9/2014, The total Ebola toll was as follows. Guinea, 1,008 cases, 632 deaths.
Liberia, 3,022 cases, 1,578 deaths. Nigeria, 20 cases, 8 deaths. Senegal, 1
case, 0 deaths. Sierra Leone, 1,813 cases, 593 deaths.
31/7/2014, The number of fatalities in the Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Sierra Leone
and Liberia passed 1,200; cases were also reported in Nigeria.
12/12/2005, Scientists announced they
had created mice with small amounts of
human brain cells, to study neurological disorders.
30/11/2005, Surgeons in France carried
out the first human face transplant.
28/7/2004, Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA, died aged 88.
5/7/2003, The WHO declared SARS
to be ‘contained’
25/10/2000. Britain’s oldest man, Bill Lee, died. He attributed his
longevity to a dram of whisky every night, and died peacefully in his sleep aged 108. He was born on 13/1/1892 in
Stoke on Trent. He was shot in the arm and blinded in one eye whilst serving as
a sapper in France during World War One, and was awarded the Cross of
the Legion of Honour by the French Government for his services in war.
Afterwards, Mr Lee returned home to manage a Milletts store in Hanley, Stoke,
until he retired at the age of 72. He spent is later years in a residential
home. He left a brother and sister, four grandchildren, ten great
grandchildren, and two great-great grandsons. He was recognised as Britain’s
oldest man by the Guinness Book of Records in August 2000.
26/6/2000. British and American
scientists announced they had succeeded
in decoding the 3 billion pairs of human DNA.
13/8/1998, UK authorities warned of a rat invasion, saying there were 750,000
rat-infested homes in Britain.
2/7/1997. The British
Medical Association announced that drugs derived from cannabis were to be made legally available for cancer patients and
others suffering from debilitating diseases.
26/9/1996. The first death under legalised euthanasia in Australia.
1/7/1996, The Northern Territory in Australia legalised voluntary euthanasia.
18/2/1996. The
World Health Organisation sent experts to Gabon where ten people had died of
the Ebola virus.
1993, US
medical costs (public and private combined) amounted to 13.0% of national
income. This compared to 9.1% in 1980 and 7.3$ in 1970.
23/4/1993. The World Health Organisation declared tuberculosis a global emergency, saying TB could kill 30 million people by 2003.
8/5/1991. UK scientists discovered the gene that determines
sex.
16/2/1989, Harley Street kidney specialist Dr Raymond
Crockett resigned over a ‘cash for kidneys’ scandal in which organs were taken from poor Turks for
wealthy patients.
22/3/1988, In Australia, doctors
turned off the life support system of a terminally ill female patient for
the first time.
30/9/1987, At the
University of Pennsylvania Hospital, Susan Lazarchick had the first
successful transplant of the body’s most complex joint, the knee.
7/9/1987, The world’s
first conference on artificial life began, at
Los Alamos National Laboratories, USA.
17/12/1986, Mrs Davina Thompson made medical history at
Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, UK, when she was given a new heart, lungs, and liver.
22/9/1986, At Harefield Hospital, Middlesex, a 2 ½ month old
baby became the youngest heart and lung
transplant patient.
21/2/1986, Shigechiyo Izumi, the world’s oldest man, died
in Japan
aged 120.
25/10/1984. The hepatitis virus was identified.
5/8/1982, John Charnley, British orthopaedic surgeon,
died aged 70.
1981, Onco-genes (cancer genes)
were discovered by US research teams. They do not directly cause cancer but
become so when affected by viruses, ioniisn radiation or carcinogenic
chemicals.
1977, The first prototype
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine was built by Raymond Damadian. See also Atomic Power
and Electricity.
4/8/1976, First recorded cases of Legionnaires Disease, at an American Legion convention in
Philadelphia, killed 29 people. Scientists isolated the previously unknown
bacteria that caused this disease on 18/1/1977.
25/1/1972, In London, the National Organ Matching And
Distribution Service (NOMDS) was established.
1971, The diamond-bladed scalpel
was invented by the Microsurgical Instrumentation Research Association. It
greatly improved eye surgery.
1/10/1971, The first
CT scan was performed, on a patient’s brain, at the Atkinson Morley Hospital
in Wimbledon, London,
25/7/1971. The first heart and lung transplant was performed.
1970, In Germany, the first successful nerve transplant
took place.
21/2/1968, Lord Florey, Australian-born British pathologist who made
possible the large-scale production of penicillin, died.
24/4/1964, Gerhard Domagk, German pathologist (born
30/10/1895 in Brandenburg) died in Burgberg.
18/4/1963, The first
human nerve transplant was carried out by Dr
James Campbell at New York University Medical Centre.
1962, English orthopaedic surgeon John
Charnley discovered a low-friction high-density polythene suitable
for artificial joints,
10/12/1962, Crick and Watson received the Nobel prize for their work
on DNA.
11/3/1957, The World Health Information published the first
indications that radiation may have
genetic effects.
12/4/1955, The Salk polio vaccine was pronounced
safe.
11/3/1955, Sir Alexander
Fleming, discoverer of penicillin in 1928 and
Nobel prize-winner in 1945, died.
23/2/1954, In Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, USA,
the first mass inoculation of children against polio began, using the Salk
vaccine.
11/11/1953. The polio virus was identified.
26/3/1953. The Salk vaccine proved effective
against polio.
1/12/1952, George Jorgensen Jr of the USA became the
first person to have gender reassignment
surgery, becoming Christine Jorgensen.
17/6/1950. In the US, the first
kidney transplant took place. The patient, 44 year old Ruth Tucker, survived for 5
years but then died when the transplanted kidney failed.
5/10/1949, Major Greenwood (born 9/8/1880) English
epidemiologist and medical statistician, died.
7/4/1948. The World Health Organisation was
set up with its headquarters in Geneva. Its aim was to attain the highest
possible level of health for all peoples.
1947, It was observed that folic acid (one of the
B vitamins) could increase the number of abnormal white cells in children with
acute leukemia. If these children were given a drug that reduced the effects of
folic acid, the abnormal cells decreased. The idea that drugs could counteract
cancer, or chemotherapy, was
developed from this finding..
3/4/1947. In the UK, the private
medical company BUPA was founded.
22/2/1946, Dr Selman Abrahams announced the discovery
of streptomycin, an antibiotic for treating tuberculosis.
1943, The first dialysis machine
for patients with kidney failure was invented.
31/12/1943, Penicillin was finally in common usage
in hospitals, its development having been delayed by the War. Its first
successful use had been on 13/2/1941. Another ‘wonder drug’, sulphonamide, was
also useful against infections.
3/5/1941, The first successful treatment by penicillin. A patient was treated
for a 4 inch carbuncle, which was cleared and the patient was discharged on
15/5/1941.
21/2/1941, Sir Frederick
Banting, Canadian scientist who along with Charles
Best discovered insulin in 1921, was killed in an air crash.
13/2/1941, The ‘miracle drug’ penicillin was used on a human for the first time;
a policeman from Oxford, UK. However he died on 15/3/1941 because not enough
was available. It then took some 2,000 litres of mould culture fluid to produce
enough penicillin for a single case of infection. However Florey subsequently
discovered another species of mould that produced 1,000 times as much
penicillin. See 31/12/1943.
24/8/1940, The Lancet reported on the first
purification of penicillin by professors
Howard Florey and Ernest Chain.
9/1/1929, Fleming treated
his assistant Stuart Craddock for an
infection by washing it out with a penicillin solution; this cleared the
infection.
1928, Dorothy Eustis, from the US, set up a guide
dog training centre at Vervey, Switzerland, after habing heard of how a pet
Alsatian dog looked after its owner who had been blinded as a soldier in World War One.
Following this the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association was set up in Britain
in 1934.
12/10/1928. The first iron lung was used at the Boston Children’s Hospital,
Massachusetts.
15/9/1928. Alexander
Fleming reported the
discovery of penicillin.
6/4/1928, In Italy, handshaking was
banned as it was deemed unhygienic.
1927, The ‘Iron
Lung’, or Drinker Respirator, was invented by Harvard Professor Philip Drinker.
It was intended for child victims of respiratory faulire due to acute
poliomyelitis.
12/1/1926. In Paris, the Pasteur Institute
announced the discovery of an anti-tetanus vaccine.
14/6/1924, James Black, Scottish pharmacologist, was born
(died 2010).
10/2/1923. William Konrad Von Roentgen,
German physicist who discovered X rays
in 1895, died.
1919, In the UK, the Ministry of Health was established by
Act of Parliament.
29/12/1919, Sir William Osler, medical teacher, died in
Oxford, England.
22/2/1918. The world’s
tallest man, Robert Wadlow, was born, weighing 8 ½ lbs. He grew to 8 foot 11 ½ inches in height and
weighed 31 stone 5 lbs, when he died in 1940.
1917,
31/3/1917, Emil von Behring, immunologist (born 15/3/1854
in Hansdorf, Germany), died in Marburg, Germany.
1916, US psychologist Lewis M Terman
invented the term IQ for Intelligence Quotient; plastic surgery advanced as a
result of war inuries.
8/6/1916, Professor Sir Francis Crick, who along with J D Watson
discovered DNA, was born.
20/8/1915, Paul Erlich, bacteriologist, dies of a stroke
in Bad Homburg, Germany. Born in Strehlen, Silesia (now Poland) on 14/3/1854, he laid the
foundations for the use of chemotherapy in treating disease. In
1909 he developed the first compound designed specifically to cure a disease;
Salvarsan, for syphilis.
28/10/1914. Jonas Salk, US bacteriologist who discovered the anti-poliomyelitis
vaccine, was born in New York City, to Polish-Jewish immigrant parents.
8/1/1914, Doctors at
the Middlesex Hospital successfully treated cancer with radium.
1912, Casimir Funck coined the term
‘vitamin(e)’.
10/2/1912. Charles Lister.
Lord Joseph Lister, surgeon and discoverer of
antiseptics, died aged 84 at Walmer, Kent.
29/8/1911, John Charnley, British surgeon, was born (died
1982)
17/1/1911, Sir Francis Galton, English scientist and writer on eugenics, died aged 88.
13/8/1910. Florence Nightingale, born 12/5/1820, died in
London aged 90.
27/5/1910, Robert Koch, German bacteriologist and Nobel
Prize Winner who discovered the
tuberculosis bacillus, died.
1909, W Johannsen in The Netherlands
introduced the term ‘gene’; P T Levene discovered RNA and DNA
16/3/1908. Florence Nightingale,
aged 87, was awarded the Freedom of the City of London.
Born in 1820 to a middle class family in Derbyshire, she became interested in
hygienic care for the sick after visiting a German religious hospital in 1850
which specialised in hygiene and care. In 1854 she was disturbed by terrible
reports of the conditions in military hospitals there. She took 37 nurses and
arrived at the hospital at Scutari, arriving on 4/11/1854. The military did not
at first take her seriously, but her determination won through and she reduced
the hospital’s death rate from 42% to just 2%. After the Crimean War she
trained nurses in London and worked to improve the care for the sick.
1907, Bubonic Plague killed 1.3 million people in
India.
1907, C Pirquet developed a method of
diagnoising tuberculosis; C Ross Harrison developed a tissue culture
technique; Ivan
Pavlov in Russia
published Conditioned Reflexes.
29/11/1907. Florence Nightingale, aged 87, the ‘Lady with
the Lamp’, was presented with the Order of Merit by Edward VII for her work during
the Crimean War, see 4/11/1854.
1906, The term ‘allergy’ was
coined by Austrian paediatrician Clemens von Parquet.
24/8/1906, Kidney
transplants were carried out on dogs, at a medical conference in Toronto,
Canada.
8/4/1906, D Auguste, the first recorded Alzheimer's victim, died (born 1850)
1905, Zirm, in Austria, performed the
first cornea transplant.
30/10/1905. Aspirin went on sale in the UK for the first time.
17/2/1905, A typhus outbreak occurred in London’s
East End.
13/10/1904, Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud
published his Interpretation of Dreams.
31/7/1903, Alexander
Graham Bell’s proposition that radium could be used to treat cancer
appeared in the US journal, Science.
14/4/1903, In New
York, the typhus vaccine was discovered by Dr
Harry Plotz.
15/11/1901. The first hearing
aid, the Acousticon, was patented by Miller Reese Hutchinson of New York.
1/11/1901. In Chicago, Dr J E Gilman announced an X-Ray treatment for breast cancer.
16/10/1900, Sir
Henry Acland, English physician (born 23/8/1815) died.
3/9/1900, An outbreak of Bubonic Plague in Glasgow.
6/3/1899,
The painkiller Aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) was patented by Felix Hoffman. The active ingredient is
derived from willow.
24/9/1898, Sir Howard Florey, British
pathologist and joint discoverer of penicillin with Sir Ernest Chain, was born in Adelaide, Australia.
10/10/1897, Felix Hoffman, German chemist, invented the
painkiller aspirin.
5/1/1896. The German physicist Wilhelm
Roentgen gave the
first demonstration of X rays.
1895, Heroin
was marketed by Bayer Pharmaceuticals as a cough medicine for children.
8/11/1895. Wilhelm
Roentgen discovered
X rays, during an experiment at the University of Wurtzburg. He made the
first radiograph, or X-ray, of his wife’s hand, on 22/12/1895. In 1896 Emil Grubbe, having noticed the damage that
X-ray exposure did to his own skin, experimented with applying rays to
cancerous tissie; he treated a woman with breast cancer, but did not publicise
the results until several years later.
28/9/1895. The French chemist Louis Pasteur died (see 6/7/1885). He had been born in Dole,
France, on 27/12/1822.
1894, The first British
sanatorium for the open-air treatment of tuberculosis
opened in Edinburgh. Others soon followed in Glasgow, Renfrewshire and Frimley
(Surrey). The notion that open clean air could assist in the treatment of
tuberculosis had been popular since the late 1800s; the wealthy would take the
train to the Alps of the south of France. Wealthy philanthropists funded the
British sanatoria, although because tuberculosis was considered a disease of the
poor, it attracted less funding than cancer.
1893, A Japanese scientist, Shibasaburo
Kitasako, proved that The Plague was a bacterial disease carried by
infected rat fleas.
30/11/1889, Edgar Adrian, English
physiologist, was born. He studied the neurons of the nervous system.
22/7/1888, Selman Abraham Waksman, Russian
microbiologist whose search for antimicrobial substances in soil led to the
discovery of actinomycin and streptomycin, was born.
29/6/1888, The first appendectomy was carried out in the UK,
at the London
Hospital by Professor
Frederick Treves.
27/4/1887, The first
appendix operation, for removing an infected appendix, was carried out by George Thomas
Morton on a 26-year-old man with acute appendicitis, in
Philadelphia, USA.
6/7/1885. Louis Pasteur, 63, administered his first successful
treatment of rabies with anti rabies vaccine made from a weakened rabies virus.
25/11/1884, English surgeon Rickman Godlee undertook the first
operation to remove a brain tumour.
6/8/1881. Alexander Fleming,
the Scottish bacteriologist who
discovered penicillin, was born in Scotland. Fleming specialised in
bacteriology at St Mary’s Hospital, London. The
enormous death toll amongst soldiers suffering from infected wounds left
Fleming seeking a chemical that could fight the infection. Whilst clearing up
Petri dishes in which he had been growing bacteria, Fleming stumbled on a
mouldy dish in which the bacteria had been killed. However it was not until the
Second World War that chemists really took an interest in the development of
penicillin. Fleming was knighted in 1944 and awarded the Nobel Prize in 1945.
5/5/1881, Louis Pasteur
tested his
inoculation against anthrax on an ox, cows and sheep.
1880, Louis Pasteur accidentally discovered the technique for inoculation, by
injection of a weakened pathogen. He went on holiday, leaving a solution of
chicken cholera bacteria, which he did not realise would grow weaker over time.
On return he injected chickens with these bacteria; to his surprise they became
ill but survived, and then were able to resist full strength bacteria also.
24/6/1877, The St
John’s Ambulance brigade was formed, as the Ambulance Association, by the Red
Cross.
1874, Armauer Hansen,
a Norwegian doctor, discovered the
bacteria which causes leprosy. However drug s to treat the disease were only
developed in the 1940s.
2/3/1874, Neil Arnott, Scottish physician (born 15/5/1788)
died.
17/6/1867. Joseph Lister performed a mastectomy on his
sister Isabella, using carbolic acid as an antiseptic. It was the first operation under antiseptic conditions.
12/8/1865, British surgeon Joseph Lister,
38, operating at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, pioneered
the use of carbolic acid as a disinfectant, aiming to reduce the 50%
mortality rate amongst amputees.
1861, The principle of dialysis
was demonstrated for the first time, by Glasgow-born chemist Thomas Graham
(1805-69). This led to the invention of the first kidney dialysis machine in 1943.
24/6/1860, The training of nurses in Britain started at St
Thomas Hospital, London.
15/6/1860. Florence Nightingale
started her School for Nurses at St Thomas’s Hospital, London.
16/12/1858, Physician Richard Bright died in London, England.
23/11/1858, The General
Medical Council held its first meeting in London. It was set up under the
Medical Act 1858 to maintain a register of qualified medical parctitioners in
the UK, and to regulate the standards of medical education and examinations.
2/8/1858, Under the Medical
Act, UK doctors were now required to be registered.
1855, Addison’s Disease, a degeneration of the endocrine glands, was
first recognised by physician Thomas Addison (1793-1860).
4/11/1854. Florence
Nightingale arrived at Scutari (Crimean War).
15/3/1854,
Emil von Behring, bacteriologist who won
the Nobel Prize in 1901 for his work on immunisation aganist diphtheria,
was born.
14/3/1854, Paul Erlich, bacteriologist, was born in
Strehlen, Silesia (now Poland); died
20/8/1915.
12/3/1851,
Bacteriologist Charles Chamberland
was born in Chilly le Vignoble, France.
He improved sterilisation techniques and invented filters to trap bacteria,
which led to the discovery of viruses.
2/6/1850, Jesse Boot, British pharmacist, was born in
Nottingham.
26/9/1849, Ivan Pavlov, son of a village priest, was born
this day near Ryazan, Russia. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1904 for
his discovery of conditioned reflexes.
22/6/1848, Sir William Macewen, surgeon, was born.
7/5/1847, The American Medical Association was founded.
26/3/1845. The sticking
plaster was patented.
11/12/1843, Robert Koch, German bacteriologist, was born in
Klausthal.
21/6/1843. The Royal
College of Surgeons was formed from the original Barber –Surgeon Company.
2/4/1843. The originator of homeopathic medicine, Samuel Hanneman,
died in Paris aged 88. He believed that diseases could be cured by drugs
producing similar symptoms, only in much smaller doses than normal; the ‘law of
similars’.
12/2/1841, Sir Astley Cooper, English
surgeon, died in London (born 23/8/1768 in Norfolk).
1840, Swiss chemist Charles J Choss demonstrated the
need for calcium for proper bone development.
1837, Leeches
were heavily used in medicine. At Bartholomews, London, 96,300 leeches were used during
1837, up from 52,000 in 1822 and 24,700 in 1821. Heavy bleeding was used to
induce unconsciousness before an operation such as an amputation, in the
absence of anaesthetics.
1836, The first nurses training school in the
world was opened in Kaiserwerth, Germany by Pastor Theodore Fiedner and his
wife. The Quaker philanthropist Elizabeth Fry visited there and was so
impressed she opened the firest nurses training school ln England in London in
1840. Florence
Nightingale was trained at the school in Kaiserwerth.
31/12/1833, During
the year 1833, doctors in France imported 41.5 million leeches, actually making it an endangered species.
1832, The British Medical Association was founded. Until 1856 it
was known as the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association. It publishes the British Medical Journal.
1832, The water bed was
developed by Scottish surgeon Neil Arnott as a means of improving the
comfort of his patients.
20/4/1831, John Abernethy,
British surgeon (born 3/4/1764 in London) died in Enfield.
1830, Physician Marchall Hall (born Basford,
England, 18/2/1790) denounced bloodletting as a treatment for disease.
24/12/1828. The trial of bodysnatcher William Burke began in Edinburgh, see
31/10/1828. The other bodysnatcher, William Hare, had turned King’s Evidence and
was not brought to trial. Sentenced to death, Burke was hanged on 28/1/1829 in
front of a large crowd.
1/11/1828, Balfour Stewart, Scottish physician, was born
(died 19/12/1887).
31/10/1828, Edinburgh bodysnatchers
Burke and
Hare claimed their last victim, a beggar woman named Docherty.
1827, William Herschel devised an
early contact lens, a glass capsule filled with animal jelly.
5/4/1827. Joseph Lister
was born in London. He was a surgeon, and pioneered the use of antiseptics.
13/8/1826, Rene Lannec, French
doctor who invented and named the stethoscope
in 1819, died.
5/10/1823, The British medical journal, The Lancet, was first published. It was set up by English surgeon Thomas Wakley.
26/1/1823, Edward Jenner, pioneer
of vaccination, died in Berkeley, Gloucestershire..
27/12/1822, Louis
Pasteur was born in Dole, France.
1821, Charles Bell, born Edinburgh 11/1744, gave the
first descriotion of Bell’s Palsy, a
facial paralysis.
12/5/1820. Florence Nightingale
was born in Florence, Italy; she was named after the city. She had a
privileged education but shocked her family by turning down several marriage
proposals to pursue a career in nursing. In 1854 she nursed soldiers in the Crimean War and resolved to improve the
appalling medical conditions there.
1818, Jean Baptiste Dumas, born Alais,
France, 14/7/1800, first treated goitre with iodine.
24/11/1818, David Agnew, US surgeon (died 22/3/1892) was born.
1815, Renne Lannec invented the
stethoscope (named after the Greek stethos,
meaning breast). It comprised a wooden cylinder to listen to the chest.
23/8/1815, Sir Henry Acland, English physician, was born
(died16/10/1900).
4/8/1815, Physician Carl Reinhold Wunderlich was born in Sulz, Germany.
He was the first to realise the usefulness of taking accurate readings of a
patient’s temperature.
23/10/1814, At the
Duke of York Hospital, Chelsea, surgeon Joseph Constantine performed the
first ‘nose job’. Using a flap of skin
from the patient’s forehead (a technique used in India in 800 BC) he
reconstructed the nose of a soldier disfigured by toxic mercury treatment.
19/4/1813, Physician
Benjamin
Rush died in Philadelphia, USA.
15/3/1813, Dr John Snow, pioneer bacteriologist, was
born.
1801, Thomas Young (born 13/7/1773 in
Milverton, England) discovered the cause of astigmatism.
9/3/1801, Johann Ackermann, German physician (born
17/2/1756) died.
6/10/1799, Physician William Withering died in Birmingham,
England.
24/6/1795, German physiologist Ernst Heinrich Weber was born in
Wittemberg. He began, in 1826, experiments with two point skin stimulation; how
close can two needle points be felt before they are perceived as just one
sensation.
1794, John Dalton gave the
earliest account of colour blindness, which he described as Daltonism, as he also
has the condition.
13/7/1794, Scottish physician James Lind died in Hampshire,
England.
13/4/1794, Jean Pierre Marie was born in France. He
studied the nervous system,located the centre of respiration, and showed that
the cerebellum controlled muscular movements.
16/2/1781, Rene Laennec, French doctor who invented and
named the stethoscope, was born in
Quimper, Brittany.
1775, Sir Percival Potts suggested
that chimney sweeps in London were developing cancers of the scrotum and nasal
area due to exposure to soot. This was
one of the first conceptions that environmental factors could cause cancer.
11/4/1775, Birth of James Parkinson,
the physician who identified Parkinson’s
Disease.
1774, Lazzaro Spallanzani discovered the digestive
action of saliva.
1772, Italian anatomist Antonio Scarpa (born Motta,
13/6/1747) discovered the labyrinth of the inner ear; the semicircular canals,
vestibule and cochlea.
3/4/1764, John Abernethy, British
surgeon, was born in London (died 20/4/1831 in Enfield).
1761, Morgagni published an anatomy textbook based
on observations from over 600 dead bodies in autopsies.
1749, David Hartley (born 30/8/1705 in Yorkshire,
England), in his work Observations on man,
first used the term ‘psychology’ as
a systematic study of the operation of the mind.
29/8/1749, Physician
Sir Gilbert
Blane was born in Blanefield, Scotland. In 1795 he got the Royal
Navy to make consumption of lime juice by sailors compulsory to prevent scurvy.
This earned British sailors the nickname ‘limeys’.
1748, John Fothergill, born in
England, 8/3/1712, gave the first description of diphtheria in his Account of the putrid sore throat.
20/5/1747, British naval surgeon James Lind (born 4/10/1716 in
Edinburgh, Scotland) began an investigation to determine the cause of scurvy.
He discovered that oranges and lemons were a good cure. In 1753 he published
his Treatise on scurvy.
1736, US physician William
Douglass described scarlet
fever.
1730, George Martine performed the first tracheotomy
for the treatment of diphtheria.
9/8/1721. Prisoners in Newgate Gaol were offered
a pardon if they agreed to be inoculated to test Dr Charles
Maitland’s theories on the subject. Seven men volunteered,
and all survived to live in freedom.
1691, Clopton Havers published the first complete
textbook on the bones of the human body.
18/11/1686, King Louis XIV of France
underwent a successful operation for haemorrhoids. The surgeon, Charles
Francois, had specially-designed tools for the operation, and had
practised on dozens of peasants and prisoners, some of whom died.
1678, The
excretory ducts of the human kidneys (Bellini’s Diucts) were discovered by the
Italian anatomist Lorenzo Bellini, 35; Bellini had taught medicine at
Pisa since 1664. Bellini also discovered the action of nerves on muscles.
29/4/1667, John Arbuthnot, British physician, was born
(died 27/2/1735).
2/9/1666. The Great
Fire of London helped end the
Great Plague.
17/6/1666, Antonio Maria Valsalva was born in Imola,
Italy. In 1704 he provided the first detailed description of the physiology of
the human ear.
28/9/1665. London was in the grip of The Plague; 7,000 died in the last week alone.
In July 1665, deaths averaged 200 a week. People were fleeing the city; graveyards
were full, and corpses were thrown into Plague Pits.
7/6/1665, The Plague
was first reported in London. It was a very hot
day. 70,000 people would die of the Plague by October. Plague forced Parliament
to meet in Oxford.
1643, Physician Daniel Whistler,
born in England
1619, gave the first medical description of rickets in his thesis to the University of Leiden.
24/10/1632, Anthony van Leeuwenhoek, naturalist, was born.
Inventor of the microscope, he was the
first person to see bacteria.
10/3/1628, Marcello Malpighi was born in Crevalcore,
Italy. In 1660 he demonstrated, using the newly-invented microscope. that the
lungs consist of many small air pockets and a complex system of capillaries.
10/9/1624, Physician Thomas Sydenham was born in England. He was
the first to describe measles and identify scarlet fever. He advocated the use
of opium to alleviate pain, chinchona bark (quinine) to relieve malaria, and
iron to treat anaemia.
27/1/1621, Birth of Thomas Willis at Great Bedwyn, England. In
1659 he published De febribus, describing typhoid fever.
20/12/1590, Ambroise Pare, known as the father of modern
surgery, died in Paris.
1546, The first Regius Professor
of Medicine was appointed at Cambridge.
1543, At Basel, Switzerland, Vesalius
published his great work - De humani
corporis fabrica (The Structure of the Human Body). This contained the
first accurate anatomical drawings of the human body.
1540, The United
Barber-Surgeon’s Company was established in Britain.
20/10/1524, Thomas Linacre, physician to King Henry VII
and VIII and founder of the Royal
College of Physicians in 1518, died.
1508, Leonardo da Vinci drew plans of
an early contact lens; a glass lens
filled with water, to magnify vision.
24/8/1349, The Black Death broke out in Elbing (Poland).
31/5/1349, The mortality rate from the Black Death in London finally
began to ease.
29/9/1348, The Black
Death reached London.
24/6/1348, The Black Death outbreak hit Melcombe Regis
(Weymouth, Dorset in England).
25/12/1347, First cases of the plague recorded in the city of Split
in Croatia.
1/11/1347, Black Death spreads to Aix-en-Provence in France.
1/9/1347, The Black Death reached the French city of Marseilles.
1347, 1348. The Black Death
arrived in Europe. It appeared in the Crimea (probably originating in China
in 1333) and spread west to the Mediterranean. It reached Greece in September 1347, and
also appeared in Sicily and southern Italy. By January 1348 Pisa,
Venice,
Avignon,
and Arles
were stricken, and by April 1348 Toulouse, Spain, and Lyons had the disease. June 1348
saw the Black Death arrive in England,
and by 1349 Germany
and Brittany
were suffering.
1230, Leprosy was brought into Europe by the Crusaders.
1167, The Council of Tours
forbade the
clergy from practising surgery, so this skill was taken over by the
barber-surgeons.
18/6/1037, Persian philosopher and physician Avicenna
died. His writings were valued sources for European doctors.
594, The Plague ended in Europe. It had killed half the population.
542, The Plague hit Constantinople, imported by rats from Egypt. In
547 it reached Britain.
219, Death of the Chinese
physician Zhang (born 152),
who compiled a large compendium of all the medical knowledge in China.
265 BCE, Rome learnt of Greek
medical techniques, from Greek prisoners of war.
290 BCE, Eristratus investigated the
human nervous system. In the course of public human dissections, Eristratus
and Herophilus
noted the existence of the liver, spleen, retina, duodenum, overies, Fallopian
tubes and prostate gland. They deduced that the brain, not the heart, is the
seat of emotions.
370 BCE. Death of the great
physician Hippocrates, born ca. 460
BC.
430 – 432 BCE, The Plague in Athens.
1700 BCE, The Ebers Egyptian papyrus
(discovered in 1872 AD) records the incidence of tooth decay and ophthalmic
problems. At the same time, smallpox was recorded in China.
2595 BCE, The first Chinese medical
text, Nei Ching, was published. It detailed the use of a range of medicines,
including camphor, opium, and sodium sulphate.
2700 BCE, Acupuncture came into use in China.
2980 BCE, The Egyptian physicial Imhotep began to
research plant cures for ailments as well as religious remedies.
3050 BCE, Date of earliest known
medical text, the Edwin Smith Papyrus.
Appendix 1 – Dentistry
17/11/1955. Anglesey became the first authority in Britain to introduce
fluoride into the water supply.
1945, Fluorine began to be added to the
water supply in the US.
1908, Dr Frederick McKay, a dentist in
Colorado, USA,
noticed that some of his patient’s teeth had become mottled, and that these
teeth were not so prone to decay as un-mottled teeth. Guessing that something
in the drinking water was causing this, he discovered, after studying other
regions in the US, that fluorine in the water was the cause. This gave
rise to the concept of fluoridating the
water, enough to arrest decay without causing mottling.
22/7/1878, The UK
Parliament prohibited medically-untrained people from calling themselves
‘dentists’.
26/1/1875, The
first battery electric powered dental drill
was used. Mains-powered dental drills were not used until 1908.
19/12/1846, The first dental extraction under anaesthetic was performed in Britain.
11/12/1844, Dr
John M Riggs, of Hartford Connecticut, successfully extracted a tooth
painlessly from Dr Horace
Wells using nitrous oxide
gas. He performed 40 more such operations, but abandoned them after a
patient nearly died from an overdose of the gas; Dr Riggs was unaware that the
nitrous oxide should be mixed with oxygen.
1834, Amalgam,
or mercury
alloy, now used for fiulling teeth.
1790, The dental drill was invented by John Greenwood, dentist to George Washington.
1771, John Hunter (born 13/2/1728) published The natural history of the human teeth.
This laid the foundations for the science of dentistry
104, First mention of dentures, by the Roman poet Martial, who died in this year.
975 BCE, False teeth, for cosmetic
purposes, in use by the Etruscans.
2900 BCE, Tooth filling was
practised in Sumer.
Appendix 2 – Heart
and Blood Cirulation,
2011, A continuous-flow artificial heart was
developed that made blood flow through the body with no heartbeat or pulse.
2/9/2001, Death of heart transplant pioneer Dr Christiaan
Barnard.
1995, In Britain, 30% of
deaths were caused by coronary heart disease, compared to just 1% of deaths in
1930. The increased prevalence of high fat foods,
previously only
accessible to the very wealthy, was blamed.
16/5/1989. The first
successful hole-in-the –heart operation on an adult was performed at the Brook
Hospital, Greenwich, London. The patient was 66-year-old Eileen Molyneaux.
2/11/1986, Britain’s first
artificial heart transplant operation was performed at Papworth Hospital,
Cambridge.
24/6/1985, Keith
Hardcastle, Britain’s longest surviving heart transplant patient, died 6
years after his operation.
2/12/1982, At the University
of Utah, 61 year old retired dentist Barney
Clark became the first person to receive a
permanent artificial heart. He lived for 112 days with the device.
15/7/1970. An experimental pacemaker was fitted to a 56 year old woman
at the National Heart Centre in London.
3/5/1968. Britain’s first
heart transplant.
11/1/1968. The world’s fifth heart transplant was performed in New York.
2/1/1968, Christiaan
Barnard performed a second heart transplant; the recipient
Philip
Blaiberg survived 594 days, proving the technique was feasible.
3/12/1967. Professor
Christian Barnard, born 1923, performed the
world’s first heart transplant in Cape Town. The recipient, a 53-year old
grocer called Waskansky, who received the heart of a 25 year old traffic
casualty, died 18 days later of pneumonia. The drugs given to suppress rejection compromised Waskansky’s immune system. A second heart transplant
patient (see 2/1/1968) survived much longer.
20/9/1963, The first pre-natal
blood transfusion was performed at the National Women’s hospital in Auckland,
New Zealand, by Professor George Green, on a child born to Mrs E McLeod.
1963, The first artificial heart was patented.
22/7/1960, The
implantable pacemaker was patented by Wilson Greatbach, New York, USA, for Wilson
Greatbach Inc.
31/10/1958. Ake Senning,
Swedish doctor, in Stockholm implanted the first internal heart pacemaker.
1953, The heart by-pass
machine made open heart surgery possible.
4/10/1952. The first external
pacemaker was developed by Dr Paul Zoll of the Harvard Medical School, and was fitted
to David
Schwartz. The first internal pacemaker was not developed until 1958.
8/3/1952. The first
artificial heart was used on a 41-year old man. It kept him alive at the
Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia, for 80 minutes.
1/4/1950, Charles R Drew
(born 3/6/1904
in Washington DC) was killed in a car accident in Burlington, North Carolina.
He discovered that blood plasma, unlike whole blood, could be stored for long
periods without spoiling; this facilitated the blood transfusion system. For
this, Drew became the first Black American man in the US to be awarded a
Doctor of Science Degree.
1937,The first artificial heart was implanted in a dog.
1937, The Rhesus blood factor was discovered by Karl Landsteiner and
Alexander S Wiener.
15/3/1937. Bernard
Faustus set up America’s first blood bank at Cook
County Hospital, Chicago.
1930, Karl
Landsteiner won a Nobel Prize for his discovery of the blood groups,
making transfusions more successful.
8/11/1922, Dr Christian Barnard, South African
surgeon who pioneered heart transplants, was born in Beaufort West, Cape
Province.
27/3/1914. The first
successful blood transfusion took place, in a hospital in Brussels.
14/11/1900, Dr Karl Landsteiner of the Pathological and Anatomical Institute of Vienna announced the discovery of the three major blood groups.
9/9/1896. Surgery was
performed on the heart for the first time, at Frankfurt City Hospital, Germany. The 22 year old patient had been stabbed
in the heart during a pub brawl and stitches were inserted in the organ.
1838, Jons Jakob
Berzelius pioneered the understanding of haemoglobin in the blood,
realising the role of iron in oxygen transportation in the body.
25/9/1818, The first blood
transfusion using human blood, as opposed to animal blood, took place in
London, at Guys Hospital.
29/12/1816, Karl
Freidrich Wilhelm Ludwig was born in Witzenhausen, Germany. In 1847 he
demonstrated that the blood circulation is purely mechanical, due to heart
pumping action.
1675, Dutch scientist
Anton van Leeuwenhoek, aged 43, gave the first accurate description of red blood
cells. He pioneered the development of the microscope. See also Technology and
Innovation.
1669, Richars Lower’s Tractatus del Corde described the properties
of the heart as a muscle, and how blood
changes colour as it passes through the lungs.
12/6/1667. The first blood transfusion was made at
Montpellier University. A 15 year old boy was given 9 oz. of blood from a lamb –
surprisingly he recovered from this, and the fever he had been suffering. It
was likely that blood clotting, of the sheep’s blood, had prevented much from
actually entering the boy’s own bloodstream.
1658, Dutch naturalist Jan Swammerdam gave the first
description of red blood cells.
3/6/1657, William Harvey,
anatomist and
physician, died near Saffron Walden, Essex. He discovered and demonstrated the
circulation of the blood.
12/2/1637, Jan Swammerdam was born this day in Amsterdam.
In 1658 he became the first person to see and describe red blood cells.
1628, William Harvey showed that blood circulated in the bodies of
animals. Until then it had been assumed that arterial and venous blood,
different in colour, were separate and had different finctions. Some thought
that arterial blood carried some sort of energy from the air to the muscles,
and venous blood carried food from the liver. By dissection and logical
arguent, in his work Exercitatio
anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus ('The Anatomical
Function of the Movement of the Heart and the Blood in Animals'), Harvey
showed that
there was just one blood system, pumped around by the heart. However until
oxygen was discovered there was no known reason for the blood to circulate, and
until capillaries were discovered there was no known mechanism for this
circulation between arteries and veins.
21/5/1618, Death of Italian physician Hieronymus Fabricius ab Aquapendente,
who discovered
one-way valves in veins.
1/4/1578, William Harvey, British anatomist who discovered the
circulation of the blood, was born at Folkestone.
492 BCE, The Greek philosopher Empedocles
of Sicily recognised the heart as the centre of the system of blood vessels; he
wrongly attributed emotions to this organ also.
Appendix 3
– Reproduction, STDs and Childbirth
31/7/2000. Cases of sexually transmitted diseases had risen sharply among young
people in the past year, according to official UK figures.
16/11/1992. A brain-dead
woman had been artificially kept alive to allow her foetus to be born;
however she miscarried and the life support was turned off.
30/1/1990, Surgeons at Guy’s Hospital, London, performed the first surgery on
a baby in its mother’s womb.
1/10/1987, 48 year old surrogate
grandmother Mrs Pat
Anthony gave birth to triplets for her daughter
Karen Ferriera-Jorge in Johannesburg, South Africa.
15/8/1987. Septuplets,
three boys and four girls, were born to Susan
Halton in Liverpool’s Oxford Street Hospital. Their combined weight was 9 ½ pounds. None
survived; the last lived until 31/8/1987.
29/3/1986, The first test-tube quintuplets were born, in London.
4/1/1985, Mrs Kim Cotton, believed to be
the first commercial surrogate mother in
Britain, gave birth to a girl.
1983, In Australia, the first
birth from a woman without ovaries, using donated eggs, was achieved.
18/11/1983, In Liverpool Janet Walton, 31, gave birth to sextuplets, all girls.
28/12/1981, The first American test-tube baby, Elizabeth Jordan Carr, was born
in Norfolk, Virginia.
25/7/1978. The world’s first ‘test tube’ (IVF) baby was
born, in Britain.
Louise Joy
Brown was born by Caesarean section at Oldham General Hospital,
Lancashire, to Lesley
Brown. She had been conceived by combining the sperm and egg in a
Petri Dish, because her mother’s Fallopian Tubes were blocked.
1977, The first successful case
of in-vitro fertilisation. A couple, John
and Lesley
Brown had tried and failed to conceive naturally for 9 years.
Scientists Robert
Edwards and Patrick Steptoe removed an egg from Lesley’s
ovaries and injected John’s sperm into the egg. Two days later the
now 8-celled embryo was implanted back into Lesley’s uterus. A baby girl was
successfully born on 25/7/1978. By 2017, some 5 million babies had been
conceived in-vitro.
28/3/1974, In Britain, the NHS Family Planning Service was
inaugurated.
11/1/1974. The first
surviving sextuplets were born to Mrs Sue Rosenberg in Cape Town, South
Africa.
16/10/1972. Venereal Disease cases amongst under 16s in the UK
were up 10% on last year.
26/2/1971. Hammersmith Borough Council launched a lurid and
aggressive campaign against the spread
of venereal diseases such as syphilis.
13/11/1969, In London, a woman had quintuplets after fertility
drug treatment.
13/2/1969. Scientists in Cambridge announced the first
successful in-vitro fertilisation of
a human being.
1953, The first birth using a human egg that had
been fertilised using previously-frozen sperm.
17/9/1953, The first successful separation of Siamese Twins took place, at the
Ochnser Foundation Hospital in New Orleans.
1952, Virginia Apgar developed the Apgar Score to assess the viability of
a newborn infant, in order to combat high neonatal mortality rates. Still used
today, each infant is scored 0, 1 or 2 on 5 parameters; heart rate, breathing,
reflexes, muscle tone and colour. The result is a score out of ten indicating
any need for medical intervention.
1944, In Britain the Royal
College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists recommended that 70% of births
should take place in hospitals. Previously most births took place at the
mother’s home, with the assistance of a midwife. The cost of a hospital birth,
before the inception of the NHS, was 6 guineas,but for those women who could afford it,
a hospital birth was a welcome respite from rationing, laundry and housekeeping
duties.
15/12/1942, The British Government began a campaign against venereal disease, which had increased
markedly since the war began.
26/11/1928, The first twins to be born by Caesarean section in Britain were
delivered in Manchester.
3/11/1916, There was concern about rising rates of
sexually-transmitted diseases in Britain, with 50,000 cases reported amongst
servicemen in 1916.
1909, Paul Ehrlich, in Germany,
prepared Salvarsan as a cure for syphilis;
1900, The age of menarche in
Western girls was down to 14, from 17 in the late 1700s. By 2000 it was down to
13, and was around 12.5 by 2017.
17/1/1874. The original Siamese
Twins, Chang
and Eng
Bunker, died within three hours of each other, aged 62. Chang and
Eng meant Left and Right in Thailand, where they were born.
21/2/1866, August von Wasserman, German bacteriologist who invented a test for syphilis,
was born.
11/5/1811. The original Siamese
twins, Chang
and Eng Bunker, were born of Chinese parents in Maklong, Siam. They
were joined at the chest.
31/1/1747, The first venereal disease clinic opened at London Lock Hospital.
1741, William Smellie became the first
obstetrician to make a scientific study of childbirth. From 1741
Smellie gave midwives and medical students in London
unprecedented practical lectures on childbirth. He achieved this by offering
his services to poor women on condition that his students could attend the
birth. In 1752 he published the Treatise
on midwifery, the first scientific approach to obstetrics.
1721, Jean Palfryn introduced the use
of forceps for facilitating birth.
1502, Syphilis first appeared in China, brought to the port of Canton by
European traders.
1500, Jakob Nufer of Switzerland
performed the first recorded Caeasarian operation on a living woman.
Appendix
3a, Thalidomide
30/7/1973, Families of thalidomide victims won £20 million damages
after an 11-year court case fought on their behalf by The Sunday Times
newspaper. Babies had been born with missing or malformed limbs after their
pregnant mothers took the drug for morning sickness.
16/10/1972. Protesters demanded compensation from the makers
of the drug Thalidomide.
29/11/1971, The British Government announced a fund of £3
million for the victims of thalidomide.
23/3/1970, In the UK, the High Court awarded £370,000 damages
to 18 children born with birth defects due to thalidomide, against Distillers (Biochemicals). Five
children born with tiny ‘flipper’ arms, the worst-disabled, received £28,000
each.
27/5/1968, The trial of the executives of the Chemie-Grunenthal company,
responsible for the Thalidomide disaster that killed 80,000 babies
and maimed 20,000 more, opened in Alsdorf, near Aachen. The trail was expected
to last at least three years, but was shut down on 18/12/1970. All defendants
were granted immunity from prosecution. The German Government and Grunenthal
agreed a compensation scheme that many parents regarded as inadequate. Thalidomide
was launched as a wonder cure for morning sickness on 1/10/1957; it was
withdrawn on 27/11/1961. It was sold as Distaval in the UK, as Contergan in
Germany. It emerged that no tests were done for effects on embryos; the
executives claimed nobody in the 1950s realised that drugs taken by the mother
could affect the foetus, which claim was untrue even then. Adults who took thalidomide
as a sedative in 1959 had suffered serious nerve damage.
14/9/1962, Distillers
Company agreed to pay £14 million to the victims of thalidomide.
31/12/1958, There were fears that a drug prescribed for
morning sickness, thalidomide, might be causing birth defects.
Appendix i,
AIDS
AIDS statistics, click here, https://www.avert.org/global-hiv-and-aids-statistics
24/11/1991. Freddie Mercury, lead singer of the rock group Queen, died of
AIDS, aged 45.
10/10/1992, Tens
of thousands rallied in Washington, D. C., calling on the government to
dedicate more funding to combating HIV/AIDS.
17/6/1991. 8,000
scientists met for an international conference on AIDS at Florence. AIDS was
now in 163 countries and especially severe in Africa; the WHO estimated that
over 1.5 million people had developed AIDS, with a total of 8–10 million
infected. WHO expected a total of 40 million AIDS cases by 2000. In the USA,
170 had the disease, and a further 6,000 contracted it every month; in the UK
4,500 cases had been reported since 1981.
4/6/1991. The AIDS epidemic
worsened in Malawi, with 37% of the population now carrying the virus.
2/5/1991. The World Health Organisation estimated that 40 million
people will have the AIDS virus by 2000.
11/12/1990, The British Government announced it would award
£42 million to haemophiliacs who
became infected with HIV after being treated with contaminated Inhibitor Factor VIII.
8/3/1990. Over 3,000 people in the UK now had AIDS.
11/1/1990. In the UK, 1,612 have died of AIDS.
8/11/1988. In the UK, the death toll from AIDS reached 1,002, with 1,862
cases reported. A government report issued on 30/11/1988 feared that up to
50,000 in the UK could be HIV+ and that by 1992 17,000 AIDS deaths might have
occurred.
5/9/1988. Britain now had
1,730 reported cases of AIDS and 949 deaths.
11/7/1988. 8,500 people in the UK were known to be carrying the AIDS
virus.
13/1/1988. One in every 61 babies born in New York in December 1987 had
the AIDS virus. Doctors believed up to 40% of them would develop AIDS. In the UK, there were 1,277 AIDS cases; 697
had died from the disease.
10/8/1987, One person a day
was dying of AIDS in Britain.
20/3/1987, The drug AZT was
launched to combat AIDS.
15/2/1987. The World Health Organisation announced that a total of
38,401 AIDS cases had been reported in 85 countries. The AIDS virus had been
discovered in the USA on 23/4/1984.
21/11/1986, The UK Government began an AIDS awareness advertising
campaign focussed on safe sex.
16/12/1985, 8,000 Americans had now died of AIDS.
2/10/1985. Hollywood actor Rock Hudson died of AIDS, aged 59.
26/9/1985, The British Government announced £1 million funding to stop
the spread of AIDS.
25/7/1985, Film star Rock Hudson was admitted to hospital suffering from AIDS.
10/5/1985. The World Health Organisation announced that
AIDS cases were doubling every year in the USA and Europe. Worldwide, 11,000
AIDS cases had been reported since the virus was discovered on 23/4/1984.
11/4/1985. An
18-month old boy became the first British baby to die of AIDS.
15/3/1985, In Britain, blood donors were now
to be tested for AIDS.
23/4/1984. The discovery of the AIDS virus was announced in the USA.
21/5/1983. The US made AIDS top health priority.
31/12/1981. Doctors became aware of a new disease that destroyed the
immune system and appeared to be common in homosexuals. This was to be known as
AIDS.
5/6/1981, The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention
reported that five homosexual men in Los Angeles, California, had a rare form
of pneumonia seen only in patients with weakened immune systems. These were the
first recognised cases of AIDS.
Appendix ii,
Cholera
10/1/2010, Deaths from a cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe now amounted to 4,293, with
98,741 cases reported.
1961, The El Tor outbreak of cholera started in Indonesia. Assisted by air travel, it reached
Taiwan by 1963, and by 1964 was present in Taiwan, Hong Kong, India and Egypt.
By 1965 it was found in Iran and Saudi Arabia, and by1970 had reached Libya,
Lebanon and Astrakhan,
29/8/1902, A cholera epidemic in Egypt killed over 9,000.
13/2/1832. Asiatic
Cholera appeared for the first time in London.
21/6/1831, King William IV
of England, on opening the UK Parliament, announced the arrival of a
virulent strain of cholera in
Europe. Starting in the Ganges area of India in 1826, cholera had spread
through Iran and Turkey into south east Europe. It first hit the UK at
Sunderland on 19/10/1831. Thereafter it spread rapidly in the slums of the new
industrial cities, killing 3,000 in Glasgow, 700 in Leeds, 200 in York, 1,500
in Liverpool, 900 in Manchester and 6,800 in London. Britain was subsequently
hit by a further cholera outbreak in 1848/9 (450 deaths in Edinburgh, 3,800 in
Glasgow, 7,000 across the whole of Scotland). Cholera came again in 1853/4,
starting from Tyneside, and in 1854 in London. This outbreak killed 30,000
across the UK; 10,738 in London alone. The fourth and final outbreak of cholera
in Britain was in 1866, starting from Southampton; total UK fatalities amounted
to 18,000.
1817, A cholera pandemic began in India and spread to east Africa
and across much of SE Asia, from Japan to the Philippines.
Appendix iii,
Diabetes and Insulin
23/5/1977, Scientists reported using bacteria to
make insulin.
24/7/1925. Insulin (patented 12/6/1922) was first used to successfully
treat a patient, 6 year old Patricia Cheeseman, at Guy’s Hospital London.
12/6/1922, Insulin,
the treatment for diabetes, was patented by Frederick Banting. See 27/7/1921
and 24/7/1925.
11/1/1922, Leonard Thompson, aged 14, became the first
patient to be treated with insulin for his diabetes, at Toronto General. Hospital. He lived for another 13 years before dying
of pneumonia at age 27.
27/7/1921. Insulin
was isolated by Dr
Frederick Banting at the University of Toronto medical School,
helped by his assistant Charles Best, and tested
on a de-pancreatised dog the same day. It was first used successfully on a
human on 11/1/1922.
27/1/1899, Charles Best, Canadian co-discoverer of insulin for treating diabetes, was born
in West Pembroke, Maine.
14/11/1891, Sir
Frederick Banting, Canadian co-discoverer of insulin with McLeod and Best in 1922,
was born in Alliston, Ontario.
1815, Michel Chevreul, born Angers, France, 31/8/1786,
showed that the sugar in the urine of diabetics was glucose; an important step
in understanding the disease.
11/11/1675, Death of Thomas Willis, physician to King Charles II
and to the Duke
of York. He was the first to notice an increase in what we now know
as diabetes amongst his more affluent clients – he called it ‘the pissing
evil’. He also noted the very sweet nature of this urine. The wealthy in
England were raising their consumption of sugar, now being imported from the
Caribbean, both in desserts and in tea. In fact the issue of sweet urine and
diabetes was also known to the ancient Greeks, Indians and Chinese.
643, Death of the Chinese
physician Chen Ch’uan. He was the first to describe the symptoms of diabetes,
including thirst and sweet urine.
Appendix
iv,Influenza
10/8/2010, The World Health Organisation declared
the H1N1
influenza pandemic officially over.
11/6/2009, The influenza
strain H1N1 sparked fears of a global flu pandemic.
28/4/2009, The Mexican Government confirmed an outbreak of Swine Flu
in humans.
30/9/2005, The UN issued warnings
that a pandemic of Avian Flu might be
imminent, and kill between 5 and 150 million people.
9/1/1970, In Britain, Hong
Kong Flu claimed 2,850 lives in a week.
7/1921, The
last new cases of Spanish Flu were being reported
in New Caledonia.
1920, The Spanish Flu pandemic had killed 50 - 100
million people. In the developed world, mortality was about 2%; in Britain,
250,000 died, mostly aged between 20 and 40. However in India, where 18.5
million died, it was 6%, and in Egypr, where 138,000 died, mortality was 10%.
Death rates tended to be higher in populations which had been less exposed to
the flu virus previously.
26/10/1918. In London alone, in the past week, Spanish flu claimed 2,225 lives.
21/10/1918. The
Spanish Flu epidemic began in
Britain. 150,000 died of this disease in the last quarter of 1918. It killed
twice as many as died in World War One.
4/3/1918, The
first recorded case of Spanish flu,
in a US soldier at Cape Funston, a military base in Kansas.
17/2/1900, The influenza epidemic in Britain ended.
9/1/1900, The
influenza epidemic in London was killing 50 people a day.
Appendix v,
Malaria
2016, There were 216 million malaria cases
worldwide, 80% of them in India and 14 sub-Saharan countries. 445,000 people
died of malaria.
31/12/2014, During 2014, malaria
killed 627,000 worldwide, 77% of these being children under 5. In 2014 there
were 207 million new cases of malaria, and Africa lost an estimated US$ 12
million productivity due to the disease.
1977, The number of malaria
cases in India stood at 10 million, up from 100,000 in 1965. The emergence of
resistant strains of the disease was to blame.
10/12/1902. Major Ronald Ross of the British army won the Nobel Prize
for medicine because of his work relating malaria to mosquitoes.
20/8/1897, Sir Ronald Ross discovered that malaria was
spread by mosquitoes.
Appendix vi,
Mental illness
29/12/1987, Prozac
made its debut in the USA. Initially used to treat high blood pressure and
obesity, doctors noticed it could relieve depression. Its active ingredient, fluoxetine, increases the amount of serotonin in the brain. It is knwn as a
Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI).
13/11/1962. UK doctors estimated that 40,000 Britons were taking pep pills.
6/6/1961, Carl Gustav Jung, Swiss psychologist and
associate of Freud,
died aged 85.
23/9/1939. Sigmund Freud,
Austrian psychiatrist, born 6/5/1856, died
in Hampstead aged 83. He had moved to
London in 1938 following Hitler’s annexation of Austria.
6/1/1938. Sigmund
Freud
arrived in London, fleeing Nazi persecution.
1916, F W Mott developed a theory of
shell-shock.
1911, Bleuler in Switzerland coined the term
‘schizophrenia’.
17/9/1910, A London doctor stated that if lunacy kept increasing at the current rate,
the sane would be outnumbered by the insane within 40 years.
1/1/1906, In Britain the Lunacy Commission reported that on this date 121,979 persons were certified as insane.
17/7/1887, Dorothy Lynde Dix, pioneer in the humane
treatment of the mentally disabled in the US (born 4/4/1802 in Hampden, Maine),
died in Trenton, New Jersey.
26/7/1875, Carl Jung, Swiss psychoanalyst, was born in Kesswil.
7/2/1870, Birth of Alfred Adler, the psychoanalyst who introduced
the concept of the inferiority complex.
6/5/1856, Sigmund Freud,
Austrian
pioneer of psychoanalysis, was born in Freiburg, Moravia.
Appendix
vii, Snallpox
8/5/1980. The World Health Organisation declared that smallpox had been eradicated.
11/9/1978. The world’s
last smallpox victim died. She was a medical school photographer in
Birmingham, and had caught the virus on 30/8/1979 after it escaped from a
laboratory located on the floor below her workplace. The Head of Department
responsible for this laboratory later committed suicide by cutting his throat.
21/1/1962 . Smallpox was also a
threat as an epidemic hit Britain and other countries insisted visitors from
the UK were vaccinated.
19/2/1902. France made smallpox vaccinations
compulsory.
31/1/1902, The number of smallpox
victims in London rose to 2,273.
21/1/1799. Edward Jenner
introduced the smallpox
vaccination. In the 18th century, smallpox took
over from the bubonic plague as the major killer disease. Edward Jenner worked
as a doctor in Berkeley, Gloucestershire. By observing local milkmaids, Jenner
tested the generally held belief that cowpox sufferers were immune to smallpox.
In 1796 he experimented by scraping pus from a cowpox sore on the arm of a
milkmaid and inserting it into two cuts on the arm of a young boy. On 1/7/1796
he did the same with pus from a smallpox sore. The boy caught cowpox but not
smallpox. After doing this to 23 other people, Jenner called this method
‘vaccination’, meaning ‘from a cow’. Jenner published his findings
in 1798 and despite scepticism from doctors, vaccination became widely
accepted. Even members of the Royal Family were vaccinated. Vaccination became
free for all infants in 1840 and compulsory in Britain in 1853. In 1980 the
World Health Organisation declared smallpox had been eradicated throughout the
world.
14/5/1796. Dr Edward Jenner,
born 17/5/1749, from Berkeley, Gloucestershire, carried out his first
human vaccination. He infected
an eight year old, James Phipps, with cowpox, or
‘vaccinia’ disease, having once heard a dairymaid claim that she would never
catch smallpox because she had been infected by cowpox. Then on July 1st
he deliberately exposed the boy to smallpox; he proved resistant to the disease.
17/5/1749, Edward Jenner, pioneer of vaccination, was born at Berkeley vicarage,
Gloucestershire.
13/2/1713, Dutch sailors inadvertently introduced smallpox
to the indigenous Khoisan people of South Africa. The mortality rate was 90%.
Appemdix a
– National Health Service (UK)
27/7/2000. Tony Blair’s government unveiled
its national plan for the Health Service, with a ten-year package of sweeping
reforms and restructuring. The days of
dirty wards, inedible food, and entertainment restricted to volunteer-staffed
radio stations were over, according to the proposals.
29/1/1988. Junior Health Minister (Conservative), Edwina Curry,
told people they should forego holidays
to pay for private health care.
10/6/1968, NHS prescription charges were reintroduced.
See 1/2/1965.
1/2/1965, In the UK, NHS prescription charges were removed. They
were re-introduced on 10/6/1968, see Price; 16/1/1968.
6/7/1960. Aneurin Bevan, founder of the
National Health Service in 1948, Minister of Health 1945-51, died. He was born on 15/11/1897.
7/6/1960, The first NHS hearing aids were issued.
23/4/1951. The Labour Health Minister Nye Bevan and two other
ministers resign over the introduction of charges
for NHS glasses and false teeth. The
charges were imposed to pay for defence costs.
6/10/1949, Aneurin Bevan gave some figures for the demand on
Britain’s new NHS since its inception on 5/7/1948. 187,000,000 prescriptions
had been dispensed at a cost of 2s 9d (14p) each; 5,250,000 pairs of glasses
had been given out, with another 3,000,000 on order; 8,500,000 dental patients
had been treated. The Government Actuary, Sir George Epps, had estimated that
the cost of the NHS in its first year would be £170 million; the actual figure
turned out to be £242 million. Annual costs were expected to fall as the
population grew fitter; in fact annual costs rose to £384 million in 1952/3.
5/7/1948. The National Health Service was established in the UK.
Introduced under a Labour government, it provided
free medical treatment, and free prescriptions for glasses, teeth, and wigs. In
its first year the NHS cared for 47.5 million patients, provided 5.25 million
pairs of glasses, 7,000 artificial eyes and 5,000 wigs. Doctors wrote 187
million NHS prescriptions, and by 1950, 95% of UK citizens were using the NHS.
7/6/1948, Over half of UK doctors
agreed to join the NHS.
18/2/1948. In a poll by the British
Medical Association, 86% of doctors
voted against joining the NHS.
27/1/1948, UK medical consultants
threatened to boycott the new National Health
Service.
21/3/1946. Aneurin Bevan announced Labour Government
plans for a National Health Service.to become operational in 1948. The cost per year was
expected to be around £152 million (£5,000 million in 2015 prices; actual 2015
NHS spending is more like £115,000 million).
17/2/1944, In the UK, the White Paper on the National Health
Service was published.
4/5/1910. Lloyd George introduced a National Health Insurance Bill.
Appendix b
– Hospitals, (London)
1982, The number of hospitals in
the UK had fallen from 3,000 in 1960 to 2,650. The number of psychiatric
hospitals had fallen over this period from 2,650 to 2,150.
1967, The first research
and teaching hospice in the UK (for the care of the terminally ill) was
established at St Christopher’s Hospice, London, founded by Cicely Saunders.
4/9/1965. Albert
Schweitzer, French medical missionary, died aged 90 in
Lambarene, Gabon, in the village where he had opened his hospital for natives
in 1913. He was aged 90, and won the Nobel Prize in 1952.
1959, In Swindon the first part
of the new Princess Margaret Hospital
was opened.
1957, The
reconstruction of Guy’s Hospital, London began, at a cost of well over £2,000,000.
15/4/1925, Sir James Barrie donated the
copyright of Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick
Children in London.
15/8/1913, Dr. Albert Schweitzer performed major surgery
for the first time at the site of what would become the Albert Schweitzer
Hospital at Lambaréné in Gabon, at that time a part of French Equatorial
Africa.
1887, The London Skin Hospital was founded.
1874, The Central London Hospital for Throat,
Nose and Ear was founded.
1868, The East End Hospital for Children was
founded.
1867, Queen’s Hospital for Children was founded.
1866, The Belgrave Hospital for Children and the Grosvenor Hospital for Children were
founded.
1863, The Hospital
for Diseases of the Throat, London, was founded.
1861, The National
Dental Hospital was founded.
1860, St Peter’s Hospital for Stone, London, was founded.
1859, The National Hospital for Paralysis and Epilepsy was founded.
1858, The Royal Dental Hospital was founded.
1857, The National Hospital for Diseases of the Heart, the Royal Eye Hospital and the Liverpool Infirmary for Children were
founded.
1855, The Poplar Hosiptal for Accidents was founded.
1854, The Royal Hospital for Incurables, Putney,
was founded,
14/2/1852. London’s famous children’s hospital, in Great
Ormond Street, opened. The first patient admitted was Eliza Armstrong.
1851, The Free Cancer Hospital, Fulham, was
founded.
1850, The London Smallpox Hospital was founded.
1849, The London Homeopathic Hospital was founded.
1848, The Victoria Park Hospital for Diseases of the
Heart and Lungs was founded.
1847, The Samaritan Free Hospital for Women was founded.
1840, Kensington Children’s Hospital was founded.
1838, The Royal
National Orthopaedic Hospital, London, and the Metropolitan Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital were founded.
1836, The Metropolitan
Free Hospital was founded in east London top treat poor patients. However
it was later forced to adopt a subscription model to ensure funding, so had to
drop the word ‘Free’ from its title.
1835, St
Marks Hospital for Cancer was founded.
1829, The Hospital for Children, Manchester was founded.
1818, The Charing Cross Hospital was founded,
1816, The Royal Ear Hospital, the Royal Westminister Ophthalmic Hospital
and the Royal Waterloo Hospital for
Children and Women were founded.
1814, The Royal Hospital for Diseases of the Chest was founded.
1806, Exeter Eye Hospital was founded.
1805, Moorflelds Eye Hospital was founded.
1802, The London Fever Hospital was founded.
1792, The Liverpool Royal Lunatic Asylum was
founded.
1787, Wakefield
Hospital was founded.
1784, Hull
Royal Infirmary was founded.
1783, Kent
Dispensary and Miller Hospital was founded.
1782, Nottingham
General Hospital was founded.
1777, The York Asylum was founded.
1776, Hereford General Infirmary was founded.
1771, Leicester
Infirmary was founded.
1770, Radcliffe
Informary, Oxford, was founded.
1769, Lincoln
County Hospital was founded.
1767, Leeds
Infirmary was founded.
1766, The Manchester Royal Lunatic Asylum was founded.
1765, John Morgan founded the first medical school
in the USA,
at the College of Pemnnsylvania.
1752, Manchester
Royal Infirmary was founded.
11/2/1752, The first hospital in what
is now the USA
opened, in Pennsylvania.
1751, The first mental institution was opened in
London.
1750, The City
of London Maternity Hospital was founded.
1746, Middlesex County Hospital was founded, to treat smallpox. Worcester Royal Infirmary was founded.
1745, Gloucester Infirmary was founded. Shrewsbury Infirmary was founded. Liverpool Royal Infirmary was founded
1743, Devon and Exeter Hospital was founded.
17/10/1739, The Foundling Hospital (now Coram), the UK’s first dedicated children’s
charity, was created by a Royal Charter of King George II.
1738, The Bath GeneraL Hospital was founded, so
as to make use of the curative properties of the water in the spa town.
1723, Guys Hospital, London,
was founded by Thomas
Guy. The hospital opened in 1725.
14/1/1716. Westminster Hospital founded.
30/6/1696. Greenwich Hospital founded.
26/6/1553, Christ’s Hospital London was founded on the
ste of the former Greyfirars Monsatery by King Edward VI, as a hospital for poor
children.
1407, Bethlehem
Hospital, London, became an institution for the insane; later known as Bedlam.
5/6/1123. St Bartholomew Hospital, London, was founded.
Ca. 1085, St
Wulstan’s Hospital, Worcester, was founded by Bishop
Wulstan.
1084, St John’s
Hospital, Canterbury was founded by Lanfranc.
977, A
hospital was founded at Baghdad. It employed 24 physicians and had a surgery
and a ward for eye disorders.
937, King Athelstan founded St Peters
Hospital at York.
794, A Saxon hospital existed
at St Albans.
Appendix c
– Anaesthitics,
7/4/1853, Queen Victoria used chloroform
to help her through the birth of her seventh child, Prince Leopold. This established
chloroform as the favoured anaesthetic in Britain.
9/11/1847, Obstetrician Sir James Simpson, Professor of Midwifery at
the University of Edinburgh demonstrated a new anaesthetic, trichloromethane, better known as chloroform. Claimed to be three times
as effective as ether, it was to be of great use during difficult childbirths;
however Scottish Calvinists opposed the use of any anaesthetic during
childbirth.
21/12/1846. Anaesthetic was used in a British hospital
for the first time (see 16/10/1846).It was used by surgeon Robert Liston during a leg
amputation at University College Hospital, London.
16/10/1846. Anaesthetic was used successfully for the
first time in a major operation, at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dentist William Morton
Warren used diethyl ether before removing a tumour from a man’s jaw.
30/3/1842. The first anaesthetic,
ether, was used in an operation, in Jefferson, Georgia, USA. The
surgeon was Dr
Crawford Long. He removed a cyst from the neck of a Mr James
Venables. The bill for the anaesthesia was US$ 2.25. Dr Long performed 9
successful operations with ether, including the amputation of a boy’s finger,
but was accused of sorcery by the older citizens of Jefferson and threatened
with lynching if he continued.
1/11/1815, Crawford Williamson Long,
surgeon, was born in Danielsville, Georgia, USA. He is credited with the first
use of ether as an anaesthetic, on 30/3/1842.
27/10/1794, Birth of Robert Lister,
Scottish doctor who performed the first
operation using anaesthetic.