People
AIDS
Cholera
Influenza
Ebola
Smoking
Other Epidemics
NHS
Thalidomide
Hospitals – see Appendix 1.
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.
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.
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.
10/8/2010, The World Health Organisation declared
the H1N1
influenza pandemic officially over.
10/1/2010, Deaths
from a cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe
now amounted to 4,293, with 98,741 cases reported.
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.
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.
30/9/2005, The UN issued warnings
that a pandemic of Avian Flu might be
imminent, and kill between 5 and 150 million people.
11/8/2004, The first licences for the cloning of human embryos
were granted in Britain.
28/7/2004, Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA, died aged 88.
5/7/2003, The WHO declared SARS
to be ‘contained’
28/5/2003, The first horse cloned by Italian scientists, Prometea, was born
2/9/2001, Death of heart transplant
pioneer Dr
Christiaan Barnard.
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.
31/7/2000. Cases of sexually transmitted diseases had risen sharply among young
people in the past year, according to official UK figures.
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.
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.
24/2/1997. The cloned sheep, Dolly,
was presented to the public. He had been cloned from a single cell of her
mother at the Royal Institute in Edinburgh. There was moral panic about the
possibility of cloning humans, but some
saw it as a useful way to create organs for transplant.
26/9/1996. The first death under legalised euthanasia in Australia.
5/7/1996, Dolly the
sheep became the first mammal to be successfully
cloned from an adult stem cell. Lamb 6LL3 was named after Dolly Parton. The animal died
prematurely in February 2003.
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.
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.
23/4/1993. The World Health Organisation declared tuberculosis a global emergency, saying TB could kill 30 million people by 2003.
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.
24/11/1991. Freddie Mercury, lead singer of the rock group Queen, died of
AIDS, aged 45.
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.
8/5/1991. UK scientists discovered the gene that determines
sex.
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.
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.
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.
1988, In the US, smoking was banned on all airline flights of less than 2
hours duration.
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.
22/3/1988, In Australia, doctors
turned off the life support system of a terminally ill female patient for
the first time.
29/1/1988. Junior Health Minister (Conservative), Edwina Curry,
told people they should forego holidays
to pay for private health care.
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.
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.
29/12/1987, Prozac
made its debut in the USA.
17/12/1987, In Britain, Davina Durban became the world’s first triple (heart, lungs, liver) transplant recipient.
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.
7/9/1987, The world’s
first conference on artificial life began, at
Los Alamos National Laboratories, USA.
15/8/1987. Sextuplets,
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.
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.
17/12/1986, Mrs Davina Thompson made medical history at
Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, UK, when she was given a new heart, lungs, and liver.
21/11/1986, The UK Government began an AIDS awareness advertising campaign
focussed on safe sex.
2/11/1986, Britain’s
first artificial heart transplant operation was performed at Papworth
Hospital, Cambridge.
22/9/1986, At Harefield Hospital, Middlesex, a 2 ½ month old
baby became the youngest heart and lung
transplant patient.
29/3/1986, The first test-tube quintuplets were born, in
London.
21/2/1986, Shigechiyo Izumi, the world’s oldest man, died
in Japan aged 120.
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.
24/6/1985, Keith Hardcastle, Britain’s longest surviving heart transplant patient, died 6 years
after his operation.
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.
29/3/1985, Luther Terry, US Surgeon-General whose report in 1964 concluded
that smoking caused cancer, died.
15/3/1985, In Britain, blood donors were now to be tested for AIDS.
4/1/1985, Mrs Kim Cotton, believed to be
the first commercial surrogate mother in
Britain, gave birth to a girl.
25/10/1984. The hepatitis virus was identified.
23/4/1984. The discovery of the AIDS virus was announced in the USA.
18/11/1983, In Liverpool Janet Walton, 31, gave birth to sextuplets, all girls.
21/5/1983. The US made AIDS top health priority.
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.
26/3/1982, In Cambridge, UK, the first test tube babies were born.
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.
28/12/1981, The first
American test-tube baby, Elizabeth Jordan Carr, was born in Norfolk,
Virginia.
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.
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
25/7/1978. The world’s first test tube baby was born,
in
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.
23/5/1977, Scientists reported using bacteria to make
insulin.
4/8/1976, First recorded cases of Legionnaires Disease, at an American Legion convention in
11/1/1974. The first
surviving sextuplets were born to Mrs Sue Rosenberg in
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.
Venereal Disease cases amongst under 16s were up 10% on last year.
25/1/1972, In London, the National Organ Matching And
Distribution Service (NOMDS) was established.
1971, Cigarette advertisements were banned from TV in the US.
29/11/1971, The British Government announced a fund of £3
million for the victims of thalidomide.
1/10/1971, The first
CT scan was performed, on a patiernt’s brain, at the Atkinson Morley
Hospital in Wimbledon, London,
26/2/1971. Hammersmith Borough Council launched a lurid and
aggressive campaign against the spread
of venereal diseases such as syphilis.
25/7/1971. The first heart and lung transplant was performed.
15/7/1970.) An experimental pacemaker was fitted to a 56 year old
woman at the National Heart Centre in
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.
9/1/1970, In Britain, Hong
Kong Flu claimed 2,850 lives in a week.
13/11/1969, In London, a woman had quintuplets after fertility
drug treatment.
13/2/1969. Scientists in
10/6/1968, NHS prescription charges were reintroduced.
See 1/2/1965.
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 18/12/11970. 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 te 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.
3/5/1968. Britain’s first heart transplant.
21/2/1968, Lord Florey, Australian-born
British pathologist who made possible the large-scale production of penicillin, died.
11/1/1968. The world’s fifth heart
transplant was performed in
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
4/9/1965. Albert
Schweitzer, French medical missionary, died aged 90 in
8/2/1965. The British Government, Health Minister Kenneth
Robinson, announced a ban on cigarette
advertising on TV, to take effect
on 31/7/1965.
1/2/1965, In the
11/1/1964. Health experts in
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.
18/4/1963, The first
human nerve transplant was carried out by Dr
James Campbell at New York University Medical Centre.
10/12/1962, Crick and Watson received the Nobel prize for their work
on DNA.
13/11/1962. UK doctors estimated that 40,000 Britons were taking pep pills.
14/9/1962, Distillers
Company agreed to pay £14 million to the victims of thalidomide.
21/1/1962 . Smallpox was also a
threat as an epidemic hit
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,
6/6/1961, Carl Gustav Jung, Swiss psychologist and
associate of Freud,
died aged 85.
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.
27/5/1959, Sales of filter tipped cigarettes helped tobacco
manufacturers maintain sales after recent reports linking smoking to cancer.
31/12/1958, There were fears that a drug prescribed for
morning sickness, thalidomide, might be causing birth defects.
31/10/1958. Ake Senning, Swedish doctor, in
12/7/1957, US
Surgeon-General Leroy E Burney announced the US Public Health Service’s belief
that there was a direct causal relationship between smoking and lung cancer.
26/6/1957. The UK government began an anti-smoking campaign,
despite fears that this would cause tax revenue to fall. As recently as 1956, the Health Minister, Mr R Turton,
had said there was no proof that smoking caused any harm, but recent reports in
the UK and USA now suggested links to some bronchial and heart diseases.
11/3/1957, The World Health Information published the first
indications that radiation may have
genetic effects.
7/5/1956. The
17/11/1955. Anglesey became the first authority in
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.
12/1/1954, A UK official committee linked
cigarettes with cancer.
11/11/1953. The polio virus was identified.
17/9/1953, The first successful separation of Siamese Twins took place, at the
26/3/1953. The Salk vaccine proved effective against polio.
28/2/1953. Watson and Crick discovered DNA.
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 for 80
minutes.
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.
17/6/1950. In the
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.
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.
5/10/1949, Major Greenwood (born 9/8/1880) English
epidemiologist and medical statistician, died.
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
18/2/1948. In a poll by the British
Medical Association, 86% of doctors
voted against joining the NHS.
7/4/1948. The World Health Organisation
was set up with its headquarters in
27/1/1948, UK medical consultants
threatened to boycott the new National Health
Service.
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
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).
22/2/1946, Dr Selman Abrahams announced the discovery of streptomycin, an antibiotic for
treating tuberculosis.
17/2/1944, In the
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.
15/12/1942, The British Government began a campaign against venereal disease, which had increased
markedly since the war began.
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. See
31/12/1943.
24/8/1940, The Lancet reported on the first purification of penicillin by professors Howard Florey and Ernest Chain.
23/9/1939. Sigmund Freud,
Austrian psychiatrist, born 6/5/1856, died
in Hampstead aged 83. He had moved to
6/1/1938. Sigmund
Freud
arrived in
15/3/1937. Bernard
Faustus set up America’s
first blood bank at
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 traini g 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.
26/11/1928, The first twins to be born by Caesarean section in Britain were
delivered in Manchester.
12/10/1928. The first iron lung was used at the Boston Children’s Hospital,
15/9/1928. Alexander
Fleming reported the discovery of penicillin.
10/8/1928, British cigarette
smoking was rising fast. In 1924 the country consumed 77,458,000 lbs of
tobacco, up from 23,766,000 lbs in 1907, according to figures from the Imperial
economic Committee. In 1927 Britons consumed 3.4 lbs of tobacco per head. All
the increase was from cigarettes; pipe smoking and cigars had declined.
Cigarette sales were boosted by marketing techniques such as free cards, and cigarette smoking had become a powerful
symbol of female emancipation. Younger females also saw the habit as romantic.
However some doctors were concerned about links to the rise in various cancers.
6/4/1928, In Italy, handshaking was
banned as it was deemed unhygienic.
24/1/1927, The British
Medical Association warned that cancer
deaths, especially of the chest and tongue, had risen sharply in the past
20 years. Smoking had become much more
popular over this period.
25/1/1926, British surgeon Sir Berkeley
Moynihan said cancer of the tongue is partly caused by smoking.
12/1/1926. In
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.
15/4/1925, Sir James Barrie donated the copyright of Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children in London.
21/3/1923. Scientists in
10/2/1923. William Konrad Von Roentgen,
German physicist who discovered X rays
in 1895, died.
12/6/1922, Insulin,
the treatment for diabetes, was patented by Frederick Banting. See 27/7/1921
and 24/7/1925.
8/11/1922, Dr Christian Barnard, South
African surgeon who pioneered heart
transplants, was born in Beaufort West,
11/1/1922, Leonard Thompson 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
1920, The Spanish Flu pandemic had killed nearly 22
million people.
29/12/1919, Sir William Osler, medical teacher, died in
Oxford, England.
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.
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.
31/3/1917, Emil von Behring, immunologist (born 15/3/1854
in Hansdorf, Germany), died in Marburg, Germany.
3/11/1916, There was concern about rising rates of
sexually-transmitted diseases in Britain, with 50,000 cases reported amongst
servicemen in 1916.
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,
27/3/1914. The first ‘successful’ blood transfusion took place, in a hospital in
8/1/1914, Doctors at
the Middlesex Hospital successfully treated cancer with radium.
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.
28/10/1912, Birth of Sir Richard
Doll, British cancer specialist who proved the link between cigarette smoking and cancer.
10/2/1912. Charles Lister.
Lord Joseph Lister, surgeon
and discoverer of antiseptics, died aged 84 at
17/1/1911, Sir Francis Galton, English scientist and
writer on eugenics, died aged 88.
17/9/1910, A
13/8/1910. Florence Nightingale, born 12/5/1820, died in
27/5/1910, Robert Koch, German bacteriologist and Nobel
Prize Winner who discovered the
tuberculosis bacillus, died.
4/5/1910. Lloyd George introduced a National Health Insurance Bill.
1908, Dr Frederick McKay, a dentist in
Colorado, USA, noticed that some of hist patient’s teeth had become mottled,
and that these teeth dwer 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.
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
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.
2/8/1907, Dr Herbert Tidswell, a Devon GP, spoke out at a meeting of the British
Medical Association about the undesirability
of allowing children to smoke. He claimed smoking could cause cancer, but other doctors were unconvinced that
moderate smoking was dangerous.
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)
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.
10/12/1902. Major Ronald Ross of the British army won the Nobel Prize
for medicine because of his work relating malaria to mosquitoes.
29/8/1902, A
cholera epidemic in
19/2/1902. France made smallpox
vaccinations compulsory.
31/1/1902, The number of smallpox
victims in
1/11/1901. In
14/11/1900, Dr
Karl Landsteiner of the Pathological and Anatomical Institute of
Vienna announced the discovery of the
three major blood groups.
3/9/1900, An outbreak of Bubonic Plague in
17/2/1900, The influenza epidemic in Britain ended.
9/1/1900, The
influenza epidemic in London was killing 50 people a day.
6/3/1899,
The painkiller Aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) was patented by Felix Hoffman. The active ingredient is
derived from willow.
27/1/1899, Charles Best, Canadian co-discoverer of insulin for treating diabetes, was born
in West Pembroke, Maine.
24/9/1898, Sir Howard Florey, British pathologist and
joint discoverer of penicillin with Sir Ernest
Chain, was born in Adelaide, Australia.
20/8/1897, Sir Ronald Ross discovered that malaria was
spread by mosquitoes.
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.
5/1/1896. The German physicist Wilhelm
Roentgen gave the
first demonstration of X rays.
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.
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, Renfershire 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 fundung than cancer.
1893, A Japanese scientist, Shibasaburo
Kitasako, proved that The Plague was a bacterial disease carried by
infected rat feas.
14/11/1891, Sir
Frederick Banting, Canadian co-discoverer of insulin with McLeod and Best in 1922,
was born in Alliston, Ontario.
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.
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.
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..
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 saheep.
24/6/1877, The St
John’s Ambulance brigade was formed, as the Ambulance Association, by the
Red Cross.
26/7/1875, Carl Jung, Swiss psychoanalyst, was born in
Kesswil.
26/1/1875, The
first battery electric powered dental drill was used. Mains-powered
dental drills were not used until 1908.
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.
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
7/2/1870, Birth of Alfred Adler, the psychoanalyst who introduced
the concept of the inferiority complex.
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.
21/2/1866, August von Wasserman, German bacteriologist
who invented a test for syphilis, was born.
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.
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.
23/11/1858, The General
Medical Council held its first meeting in London.
2/8/1858, Under the Medical
Act, UK doctors were now required to be registered.
6/5/1856, Sigmund Freud,
Austrian pioneer of psychoanalysis, was born in Freiburg, Moravia.
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.
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.
2/6/1850, Jesse Boot, British pharmacist, was born in
Nottingham.
12/7/1849, Sir William Osler, medical teacher, was born
in Ontario, Canada,
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.
7/5/1847, The American
Medical Association was founded.
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.
19/12/1846, The first dental extraction under anaesthetic was performed in Britain.
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.
26/3/1845. The sticking
plaster was patented.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
31/12/1833, During the
year 1833, doctors in France imported 41.5 million leeches, actually making it an endangered species.
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.
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.
31/10/1828, Edinburgh bodysnatchers
Burke and
Hare claimed their last victim, a beggar woman named Docherty.
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.
1823, The
British medical journal, The Lancet,
was first published.
26/1/1823, Edward Jenner, pioneer
of vaccination, died in Berkeley, Gloucestershire..
27/12/1822, Louis
Pasteur was born in Dole, France.
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.
25/9/1818, The first
blood transfusion using human blood, as opposed to animal blood, took place
in London, at Guys Hospital.
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.
15/3/1813, Dr John Snow, pioneer bacteriologist, 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.
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.
27/10/1794, Birth of Robert Lister,
Scottish doctor who performed the first
operation using anaesthetic.
16/2/1781, Rene Laennec, French doctor who invented and
named the stethoscope, was born in
Quimper, Brittany.
11/4/1775, Birth of James Parkinson,
the physician who identified Parkinson’s
Disease.
17/5/1749, Edward Jenner, pioneer of vaccination, was born at Berkeley vicarage,
Gloucestershire.
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.
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.
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.
1675, Dutch
scientist Anton
van Leeuwenhoek, aged 43, gave the forst accurate description of red
blood cells. He pioneered the development of the microscope. See also Technology and
Innovation.
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.
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.
2/9/1666. The Great
Fire of London helped end the
Great Plague.
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.
1658, Dutch naturalist Jan Swammerdam
gave the forst 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.
24/10/1632, Anthony van Leeuwenhoek, naturalist, was born.
Inventor of the microscope, he was the
first person to see bacteria.
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 bllod 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.
20/12/1590, Ambroise Pare, known as the father of modern
surgery, died in Paris.
1/4/1578, William Harvey, British anatomist who discovered the circulation
of the blood, was born at Folkestone.
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)
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.
1502, Syphilis first appeared in China, brought to the port of Canton by
Euroepan traders.
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.
18/6/1037, Persian philosopher and physician Avicenna
died. His writings were valued sources for European doctors.
937, King Athelstan founded St Peters
Hospital at York.
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.
104 AD, first mention of dentures, by the Roman poet Martial, who died in this year.
265 BCE, Rome learnt of Greek
medical techniques, from Greek prisoners of war.
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 iof 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.
Appendix 1 – Hospitals
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.
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.
1835, St
Marks Hospital for Cancer was founded.
1829, The Hospital for Children, Manchester 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.
1752, Manchester
Royal Infirmary was founded.
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, Berthlehem 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.
794, A Saxon hospital existed
at St Albans.