2,397 Years of Progress

FROM THE HIPPOCRATICS TO THE GENETIC ENGINEERS OF TODAY, THE PRACTITIONERS OF MEDICINE HAVE BEEN DISCOVERING, AMENDING AND REFINING BOTH THEIR SCIENCE AND THEIR ART. HERE ARE SOME OF HISTORY'S GREAT CONTRIBUTORS:

circa A.D. 170
Galen, a Greek physician in the Roman Empire, uses pulse taking as a diagnostic aid; his studies in physiology and anatomy remain widely influential until the 1500s

1268
Roger Bacon, a British scientist and philosopher, publishes a treatise on how sight can be improved by using eyeglasses, which are already being worn in Europe and China

1628
British physician William Harvey publishes On the Movement of the Heart and Blood in Animals, an accurate explanation of how blood circulates in the body

1796
British doctor Edward Jenner administers the first effective vaccination against smallpox; within 30 years his treatment is practiced throughout the world

1846
U.S. dentist William Morton gives the first demonstration of the effective use of ether as an anesthetic; the operation -- for the removal of a neck tumor -- lasts 25 minutes

1854
British philanthropist Florence Nightingale tends the wounded during the Crimean War, applying revolutionary nursing practices; she later establishes a model school of nursing

1858
German pathologist Rudolf Virchow publishes Cellular Pathology, in which he elaborates on his discovery that disease -- end even life itself -- occurs at a cellular level

1862
French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur publishes his findings on how germs cause disease, which he later uses to develop the pasteurization process

1866
Austrian botanist and monk Gregor Mendel proposes basic laws of heredity in Experiments with Plant Hybrids, a statistical analysis of his crossbreeding work on pea plants

1867
British surgeon Joseph Lister reports his findings on how potentially deadly infections can be prevented by antiseptic operating procedures and treatment of wounds

1895
German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen discovers invisible electromagnetic rays, which he calls X rays; they are used to create diagnostic images of structures within the body

1897
Felix Hoffman, a German chemist, synthesizes a form of acetylsalicylic acid that enables mass production of aspirin; it becomes the best-selling drug for pain and inflamation

1900
Austrian pathologist and immunologist Karl Landsteiner discovers the major blood groups, A, B and O, and works out a blood-typing system that allows safe transfusions

1910
German bacteriologist Paul Ehrlich develops a cure for syphilis by administering a form of arsenic; the procedure establishes modern chemotherapy -- the use of selectively toxic drugs to treat disease

1921
Canadian surgeon Frederick Banting and colleagues isolate insulin from the pancreas; within a few years, it is commercially produced for insulin-deficient diabetics

1928
British bacteriologist Alexander Fleming identifies the bacterial-killing properties of penicillin, the first safe, successful antibiotic; in the 1940s, it is refined and widely used to cure infectious diseases

1928
Greek-American pathologist George Papanicolaou develops the Pap smear test, making possible the early detection of cancer in the female reproductive tract

1940
U.S. surgeon Charles Drew describes long-term storage properties of blood plasma, which often can be used in place of whole blood to transfuse wounded our burned patients

1943
Dutch physician Willem Kolff develops the first artificial dialysis machine to perform the kidneys' blood-cleansing functions; it is often used before or after a kidney transplant

1953
American biochemist and geneticist James Watson, left, and British biophysicist Francis Crick decipher the structure of DNA, the molecule that carries the genetic code

1956
U.S. biologist Gregory Pincus reports on the first successful trials of a birth-control pill, which he developed at the urging of social activist Margaret Sanger

1964
Using his discovery of beta blockers, British pharmacologist James Black produces a heart-disease drug that can prevent hormones from triggering undesirable reactions

1967
British physician Cicely Saunders establishes St. Christopher's, the first modern hospice, in London; she also pioneers aggressive pain management for the terminally ill

1982
U.S. patient Barney Clark is the first to receive a permanent artificial heart; he survives 112 days after the surgery, providing valuable information about his reaction to the device

1984
U.S. surgeon Leonard Bailey performs the first transplant of an animal heart to a human; the patient, a baby, receives a baboon's heart, but a mismatch of blood types proves fatal

Robert Gallo	1985 Gallo, of the U.S. National Cancer Institute, and Montagnier, of France's Pasteur Institute, each publish the genetic sequence of the AIDS virus they have identified; their findings turn out to be identical
Luc Montagnier

1990
U.S. geneticist W. French Anderson performs the first gene therapy on a human, injecting engineered genes into a four-year-old to repair her faulty immune system