2600 BC - The Egyptian Imhotep describes the diagnosis and treatment of 200 diseases.
500 BC - Alcmaeon of Croton distinguished veins from arteries.
460 BC - Birth of Hippocrates, the Greek father of medicine begins the scientific study of medicine and prescribes a form of aspirin.
300 BC - Diocles wrote the first known anatomy book.
280 BC - Herophilus studies the nervous system.
130 AD - Birth of Galen. Greek physician to gladiators and Roman emperors.
160AD - Pedanius Dioscorides writes De Materia Medica.
910 - Persian physician Rhazes identifies smallpox.
1010 - Avicenna writes The Book of Healing and The Canon of Medicine.
1249 - Roger Bacon invents spectacles.
1489 - Leonardo da Vinci dissects corpses.
1543 - Vesalius publishes findings on human anatomy in De Fabrica Corporis Humani.
1590 - Zacharius Jannssen invents the microscope.
1628 - William Harvey publishes An Anatomical Study of the Motion of the Heart and of the Blood in Animals which forms the basis for future research on blood vessels, arteries and the heart.
1656 - Sir Christopher Wren experiments with canine blood transfusions.
1670 - Anton van Leeuwenhoek discovers blood cells.
1683 - Anton van Leeuwenhoek observes bacteria.
1701 - Giacomo Pylarini gives the first smallpox inoculations.
1747 - James Lind publishes his Treatise of the Scurvy stating that citrus fruits prevent scurvy.
1755 - Birth of Haennemann.
1763 - Claudius Aymand performs the first successful appendectomy.
1796 - Edward Jenner develops the process of vaccination for smallpox, the first vaccine for any disease.
1800 - Sir Humphry Davy discovers the anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide.
1816 - Rene Laennec invents the stethoscope.
1818 - James Blundell performs the first successful transfusion of human blood.
1842 - Crawford W. Long uses ether as a general anesthetic.
1842 - Haenemann dies.
1844 - Dr. Horace Wells uses nitrous oxide as an anesthetic.
1846 - William Morton, a dentist, is the first to publish the process of using anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide.
1849 - Elizabeth Blackwell is the first woman to gain a medical degree from Geneva Medical College in New York.
1847 - Ignaz Semmelweis discovers how to the prevent the transmission of puerperal fever.
1853 - Charles Gabriel Pravaz and Alexander Wood develop the syringe.
1857 - Louis Pasteur identifies germs as cause of disease.
1867 - Joseph Lister develops the use of antiseptic surgical methods and publishes Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery.
1870 - Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur establish the germ theory of disease.
1879 - First vaccine developed for cholera.
1881 - First vaccine developed for anthrax by Louis Pasteur
1882 - First vaccine for developed for rabies by Louis Pasteur.
1882 - Koch discovers the TB bacillus.
1887 - First contact lenses developed.
1890 - Emil von Behring discovers antioxins and develops tetanus and diphtheria vaccines.
1895 - Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen discovers X rays .
1896 - First vaccine developed for typhoid fever.
1897 - First vaccine developed for Bubonic plague.
1899 - Felix Hoffman develops aspirin.
1901 - Karl Landsteiner introduces the system to classify blood into A, B, AB, and O groups.
1913 - Dr. Paul Dudley White pioneers the use of the electrocardiograph - ECG.
1921 - Edward Mellanby discovers that lack of vitamin D in the diet causes rickets.
1921 - Earle Dickson Invented the Band-Aid.
1922 - Insulin first used to treat diabetes.
1923 - First vaccine developed for diphtheria.
1926 - First vaccine developed for whooping cough.
1927 - First vaccine developed for tuberculosis.
1927 - First vaccine developed for tetanus.
1928 - Sir Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin.
1935 - First vaccine developed for yellow fever.
1935 - Percy Lavon Julian synthesized the medicines physostigmine for glaucoma and cortisone for rheumatoid arthritis.
1937 - First vaccine developed for typhus.
1937 - Bernard Fantus pioneers the use the first blood bank in Chicago.
1942 - Doctor Karl Theodore Dussik publishes the first paper on medical ultrasonics - ultrasound.
1943 - Selman A. Waksman discovers the antibiotic streptomycin.
1945 - First vaccine developed for influenza.
1950 - John Hopps invented the first cardiac pacemaker.
1952 - Paul Zoll develops the first cardiac pacemaker.
1952 - Jonas Salk develops the first polio vaccine.
1952 - Rosalind Franklin uses X-ray diffraction to study the structure of DNA.
1953 - James Watson and Francis Crick work on the structure of the DNA molecule.
1954 - Gertrude Elion patented a leukemia-fighting drug.
1954 - Dr. Joseph E. Murray performs the first kidney transplant.
1955 - Jonas Salk develops the first polio vaccine.
1963 - Thomas Fogarty invented the balloon embolectomy catheter.
1964 - First vaccine developed for measles.
1967 - First vaccine developed for mumps.
1967 - Dr. Christiaan Barnard performs the first human heart transplant.
1970 - First vaccine developed for rubella.
1974 - First vaccine developed for chicken pox.
1975 - Robert S. Ledley invents CAT-Scans.
1977 - First vaccine developed for pneumonia.
1978 - First test-tube baby is born.
1978 - First vaccine developed for meningitis.
1980 - Smallpox is eradicated.
1981 - First vaccine developed for hepatitis B.
1983 - HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is identified.
1984 - Alec Jeffreys devises a genetic fingerprinting method.
1985 - Willem J. Kolff invented the artificial kidney dialysis machine.
1992 - First vaccine developed for hepatitis A.
1996 - Dolly the sheep becomes the first clone.
2006 - First vaccine to target a cause of cancer.
