2000 BC Peruvian surgeons cut holes in skulls
Medicine men in Peru practise trephination, cuttting holes in the skulls of brave or foolhardy patients

550 BC Plastic surgery in India
The Indian physician Susruta pioneers plastic surgery of the nose

550 BC Indian doctors identify three humours
Indian medical theory maintains that the body consists of three humours - spirit, phlegm and bile

400 BC Doctors swear Hippocratic oath
Hippocrates, on the Greek island of Kos, founds an influential school of medicine

280 BC Human vivisection in Alexandria
The Alexandrian school of medicine develops an alarming form of clinical anatomy – human vivisection

100 BC Acupuncture in China
The practice of acupuncture is described in Nei Qing, a Chinese medical text

50 Roman surgery on bladder
The Roman surgeon Cornelius Celsus describes in De Medicina how to cut stones from a patient's bladder

158 Galen is doctor to gladiators
A new doctor, Galen, is appointed to look after the gladiators at Pergamum

950 Medical school at Salerno
Medieval Europe's first institute of higher education is established, with the founding of the medical school at Salerno

1000 Arab manual of surgery
The first illustrated manual of surgery is written by Abul Kasim, an Arab physician in Cordoba

1489 Leonardo dissects corpses
Leonardo da Vinci begins an unprecedented series of detailed anatomical drawings, based on corpses dissected in Rome

1500 New diseases ravage America
European diseases bring death on a massive scale to an American population that has no immunity

1543 Vesalius reveals anatomy
Flemish anatomist Andreas Vesalius publishes a seven-volume work which for the first time lays bare human anatomy

1545 Surgeon's guide to gunshot wounds
Ambroise Paré, the greatest surgeon of his day, publishes an account of how to treat gunshot wounds

1628 Heart is a pump says Harvey
William Harvey publishes a short book, De Motu Cordis, proving the circulation of the blood

1658 Pepys has stone cut from bladder
Samuel Pepys has a two-ounce stone cut from his bladder, in an operation carried out at home in the presence of his family

1665 Blood transfusion works - on dogs
The first recorded attempt at blood transfusion, at the Royal Society in London, proves that the idea is feasible

1667 Human blood transfusion in Paris
The first successful human blood transfusion is achieved in Paris by Jean Baptiste Denis, apparently saving the life of a 15-year-old boy

1717 English baby inoculated in Turkey
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, observing the Turkish practice of inoculation against smallpox, submits her infant son to the treatment

1752 Smellie breakthrough for midwives
English obstetrician William Smellie introduces scientific midwifery as a result of his researches into childbirth

1761 Doctor taps patients
Austrian physician Joseph Leopold Auenbrugger describes his new diagnostic technique – percussion, or listening to a patient's chest and tapping

1775 Cook finds solution to scurvy
Captain Cook publishes his discovery of a preventive cure against scurvy, in the form of a regular ration of lemon juice

1784 Franklin needs bifocals
Benjamin Franklin, irritated at needing two pairs of spectacles, commissions from a lens-grinder the first bifocals

1785 Foxglove for dropsy
William Withering's Account of the Foxglove describes the use of digitalis for dropsy, and its possible application to heart disease

1796 Jenner vaccinates with cowpox
In Berkeley, Gloucestershire, Edward Jenner inoculates a boy with cowpox in the pioneering case of vaccination

1796 Samuel Hahnemann invents homeopathy
German physician Samuel Hahnemann coins the term 'homeopathy' and describes this new approach to medicine

1816 French physician devises stethoscope
René Laënnec, reluctant to press his ear to the chest of a young female patient, finds a solution in the stethoscope

1828 Burke and Hare
William Burke and William Hare murder 16 victims and sell their bodies to the Edinburgh Medical School for anatomical study

1832 Cholera epidemic in USA
The USA suffers the first of several cholera epidemics, spanning the sixty years to 1892

1846 American dentist uses anaesthetic
A dentist in Boston, William Morton, uses ether as an anaesthetic while surgeon John Collins Warren removes a tumour in a patient's neck

1847 Anaesthetic for childbirth
Scottish obstetrician James Simpson uses anaesthetic (ether, and later in the year choloroform) to ease difficulty in childbirth

1851 Helmholtz invents ophthalmoscope
German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz invents the ophthalmoscope, making it possible for a doctor to examine the inside of a patient's eye

1853 Hypodermic syringe
The hypodermic syringe with a plunger is simultaneously developed in France and in Scotland

1854 Quinine proves effective against malaria
William Baikie, on an expedition up the Niger, protects his men from malaria by administering quinine

1854 John Snow links cholera and water
English physician John Snow proves that cholera is spread by infected water (from a pump in London's Broad Street)

1854 Nightingale sails east
Florence Nightingale, responding to reports of horrors in the Crimea, sets sail with a party of twenty-eight nurses

1855 Mary Seacole cares for sick in Crimea
Jamaican-born nurse Mary Seacole sets up her own 'British Hotel' in the Crimea to provide food and nursing for soldiers in need

1860 Nightingale trains professional nurses
Florence Nightingale opens a training school for nurses in St Thomas's Hospital, establishing nursing as a profession

1861 Semmelweis washes hands to save life
Hungarian physician Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis publishes his discovery that deaths from puerperal fever can be dramatically reduced by a strict hand-washing routine

1865 Lister proves value of antisepsis
English surgeon Joseph Lister introduces the era of antiseptic surgery, with the use of carbolic acid in the operating theatre

1875 Measles in Fiji
An outbreak of measles in Fiji, brought to the islands by British visitors, kills a quarter of the population

1882 Koch discovers TB bacillus
German bacteriologist Robert Koch announces his discovery of the bacillus that causes tuberculosis

1885 Pasteur inoculates with rabies vaccine
Louis Pasteur uses rabies inoculation to save the life of 9-year-old Joseph Meister, bitten by a rabid dog

1887 First contact lenses
A German physiologist, Adolf Fick, grinds a pair of lenses to fit snugly in contact with a patient's eyeballs

1897 Ross pins blame on mosquito
British physician Ronald Ross identifies the Anopheles mosquito as the carrier of malaria

1900 Water-soluble aspirins
The Bayer company in Germany sells aspirin in the form of water-soluble tablets, the first medication of its kind

1900 Freud interprets dreams
Sigmund Freud publishes one of his most significant works, The Interpretation of Dreams

1900 Pavlov experiments on dogs
The Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov keeps dogs alive almost indefinitely by severely curtailing their bodily functions

1903 Radiation therapy for cancer
German surgeon Georg Clemens Perthes discovers, in Leipzig, that X-rays can inhibit cancer

1903 Electrocardiograph
Dutch physiologist Willem Einthoven invents the galvanometer, or electrocardiograph, for recording the electrical impulses within the heart muscle

1904 Freud analyzes everyday life
Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud publishes The Psychopathology of Everyday Life

1906 Wasserman devises test for syphilis
German immunologist August von Wasserman develops a diagnostic test to reveal the presence of the syphilis spirochaete in the blood

1906 Whooping cough bacterium isolated
Belgian physiologists Jules Bordet and Octave Gengou identify Bacillus pertussis, the bacterium causing whooping cough

1906 The word 'allergy' is coined
A pediatrician in Vienna, Clemens von Pirquet, describes a condition for which he coins the term 'allergy'

1906 Alzheimer describes a mental condition
The German neuropathologist Alois Alzheimer identifies physical symptoms in the brain of a dead woman who had presenile dementia

1907 New test for tuberculosis
Austrian scientist Clemens von Pirquet discovers a diagnostic test to identify tuberculosis in a patient

1909 Body louse blamed for typhus
French biologist Charles Nicolle discovers that epidemic typhus is transmitted by the body louse

1910 Sickle-cell anaemia explained
Chicago cardiologist James Herrick publishes the first account of the cells causing sickle-cell anaemia

1911 Adler breaks with Freud
Alfred Adler ends his association breaks with Sigmund Freud and forms his own school of psychology

1912 Jung goes his own way
Carl Jung breaks with Freud and introduces the concept of the collective unconscious

1915 'Typhoid Mary'
Typhoid-carrier Mary Mallon is detained in New York after leaving a trail of destruction

1915  March Typhus in Serbia
A typhus epidemic sweeps through Serbia, severely weakening the nation's armed forces

1916 Gillies pioneers plastic surgery
New Zealand surgeon Harold Gillies sets up a plastic surgery unit at Aldershot, a British military base

1918 August Spanish 'flu kills 30 million people worldwide
A world-wide pandemic of influenza breaks out, and within the space of a year kills 30 million people

1920 Text book for plastic surgery
New Zealand surgeon Harold Gillies publishes a pioneering text book, Plastic Surgery of the Face

1921 Adler clinic for children
Alfred Adler, in Vienna, opens the first of many child-guidance clinics

1922 Banting and Best discover insulin
Canadian physiologists Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolate insulin from the pancreas for the treatment of diabetes

1923 Freud contrasts ego and id
Sigmund Freud proposes a new interpretation of the mind in his book The Ego and the Id

1928 Studies in the Psychology of Sex
English psychologist Henry Havelock Ellis completes a thirty-year project, his 7-volume Studies in the Psychology of Sex

1928 Flying Doctors
An Aerial Medical Service is launched in Queensland, Australia, subsequently becoming the Flying Doctor Service

1928 Fleming discovers penicillin
Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming accidentally discovers a mould that selectively kills bacteria, and calls it penicillin

1932 Tuskegee syphilis experiment begins
A deeply flawed experiment with African American syphilis patients is launched in Tuskegee, Alabama

1937 Haemoglobin analyzed
British biochemist Max Perutz begins the analysis of haemoglobin

1938 Nuffield builds 'iron lungs'
Lord Nuffield donates to Commonwealth hospitals 'iron lungs', built at his Morris Oxford factory,

1940 Chain and Florey develop penicillin
British biologists Ernst Chain and Howard Florey develop penicillin as a safe and useful antibacterial drug

1946 Mechanism of genetic transfer discovered
Joshua Lederberg and Edward Tatum announce their discovery of bacterial conjugation, meaning that in effect bacteria mate and transfer genes

1950 Smoking linked to lung cancer
The Medical Research Council in Britain produces a report, by Austin Hill and Richard Doll, linking smoking and lung cancer

1951 Human 'immortal cell' used by science
George Gey uses cancer cells from Henrietta Lacks to propagate the first human immortal cell line to succeed in vitro, cells which survive still in laboratories all over the world

1953 Salk vaccine
US microbiologist Jonas Salk announces the discovery of an effective vaccine against polio

1960 Birth control pill
The birth control pill wins FDA approval in the US and goes on sale

1961 Thalidomide disaster
The drug Thalidomide, synthesized in West Germany, is shown to have been the cause of severe defects in about 12,000 children born in 46 countries

1962 Charnley pioneers joint replacement
British surgeon John Charnley pioneers the technique of joint replacement, giving a patient a new hip in a small hospital in Wrightington

1964 Coronary bypass surgery
Surgeons Michael Bakey in the USA and Vasilii Kolesov in the USSR pioneer coronary bypass surgery, using the patient's mammary artery

1967 First heart transplant
South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard, in Cape Town, transplants the heart of a young woman into a 55-year-old grocer, Louis Washkansky

1969 In vitro fertilization
British scientists Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards fertilize in a test-tube eggs removed from human ovaries

1972 Tuskegee syphilis scandal
The Tuskegee syphilis experiment in Alabama becomes a major scandal after a whistle-blower reveals the details

1978 First test-tube baby
Louise Brown, born in England, is the first test-tube baby, having been conceived by IVF (In vitro fertilization)

1979 Smallpox eradicated
The Global Commission for the Eradication of Smallpox announces that the world is free of the disease

1981 First account of AIDS
AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) is described for the first time in a US medical journal

1986 AZT as a drug against AIDS
The drug AZT (azidothymidine) offers hope as a way of inhibiting the progression from HIV to AIDS

1998 Viagra given the go-ahead
The drug Viagra wins government approval in the USA as a treatment for male impotence

2000 36 million HIV positive
At the turn of the century, it is calculated that 36 million people worldwide are infected with the HIV virus

2001 Nobel prize for cell cycle discoveries
Leland Hartwel, Paul Nurse and Tim Hunt win the Nobel Prize for their discoveries of key regulators of the cell cycle

2003 First reported case of SARS
A deadly new form of pneumonia, SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) is first reported in Hanoi and soon spreads globally

2005 SARS 'eradicated'
Two years after its first appearance, the World Health Organization announces that the deadly disease SARS has been 'eradicated'

2005 Human face transplant
French surgeon Bernard Devauchelle and his team in Amiens carry out the first human face transplant

2014 February Ebola kills thousands
The Ebola virus epidemic begins, infecting at least 28,616 people and killing at least 11,310

2015 June 30 Cuba eradicates transmission of HIV to children
Cuba becomes the first country in the world to eradicate mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis

2019 December 1 Coronavirus in Wuhan triggers pandemic
COVID-19 pandemic: First known human case of Coronavirus disease 2019 is in Wuhan, Hubei, China