Important dates

• The Black Death hits Britain

  1348
• Vesalius publishes 'The Fabric of the Human Body'


  1543-
• Royal Society founded


  1660-
• Sydenham's 'Medical Observations'


  1676
• James Simpson discovers chloroform


  1847-
• John Snow's 'On the Mode of Communication of Cholera'

  1855
• Pasteur publishes the Germ Theory


  1861
• Robert Koch identifies anthrax spores

  1876-
• First British printing press


  1470
• Harvey's 'On the Motions of the Heart and Blood'


  1628
• Great Plague hits London

  1665
• Jenner publishes his vaccination findings

  1798
• Smallpox vaccination made compulsory

  1853
• Florence Nightingale's 'Notes on Nursing'

  1865
• Public Health Act


  1875
• Wilhelm Röntgen discovers X-rays

  1895
• Ehrlich and Hata discover the first 'magic bullet', Salvarsan 606


  1909
• Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin

  1928
• Domagk discovers the second 'magic bullet', Prontosil


  1932
• Florey and Chain purify penicillin

  1938-40
• Government launches diphtheria vaccination campaign

  1940
• NHS founded


  1948
• Watson and Crick discover the structure of DNA

  1953
• Government's first polio vaccination campaign

  1956
• Cigarette adverts banned from television

  1965
• Christiaan Barnard completes first heart transplant

  1967
• Human Genome Project completed

  2003-
• Smoking banned in public places

  2006-7
• This is a timeline showing the order of key events in the history of British medicine since around 1250.