Medicine dates

• Black Death


  1348
• Printing press invented


  1440
• Dissolution of the Monasteries

  1536
• Vesalius On the Fabric of the Human Body published

  1543
• Willam Harvey's findings about the circulatory system published

  1628
• Royal Society founded


  1660
• Great Plague


  1665
• Thomas Sydenham's ideas published in his book Observationes Medicae


  1676
• Edward Jenner develops the smallpox vaccine


  1796
• Edwin Chadwick publishes a report about the poor health of the working classes


  1842
• James Simpson discovers chloroform anaesthetic


  1847
• First Public Health Act

  1848
• Government makes vaccination compulsory

  1852
• Queen Victoria uses chloroform during childbirth


  1853
• Cholera epidemic in London; John Snow shows that it is spread by dirty water


  1854
• Florence Nightingale works as a nurse in the Crimean War


  1854
• The Great Stink in London


  1858
• Florence Nightingale's book Notes on Nursing published


  1859
• Nightingale School of Nursing founded

  1860
• Louis Pasteur publishes Germ Theory


  1861
• Joseph Lister first uses carbolic acid


  1865
• Second Public Health Act

  1875
• Robert Koch identifies the first disease-causing germ (anthrax)


  1876
• Pasteur's Germ Theory of Infection published


  1878
• Karl Landsteiner discovers the first three blood groups


  1901
• Paul Ehrlich develops the first magic bullet, Salvarsan 606


  1909
• Alexander Fleming discovers penicilin

  1928
• Gerhard Domgak develops the second magic bullet, Prontos


  1932
• Florey and Chain carry out the first human trials of penicillin

  1941
• US begins mass production of penicilin

  1942
• First government vaccination campaign (diphtheria)

  1942
• NHS introduced


  1948
• Watson and Crick discover DNA

  1953
• Human Genome Project begins

  1990