A Chronology of Medical and Technological Advances

THROUGH 16TH CENTURY

400BC Hippocrates, Greek physician and founder of the first university. Considered the “father of medicine”. His studies, practice and writings embraced surgery as well as medicine.
150? Claudius Galenus, known as Galen, a Greek subject of the Roman Empire and surgeon/ physician to the gladiators at Pergamum, provides his interpretation of the circulatory system.
800 Salerno is famed as the seat of the first organized medical school in Europe.
910 Arabist physician Rhazus first to identify smallpox and measles and to suggest blood as the cause of infectious disease.
1500s Italian physician Sanctorius investigates metabolism.
1543 Andreas Vesalius published a 663 page folio challenging Claudius Galenus’ description of circulation. He was eventually forced out of the University of Padua in Italy into exile in Spain.
1546 Miguel Servetus combined anatomical studies with theology disproving Galenic doctrine. His scientific and religious views constituted a heretical mix, for which he was burned at the stake in 1553.
1590 Dutch lens grinder, Zacharius Janssn invents the microscope. Credit has been given to Leewenhoek.

17TH CENTURY

1600s Abroise Pare’ introduces that ligation of arteries is essential for the control of hemorrhage.
1600s Italian mathematician and physicist Alfonso Borelli investigates the area of physiology.
1600s English physicist Robert Boyle and his assistant Robert Hooke construction of the air pump. both pioneered in the physiology of respiration.
1600s Robert Boyle and Dennis Papind development of the pneumatic machine inspired by the air pump which predates the repirator.
1628 William Harvey, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, presents his theory of the circulatory system. Describes the function of the heart, arteries and veins. Considered to be one of the greatest advances in medicine.
1656 Sir Christopher Wren, the English architect, first proposed administering medications to dogs intravenously by means of an animal bladder attached to quills, later two small silver cannulae connected to a small leather bag.
1661 Marcello Malpighi observed with the microscope the capillaries in the lung of a frog thus completing Harvey’s thesis.
1661 British Scientist Robert Boyle discovered that a candle and a mouse expired simultaneously when air was withdrawn from a glass vacuum chamber.
1666 Oxford physician Robert Lower performs a direct exchange blood transfusion on a dog.
1667 Dr. Robert Lower is credited with performing the first successful direct blood transfusion on a human being.
1667 French physician, Jean Denis, who was a member of King Louis XIV’s staff is credited with performing the first successful animal-to-human transfusion. Later the technique was condemned by the medical society and the Pope.
1674 Anton van Leewenhoek refines the microscope and fashions nearly 250 models. Describes the observance of red blood cells and microorganisms.
1681 Physicians prescribe iron rust or filings boiled in wine for the symptoms of iron deficiency anemia, thus the first iron supplements.

18TH CENTURY

1731 Minister and physiologist Stephen Hales cannulates the carotid artery of a horse and measures arterial blood pressure.
1733 Stephen Hale complies his works on animal blood pressures in a volume entitled “Haemastaticks.”
1751 Pennsylvania Hospital, Pennsylvania. First American hospital opened through the efforts of the American statesman Benjamin Franklin and the Philadelphia physician Thomas Bond.
1761 Austrian physician Leopold Auenbrugger von Auenbrugg describes the technique of percussion for diagnostic assessment of chest disorders.
1768 William Hewson, London anatomist, describes the lymph vessels in birds and reptiles. He contributed to hematology with his research on blood clotting noting that changes in the temperature of blood did not cause coagulation thus disproving Plato’s theory. Discovered fibrinogen.
1772 Cambridge, William Heberden pens a classic description of angina pectoris and coronary artery disease.
1772 Oxygen first prepared by the Swedish chemist Scheele, who called it “fire air.”
1774 English chemist Joseph Priestley isolated oxygen as the component in air that brightened dark venous blood. Refers to the substance as “dephlagisticated air.” Credited with discovering oxygen.
1777 French chemist, Antoine Lavoisier, “the Father of Chemistry,” renames Priestley’s dephlagisticated air “oxygen.” Carries out extensive studies on its role in combustion and respiration. Demonstrated the presence of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen in natural organic compounds. He was guillotined on May 8, 1794.
1790 Luigi Galvani describes the elctro-chemical stimulation of frog muscle termed “animal electricity.”
1796 Edward Jenner, a British country physician scratches the skin of a small boy with a needle contaminated with cowpox pus from a milk maiden. This inoculation was to protect the child from smallpox.
1799 December. Gen. George Washington succumbs to excessive “bloodletting” by his physicians, causing some to question the practice.

19TH CENTURY (FIRST HALF)

1800s William Withering, English Botanist and Physician discovers Foxglove from which Digitalis, a heart stimulant, is derived.
1800s Prevost and Dumas, French physiologists, placed blood in a rotating cylinder that caused fibrin from the blood to collect on the walls of the cylinder. The result was defibrinated blood.
1800s German physiologist Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig explores cardiac and renal activity through new methods of functional study.1800 British chemist Sir Humphrey Davy discovers Nitrous Oxide.
1800 Italian physicist Volta develops the first practical electric battery.
1803 Philadelphia physician John Otto published a study tracing the history of several family “bleeders” thus identifying hemophilia.
1803 John Dalton, an English scientist proposed his atomic theory to explain the speculations and observations of the early Greeks.
1808 Sir Humphrey Davy, England, influenced by Volta’s discovery identifies six new elements: sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, stronium, and barium.
1812 French physician, Julien-Jean Cesar LeGallois proposed the idea of artificial circulation.
1816 Rene Laennec invents the stethescope considered the physician’s most useful tool today.
1818 Dr. James Blundell, lecturer at Guy’s Hospital in London on the subject of midwifery transfused ten patients for post-partum hemorrhaging.
1830s Claude Bernard, French Scientist, describes carbon monoxide poisoning
1830s Michael Faraday studied the effect of an electric current on solutions of chemical compounds. Introduced terms such as anode, cathode, electrolyte, anion and cation.
1842 British physician William Addison observes the action of platelets.
1842 American surgeon Crawford Williamson Long successfully
uses ether as a general anesthetic during surgery but does not publish his results. Credit goes to Dr. William Morton.
1844 Dr. Horace Wells, American dentist first uses Nitrous Oxide as an anesthetic
1846 October 16., Massachusetts General Hospital.
Boston dentist Dr. William T. Morton demonstrates ether’s anesthetic properties during a tooth extraction.
1847 Sir James Young Simpson, an English obstetrician, discovers the anesthetic properties of chloroform.
Induces anesthesia to Queen Victoria during childbirth.
1848-
1858 Brown-Sequard, showed the need to oxygenate blood used as a perfusate. Investigated various glands composing the endocrine system.
1849 Loebell, external perfusion of the kidneys.

19TH CENTURY (SECOND HALF)

1850s German physiologist and chemist Otto Funke discovers hemoglobin.
1850s Introduction of the Dubois chloroform inhaler, makes the surgical use of anesthetics safer.
1855 Discovery that the saliva of leeches was effective as an anticoagulant. This substance was used in transfusing blood until World War I.
1863 Frenchman Etinenne Jules Marey invents the pulsewriter which traced the pulse wave on a moving plate.
1868 Ludwig and Schmidt described an apparatus which enabled artificial blood (acacia solution) to be infused under constant pressure from a reservoir into an isolated mammalian organ.
1869 German researchers, Ludwig and Schmidt first artificially oxygenated blood. They took defibrinogenated blood and shook it along with gas in a balloon.
1870s German pathologist Rudolph Virchom correlates the connection between diet and atherosclerosis.
1873 George Callender performs the first successful heart surgery on a patient stabbed by a long needle in his coat during a brawl. He chloroformed the man excised the needle and sutured the site.
1879 Thomas Alva Edison exhibits publicly his incandescent electric light bulb. Develops dynamos for generating electric current.
1879 Louis Pasteur, french chemist and microbiologist. Proved germ theory of disease and founded the science of immunity. Developed the technique called “pasteurization” effectively destroying bacteria in solutions.
1880s Joseph Lister, British surgeon, influenced by Pasteur experimented with chemical means of preventing infection and achieved his first successful results with carbolic acid (Phenol). He revolutionized surgical practice by introducing aseptic surgery which significantly decreased surgical morbidity.
1881 Von Schroder developed the method of bubbling air through venous blood thereby aerating the blood.
1882 Italian pathologist Guilio Cesare Bizzozero describes the action of platelets.
1882 German Von Schroder introduces the first bubble oxygenator.
1882 Metchnikoff identifies phagocytes thus commanding interest in the human immune system.
1883 Ringer demonstrates that potassium inhibited and calcium stimulated the heart.
1885 von Frey and Gruber introduce the first film oxygenator.
1885 Dr. John Duncan reported the use of intraoperative autotransfusion following a leg amputation. Phosphate of soda was used as an anticoagulant.
1887 Arrhenius, a Swedish chemist, proposed a theory to explain how an electrolyte in solution conducts an electric current.
1887 British physiologist Augustus Waller invents the electrocardiogram using a mercury column which pulsated with the heart beat.
1888 French physician Fallot describes Tetrology of Fallot.
1895 Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, a German physicist and amateur photographer discovers “X-Rays.” The discovery enabled doctors to study the heart on fluoroscopes.
1896 Italian physician Scipinoi Riva-Rocci invents the sphygomanometer using a mercury column for measurement of external arterial blood pressure.
1899 Boston’s Francis Henry Williams uses the “roentgenoscope” to demonstrate enlargement of the heart, aneurysms and pericardial bleeding.

20TH CENTURY (FIRST HALF)

1900s British obstetrician James Blundell performs transfusions on women hemorrhaging from post-partum child birth. Advises that only human blood should be used, admonishing the transfusion of animal blood in humans.
1900s Australian botanist Gregor Mendel publishes his studies outlining the principles of heredity thus genetics.
1900 Austrian-American Karl Landsteiner describes blood biocompatability and rejection, presents the ABO system.
1901 the Japanese American chemist and pharmacologist Jokichi Takamine isolated the powerful vasoconstrictor adrenaline valuable in the treatment of bronchial asthma and cardiac conditions.
1903 Willem Einthoven invents the expounding on Augustus Waller’s work invents the electrocardiograph by using a string galvanometer.
1906 Pathologist James Homer Wright proved conclusively that platelets constituted a third type of blood element produced in the bone marrow.
1908 First successful transfusion using Landsteiner’s ABO typing technique.
1908 New York, Alexis Carrel, a French surgeon sewed a father’s artery to the vein of his newborn daughter who was hemorrhaging. Both survive the procedure.
1910 Hooker, idea that pulse pressure was a necessary factor in perfusion.
1911 Madame Curie discovers radium.
1911 Scottish physician Thomas Addis suggested that the key to hemophilia lay in the faulty conversion of pro- thrombin to thrombin.
1912 Polish biochemist Casimir Funk identifies vitamins.
1914 Dr. Paul Dudley White, becomes one of the country’s first cardiologists by placing an EKG machine in the basement of Massachusetts General Hospital, observing over 27,000 EKG’s and publish his findings.
1914 W.H. Howell, physiologist at Johns Hopkins University the first to see a clot’s network through a microscope with ultraviolet light.
1916 McLean isolated heparin making controlled anticoagulation possible.
1917 British physician Dr. Ivan Magill invents the endotracheal tube.
1920 Scientist/ aviator Charles A. Lindberg first oxygenation of perfusion fluid driven by compressed oxygen gas.
1920 Belt, Smith and Whipple wrote about factors relevant to perfusing living organs and tissues.
1921 German physiologist Otto Loewi expounds on Galvani’s work and isolates acetylecholine and epinephrine.
1923 Boston surgeons Dr.’s Elliott Cutler and Claude Beck and cardiologist Samuel Levine operate on an 11 year old girl for mitral stenosis. First use of a valvulotome.
1925 May 6. Dr. Henry Soutter performs a “digital” mitral commissurotomy.
1926 American physicians George Richards Minot and William Parry Murphy discover in liver an effective control for pernicious anemia.
1928 Dale and Schuster working at the National Institute for Medical research in Hempstead, England developed a double perfusion pump intended to carry out whole-body perfusion. It did not but was, however adopted by Dr. J.H. Gibbon, Jr. in his first heart-lung machine prototype.
1929 Penicillin, the action of this antibiotic was first observed by British bacteriologist Sir Alexander Fleming.
1929 Gibbs developed an artificial heart while working at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. Consisted of two bellows within a round brass container.
1929 German surgeon, Werner Forssman develops the technique of cardiac catheterization. Inserts the catheter into his arm and himself becomes the first subject.
1930s Werner Forssman uses a catheter to inject opaque dye into his heart in an attempt to outline the organ’s chambers on X-Ray photographs.
1930s University of Wisconsin biochemist Karl Paul Link helps discover dicumarol, a long-term anticoagulant.
1930s Andre Cournand and D.W. Richards, American cardiologists spend ten years exploring the potential of the angiocath.
1931 Dr. John H. Gibbon, Jr., Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, conceives the idea of the heart-lung machine for extra-corporeal circulation to remove pulmonary emboli from moribound patients.
1931 Gibbon and Churchill, first use of phenobarbitone for anesthesia.
1934 Dr. Michael DeBakey invents the DeBakey pump.
1935 Danish biochemist Henrik Dam discovers Vitamin K and it’s effect on bleeding problems. He names it Koagulation-Vitamin.
1935 May 10, Dr. John H. Gibbon, Jr., first successful application of the heart-lung machine for extracorporeal circulation in an animal (cat).
1937 Bernard Fantus starts the first blood bank at Cook County Hospital in Chicago using a 2% solution of sodium citrate. Refrigerated blood lasted ten days.
1939 Second generation Gibbon heart-lung machine incorporating DeBakey pumps thus abandoning the Dale- Schuster pumps.
1938 August 26. Boston surgeon Dr. Robert Gross ligates the patent ductus in a human. Performs over 1,500 similar cases.
1939 Charles Drew, a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University reports to the National Blood Transfusion Committee that the use of plasma is preferred over whole blood for the treatment of shock, burns and open wounds.
1940s O.H. Robertson, a Canadian medical officer during World War I, discovered that a solution of citrate glucose could preserve blood for as long as twenty-one days.
1941 Dr. Andre’ Cournand performs the first cardiac catheterization on a human at the Bellvue Hospital, New York.
1941 Paul Owen, a hematologist in Oslo, noted the correlation between diet and coronary thrombosis.
1940s Dr. Alfred Blalock, former surgical resident at Vanderbilt University, and Dr. Helen Taussig, a heart specialist at Johns Hopkins Hospital co-design the surgical technique for treatment of Tetrology of Fallot (pulmonary stenosis, ventricular septal defect, overriding aorta, right ventricular hypertrophy).
1943 Russian-born American microbiologist Selman Abraham Waksman discovered the antibiotic streptomycin used in the treatment of tuberculosis and other diseases.
1944 Dr. Alfred Blalock performs the first Blalock-Taussig procedure, end to side anastamosis of the subclavian artery to the pulmonary artery.
1944 October. Clarence Crawfoord of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm surgically repairs coarctation of the aorta in a human.
1944 Kolff and Berk, rotating kidney made from cellophane for dialysis; observed how venous blood became arterialized when exposed to aerated dialysis fluid.
1946 Cortisone produced by the cortex of the adrenal glands was synthesized and proved to have therapeutic value in rheumatoid arthritis and a variety of inflammatory diseases.
1948 American physicians Minot and Murphy isolate antianemic factor, vitamin B-12.
1948 National Heart Institute enacts the Framington (Massachusetts) study. Initial enrollment of 28,000 subjects to study the effects of factors influencing coronary artery disease. The project is ongoing.
1949 Dr. John H. Gibbon, Jr. uses protamine to reverse the anticoagulation effects of sodium heparin.
1949 IBM develops the Gibbon Model I heart-lung machine, delivered to Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, PA. Consisted of DeBakey Pumps and film oxygenator.

20TH CENTURY (SECOND HALF)

1950s English biochemist Rodney Porter and the American biochemist Gerald Edelman expand the knowledge of the body’s immunization system by detailing the structure of the antibody molecule.
1950s Researchers isolate urokinase, an enzyme that helps clear the urinary tract of blood clots from human urine.
1950s C. Walton Lillehei of the University of Minnesota
successfully applies cross circulation technique. The surgical community is not impressed and describes it as the only technique with a potential 200% mortality.
1950s Toronto’s Wilfred G. Bigelow performs laboratory experiments with animals using hypothermia at 86 degrees C.
1951 Dr. Clarence Dennis performs the first human open heart surgery cases involving extracorporeal circulation. The patient did not survive.
1951 IBM develops the Gibbon Model II heart-lung machine, delivered to Jefferson Medical College Hospital on June 19, 1951.
1951 Karlson, evaluation of a cellulose membrane oxygenator.
1951 Dr. Joseph E. Murray, first kidney transplantation, Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Boston.
1952 Paul Zoll develops the first cardiac pacemaker.
1952 First hypothermic application on humans by John Lewis and Richard Varco at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis using Bigelow’s technique at 82 degrees C.
1952 Charles Hufnagel sews an artificial valve into a patient’s aorta.
1953 Dr. Frank F. Allbritten develops the left ventricular vent thus solving intra-cardiac air complications.
1953 Dr. John H. Gibbon, Jr., Jefferson Medical College Hospital, Philadelphia. First successful application of extracorporeal circulation in a human, an 18 year old female with an atrial septal defect.
1953 Dr. Michael DeBakey, Baylor University, Houston, implants a seamless, knit Dacron tube for surgical repairs and/or replacement of occluded vessels or vascular aneurysms.
1953 Lillehei, controlled cross-circulation using live human donor lungs for oxygenation of patients’ blood during infant and pediatric surgery.
1954 IBM develops the Gibbon Model III heart-lung machine, delivered to Jefferson Medical College in July, 1954.
1954 Nationwide application of Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine.
1955 American physician and virologist Jonas Edward Salk introduced a killed-virus vaccine against polimyelitis.
1955 Melrose suggested the deliberate manipulation of the ionic environment of the myocardium (cardioplegia).
1955 Clowes, large flat multi-layered ethylcellulose membrane oxygenator; used clinically on several patients.
1955 Mustard, used excised lungs from rhesus monkeys to oxygenate blood during pediatric surgery.
1957 Wild et. al. report the use of ultrasound to visualize the heart non-invasively.
1957 Dr. C. Walton Lillehei and Earl Bakken, electronic engineer develop the first portable pacemaker. Bakken later forms the Medtronics Corporation.
1957 Dr. Willem Kolff and Dr. Tetsuzo Akutzus at the Cleveland Clinic implant the first artificial heart in a dogs. The animal survived for 90 minutes.
1958 Dr.’s Norman Schumway and Richard Lower begin a series of experiments in animal heart transplantation.
1958 Dr. Mason Sones, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation develops coronary angiography.
1959 Marcello Siniscalco of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and Arno G. Motulsky of the University of Washington diagnose hemolytic anemia.
1960s The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) provide numerous contributions to medicine. Examples not only included the observation and documentation of metabolic and physiological stress but inventions like telemetry, Teflon, titanium, freeze-drying, microwave, fiberoptics, advances in computerization etc.
1960s Dr. Richard Dyer pioneers a renewed interest in intraoperative autotransfusion leading to the development of the first commercial auto-transfusion apparatus.
1960s American physiologist Judith Pool discovered that slowly thawed frozen plasma yielded deposits high in Factor VIII. The deposits called cryoprecipitates are further refined.
1960s Vaccine against hepatitis.1960s Issac Harary, UCLA laboratory biochemist discovered the “automaticity” of heart cells leading to investigations at the cellular level.
1960 Medtronic develops the first fully implantable pacemaker.
1960 Dr. Albert Starr, Oregon surgeon develops the Starr- Edwards heart valve. One of the most successful heart valves produced until the late 1970s.
1961 Dr. R.L. Swank, University of Oregon Health Sciences Center observed that the microviscosity of stored blood was significantly greater than that of fresh blood leading to the discovery and filtration theory of microaggregates.
1961 Callaghan, developed an artificial placenta for extracorporeal support of newborns with RDS.
1962 Moulopoulos et. al. suggested the use of a single chambered intra-aortic balloon, positioned in the descending thoracic aorta, to accomplish the same hemodynamics as did arterial counterpulsation.
1964 Dotter and Judkins used tapered Teflon dilating catheters during arteriography to dilate occluded peripheral arteries.
1964 Bretschneider introduces cold cardioplegia.
1965 Raskkind, developed a low volume disposable pumpless bubble oxygenator for use as a substitute lung on children with cystic fibrosis, RDS, and CHD.
1966 Tchobroutsky, long term support of puppies and fetal lambs in a controlled environment using extracorporeal circulation.
1967 Rene Favaloro, an Argentine surgeon working in the United States performs the first coronary bypass operation using the patient’s native saphenous vein as an autograft.
1967 December 3, South African heart surgeon Dr. Christian Neethling Barnard performs the first heart transplant at Groote Schur Hospital in Capetown. This was shortly after touring the United States and observing Dr. Norman Schumway’s nine year study with animal heart transplantation and rejection methods.
1968 Kantrowitz et. al., the first clinical trial in man of intra-aortic balloon pumping.
1968 Kolobow and Zapol, partial extracorporeal gas-exchange in alert newborn lambs with a membrane artificial lung, perfused via an A-V shunt for periods up to 96 hours.
1969 Dr. Denton Cooley, Texas Heart Institute, Houston, Texas, implanted a total artificial heart designed by Domingo Liotta. The device served as a “bridge” for cardiac transplantation until a donor heart was found, 64 hours. The cardiac transplant functioned for an additional 32 hours until the patient died of pneumonia.
1969 Zapol and Kolobow, “artificial placentation.” Prematurely delivered fetal lambs connected to an extracorporeal membrane oxygenator by umbilical cord, and placed in a tank of artificial amniotic fluid.
1969 Dorson, long-term partial bypass support of a 1.6 Kg. premature infant with RDS for 20 hours.
1970 Robert Jarvik, Ph.D. designs the Jarvik series of artificial hearts.
1971 White, ECMO on newborn babies using veno-venous bypass for up to 9 days.
1972 Hill, adult ECMO for shock-lung syndrome; perfusion for 75 hours. Survived.
1972 Kolobow, ECMO on an 11 year old boy for 10 days. Survived.
1974 Dr. Gerald Buckberg advocates the use of blood/ crystalloid cardioplegia fortified with substrates.
1975 Dr. Willem Kolff, University of Utah, designs a nuclear-powered artificial heart (Westinghouse Corporation).
1975 British scientists George Kohler and Cesar Milstein of Cambridge’s Medical research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology develop the monoclonal antibody.
1975 Biomedicus Bio-Pump (Centrifugal) introduced for clinical application.
1975 Introduction of computerized axial tomography, the “CAT-scanner.”
1977 Dr. Andreas Gruntiz, Switzerland experiment with transluminal coronary angioplasty. Gruntiz later relocates to Emory University, Atlanta.
1980s Michel Mirowski and a team of scientists at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland develop the automatic implantable cardiac defibrillator (AICD).
1980 Bergman et. al. describe femoral artery percutaneous insertion of an intra-aortic balloon using a modification of the Seldinger technique..
1981 January. Cyclosporin-A introduced. An immunosuppressive drug it reopened the medical interest in organ transplantation.
1981 Dr. Denton Cooley implants another pneumatically- driven artificial heart designed by Dr. Akutsu. This artificial heart was used for 27 hours as a “bridge” to cardiac transplantation.
1982 Dr. William DeVries implants the Jarvik-7 into Barney Clark, DDS, Dr. Clark lives 112 days.
1983 Cobe Laboratories introduce the Model CML (Cobe Membrane Lung) a single pumphead membrane.
1984 Loma Linda Medical Center, Baby girl Faye’s native heart is explanted and replaced with a baboon heart. She survived for 3 weeks.