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Brown-Sequard was a physiologist and neurologist. He is best known for his discovery of the physiology of the spinal cord and the need for the adrenal gland. In addition, he predicted the existence of hormones. He sparked controversy after claiming to have rejuvenated his sexual prowess by injecting himself with extracts of monkey testis. His response to the extracts is now considered to have been placebo but his experiment helped found endocrinology as a discipline.1817-04-08T00:00:00+0000| 8 Apr 1817 | | Charles-Edouard Brown-Sequard was born in Port Louis, MauritiusBrown-Sequard | Port Louis, Mauritius | Endocrinology |
1818-01-22T00:00:00+0000| 22 Jan 1818 | | Caspar Wistar died | Wistar Institute | |
Semmelweis was a physician who in 1847 found that hand-washing with chlorinated lime solutions could dramatically reduce the number of women dying in childbirth from puerperal fever. He developed his method based on his observation that puerperal fever killed as many as 3 out 10 women who gave birth in hospital, but was rare among those who had home births. Believing the disease was possibly transmitted by doctors he insisted that all those who worked under him washed their hands in chemicals between patient examinations. Despite his success in reducing maternal mortality, his method was rejected during his life-time. It only became widespread after the rise of germ theory. 1818-07-01T00:00:00+0000| 1 Jul 1818 | | Ignaz P Semmelweis was born in Budapest, Hungary Semmelweis | Vienna General Hospital | Bacteriology |
Following experiments in animals James Blundell, a British obstetrician performed the first successful transfusion of human blood to treat postpartum haremorrahage in a woman who had just gone through childbirth. Using a syringe, Blundell managed to transfuse four ounces of blood extracted of the woman's husband's arm to treat the patient. Blundell subsequently performed ten more transfusions with human blood in the years 1825-30, half of which were successful. 1818-09-26T00:00:00+0000| 26 Sep 1818 | | First successful transfusion of human blood Blundell | Guy's Hospital | Transfusion |
Blackwell was the first woman to graduate from a medical school in US (Geneva Medical College, New York). In 1857 she set up the New York Dispensary for Indigent Women and Children. A year later she became the first woman registered on UK Medical Register. Blackwell was an ardent promoter of women's education in medicine. In 1874 she helped set up the London School of Medicine for Women which prepared women to take licensing exams. For Blackwell, medicine was a means for social and moral reform. Between 1880 and 1895 she became involved in a number of reform movements, including moral reform, sexual purity, hygiene, Eugenics, medical ethics, and women's rights. 1821-02-03T00:00:00+0000| 3 Feb 1821 | | Elizabeth Blackwell was born in Bristol, Gloucestershire, EnglandBlackwell | | |
Virchow was a German pathologist who is renowned for the development of cellular pathology. He was the first to promote the idea that disease arises in the individual cells of a tissue and developed the first standard technique for performing autopsies which involved examining the whole body for lesions. In 1845 he published the first pathological description of leukemia. He was also one of the first to notice cancer to originate from otherwise normal cells and that certain cancers were associated with long-term inflammation. Virchow was also the founder of social medicine and a major campaigner for improving sanitary and living conditions to prevent the spread of disease.1821-10-13T00:00:00+0000| 13 Oct 1821 | | Rudolf Virchow was born in Schivelbein, Pomerania, Prussia (now Poland)Virchow | | Pathology, Public health, Oncology |
Galton is best known for having ignited the debate about 'Nature versus Nurture' in 1869 and coined the term 'Eugenics' in 1883. Inspired by his cousin Charles Darwin's work, he developed a programme of research to understand human variation, looking at their differences in mental capabilities and height to facial characteristics and fingerprint patterns. He pioneered the use of statistical methods to determine human differences and how intelligence and physical traits are passed down through families. 1822-02-16T00:00:00+0000| 16 Feb 1822 | | Francis Galton was born in Birmingham, UKGalton | University College London | Genetics |
Mendel is today considered the father of modern genetics. An Augustinian monk, Mendel helped establish the basic laws of genetic inheritance by studying the traits between different pea plant generations. Mendel conducted this research between 1853 and 1863. Based on experiments with tens of thousands of different plants, Mendel established that peas followed certain patterns in terms of the traits they inherited. He published his results in 1866, but he did little to promote his work. The importance of his work was only grasped many decades later after his death. 1822-07-20T00:00:00+0000| 20 Jul 1822 | | Gregor Johann Mendel was born in Hyncice, Czech RepublicMendel | Hyncice, Czech Republic | Genetics |
Pasteur was a French chemist and microbiologist who is best known for inventing a sterilisation method for slowing down the development of microbes in milk and wine, a process now called pasteurisation. He also made significant breakthroughs in understanding the causes and prevention of bacterial diseases. His work was instrumental in helping to reduce the mortality rate from puerperal fever, a major cause of death for women in childbirth in the 19th century. Pasteur also pioneered the first rabies vaccine.1822-12-27T00:00:00+0000| 27 Dec 1822 | | Louis Pasteur was bornPasteur | Pasteur Institute | Bacteriology |
Jenner was an English physician who helped pioneer the smallpox vaccine based on his hypothesis that the pus in blisters milkmaids received from cowpox protected them from smallpox. To test out his theory in 1796 he inoculated the 8 year old son of his gardener with pus taken from the cowpox blisters of a local milkmaid. While the boy suffered a fever he showed now sign of infection with smallpox. Jenner then injected the child with smallpox material, a common method of immunisation at the time, known as variolation. Again he showed no sign of infection. Jenner then tested out the same technique in 23 further people. Based on his success, in 1840 the British government decided to outlaw variolation and instead provide Jenner's method for free to prevent smallpox. Jenner's work laid the foundation for immunisation as a method for preventing disease and for contemporary discoveries in immunology. 1823-01-26T00:00:00+0000| 26 Jan 1823 | | Edward Jenner diedJenner | | Immunology, Vaccines, Infectious diseases |
A chemist and physiologist, Hoppe-Seyler helped pioneer the disciplines of biochemistry and molecular biology. He studied fluids of the body such as blood, haemoglobin, pus, bile, milk, and urine and was the first to crystallise haemoglobin and observe its absorption spectrum. In addition he performed several important studies on chlorophyll and isolated several different proteins. Hoppe-Seyler lost both of his parents by the time he was nine years old and spent some of his childhood in an orphan asylum in Halle. He was subsequently adopted by Georg Seyler, the husband of his older sister.1825-12-26T00:00:00+0000| 26 Dec 1825 | | Felix Hoppe-Seyler was born in GermanyHoppe-Seyler | University of Tubingen | Biochemistry |
The observation was made by Carl Ernst von Baer while investigating the ovary of a dog. 1826-01-01T00:00:00+0000| 1826 | | First observation of a mammalian egg in the ovaryvon Baer | Konigsberg University | Reproduction |
The term was used by Karl Ernst Baer, a Baltic German anatomist and zoologist. Before this time sperm were known as 'animalcules. 1827-01-01T00:00:00+0000| 1827 | | Term 'spermatozoa' introduced for the first timevon Baer | St Petersburg Academy of Sciences | Reproduction |
Villemin was a physician who demonstrated that tuberculosis is an infectious disease. He did this by inoculating a rabbit with tuberculosis material taken from a dead patient. The rabbit developed tuberculosis lesions three months later. Villemin also found that rabbits developed the disease when inoculated with tuberculosis material taken from cows. Initially his contemporaries dismissed his findings, presented in 1867, because it challenged the assumption that tuberculosis was a hereditary disease. Villemin subsequently showed that injections of sputum and blood from tubercular patients could transmit the disease to animals. 1827-01-28T00:00:00+0000| 28 Jan 1827 | | Jean-Antoine Villemin was born in Prey, Vosages, FranceVillemin | | Infectious diseases |
Lister pioneered the practice of cleanliness in surgery by introducing the routine use of carbolic acid on surgical instruments and wounds. He developed these methods at Glasgow Royal Infirmary after being inspired by the work of Louis Pasteur. Lister's ideas about the transmission of infection and the use of antiseptics were initially mocked by his peers and it took time for the surgeons to accept them. The adoption of Lister's techniques dramatically reduced the incidence of post-operative infections and improved the safety of surgery. 1827-04-05T00:00:00+0000| 5 Apr 1827 | | Joseph Lister was born in West Ham, London, UKLister | Glasgow University, King's College London | |
Hutchinson was a physician and pathologist who is renowned for his life-long study of congenital syphilis. He provided the first definitive description of the medical signs for the disease: notched incisor teeth, labyrinthine deafness, and interstitial keratitis. This provided a useful means for diagnosing the disease before the discovery of Treponema pallidum bacteria and development of the Wassermann test. Hutchinson was also the first to identify an inflammatory disease, then called 'Hutchinson's disease', but now known as sarcoidosis.
1828-07-23T00:00:00+0000| 23 Jul 1828 | | Jonathan Hutchinson was born in Selby, Yorkshire, UKHutchinson | | |
Lamarck was a French biologist who proposed that physical traits were inherited through generations by two forces. The first force was alchemical and the second was environmental. He first outlined his theory of evolution in a lecture in 1802. While discredited for many years, Lamark's theory that organisms can acquire physical traits from their environment and pass these on to their offspring has resurfaced with the rise of epigenetics, a science that seeks to understand how chemical modifications to genes and proteins made in one generation are passed on to the next one. 1829-12-18T00:00:00+0000| 18 Dec 1829 | | Jean-Baptiste Lamarck diedLamarck | French Academy of Sciences | Epigenetics, Genetics |
The enzyme, diastase, was discovered by the French chemist Anselme Payen. It was published in A Payen, JF Persoz, 'Mémoire sur la diastase, les principaux produits de ses réactions et leurs applications aux arts industriels, 53 (1833), 73-92. 1833-01-01T00:00:00+0000| 1833 | | The first enzymes were isolatedPayen, Persoz | | |
Finlay was an epidemiologist who is renowned for his pioneering research on yellow fever. He was the first to theorise that the mosquito carries the organism that causes yellow fever. Finlay first proposed this idea in 1881 to the International Sanitary Conference. A year later he identified the specific mosquito species, Culex fasciatus (now known as Aedes aegypti), that carries the disease. Despite his discovery, Findlay's work went largely unheeded until 1900 when the US Army Yellow Fever Board confirmed his findings. This paved the way to measures to control the mosquito population to prevent the spread of yellow fever.
1833-12-03T00:00:00+0000| 3 Dec 1833 | | Carlos J Finlay was born in Puerto Príncipe, CubaFinlay | | Infectious diseases |
Klebs was a physician and bacteriologist who in 1883 discovered the bacillus that causes diphtheria (Corynebacterium diphtheriae). Renowned for his work on infectious diseases, Klebs' research laid the foundation for modern bacteriology. He was the first to successfully inoculate syphilis in monkeys, in 1878, and to isolate colonies of bacteria. In addition he was the first to show it was possible to cause tuberculosis in animals by injecting milk from infected cows and the first to identify the typhoid bacillus (now called Salmonella typhi). 1834-02-06T00:00:00+0000| 6 Feb 1834 | | Edwin Klebs was born in Konigsberg, Prussia (now Germany)Klebs | University of Bern | Bacteriology, Infectious diseases |
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