Timeline of Medicine and Medical Technology - Antiquity

Antiquity

• 2600 BC – Imhotep wrote texts on ancient Egyptian medicine describing diagnosis and treatment of 200 diseases in 3rd dynasty Egypt.
• 2500 BC - Iry Egyptian inscription speaks of Iry as and
• 1900 BC - 1600 BC Akkadian clay tablets on medicine survive primarily as copies from Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh.
• 1800 BC - Code of Hammurabi sets out fees for surgeons and punishments for malpractice
• 1800 BC - Kahun Gynecological Papyrus
• 1600 BC - Hearst papyrus
• 1550 BC - Ebers Papyrus
• 1500 BC – Saffron used as a medicine on the Aegean island of Thera in ancient Greece
• 1500 BC - Edwin Smith Papyrus an Egyptian medical text and the oldest known surgical treatise (no true surgery)
• 1300 BC - Brugsch Papyrus and London Medical Papyrus
• 1250 BC - Asklepios
• 8th century - Homer tell that Polydamna supplied the Greek forces besieging Troy with healing drugs Homer also tells about battlefield surgery Idomeneus tells Nestor after Machaon had fallen: A surgeon who can cut out an arrow and heal the wound with his ointments is worth a regiment.
• 700 BC - Cnidos medical school also one at Cos
• 500 BC - Darius I orders the restoration of the House of Life (First record of a (much older) medical school)
• 500 BC – Bian Que becomes the earliest physician known to use acupuncture and pulse diagnosis
• 500 BC – the Sushruta Samhita is published, laying the framework for Ayurvedic medicine
• 510-430 BC - Alcmaeon of Croton scientific anatomic dissections. He studied the optic nerves and the brain, arguing that the brain was the seat of the senses and intelligence. He distinguished veins from the arteries and had at least vague understanding of the circulation of the blood. Variously described by modern scholars as Father of Anatomy; Father of Physiology; Father of Embryology; Father of Psychology; Creator of Psychiatry; Founder of Gynecology; and as the Father of Medicine itself. There is little evidence to support the claims but he is, nonetheless, important.
• c.484 – 425 BC Herodotus tells us Egyptian doctors were specialists: Medicine is practiced among them on a plan of separation; each physician treats a single disorder, and no more. Thus the country swarms with medical practitioners, some undertaking to cure diseases of the eye, others of the head, others again of the teeth, others of the intestines,and some those which are not local.
• 496-405 BC - Sophocles “It is not a learned physician who sings incantations over pains which should be cured by cutting.”
• 420 BC – Hippocrates of Cos maintains that diseases have natural causes and puts forth the Hippocratic Oath. Origin of rational medicine.
• c. 400 BC - 1 BC – The Huangdi Neijing (Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine) is published, laying the framework for traditional Chinese medicine
• 4th century BC - Philistion of Locri Praxagoras distinguishes veins and arteries and determines only arteries pulse
• 375-295 BC Diocles of Carystus
• 354 BC - Critobulus, extracts an arrow from Phillip II's eye, treating the loss of the eyeball without causing facial disfigurement
• 3rd century BC - Philinus of Cos founder of the Empiricist school. Herophilos and Erasistratus practice androtomy. (Dissecting live and dead human beings)
• 280 BC – Herophilus Dissection studies the nervous system and distinguishes between sensory nerves and motor nerves and the brain. also the anatomy of the eye and medical terminology such as (in Latin translation "net like" becomes retiform/retina.
• 270 BC – Huangfu Mi writes the Zhenjiu Jiayijing (The ABC Compendium of Acupuncture), the first textbook focusing solely on acupuncture
• 250 BC – Erasistratus studies the brain and distinguishes between the cerebrum and cerebellum physiology of the brain, heart and eyes, and in the vascular, nervous, respiratory and reproductive systems.
• 220 BC – Zhang Zhongjing publishes Shang Han Lun (On Cold Disease Damage).
• 200 BC – the Charaka Samhita uses a rational approach to the causes and cure of disease and uses objective methods of clinical examination
• 124- 44 BC - Asclepiades of Bithynia
• 1st century AD - Rufus of Ephesus; Marcellinus a physician of the first century AD; Numisianus
• 23 AD – 79 AD Pliny the Elder
• 40 AD - Celsus
• 70–50 AD – Pedanius Dioscorides writes De Materia Medica – a precursor of modern pharmacopoeias that was in use for almost 1600 years
• 2nd century AD Aretaeus of Cappadocia
• 98-138 AD - Soranus of Ephesus
• 129 - 216 AD – Galen Clinical medicine based on observation and experience. The resulting tightly integrated and comprehensive system, offering a complete medical philosophy dominated medicine throughout the Middle Ages and until the beginning of the modern era.