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Birth of Galen. Greek physician to gladiators and Roman emperors
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Diocles wrote the first known anatomy book
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Birth of Hippocrates, the Greek father of medicine begins the scientific study of medicine and prescribes a form of aspirin
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Alcmaeon of Croton distinguished veins from arteries
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Roger Bacon invents spectacles
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1489 Leonardo da Vinci dissects corpses
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1543 Vesalius publishes findings on human anatomy in De Fabrica Corporis Humani
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1590 Zacharius Jannssen invents the microscope
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1628 William Harvey publishes An Anatomical Study of the Motion of the Heart and of the Blood in Animals which forms the basis for future research on blood vessels, arteries and the heart
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Sir Christopher Wren experiments with canine blood transfusions
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1670 Anton van Leeuwenhoek discovers blood cells
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1683 Anton van Leeuwenhoek observes bacteria.
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1701 Giacomo Pylarini gives the first smallpox inoculations
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1747 James Lind publishes his Treatise of the Scurvy stating that citrus fruits prevent scurvy
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1763 Claudius Aymand performs the first successful appendectomy
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1796 Edward Jenner develops the process of vaccination for smallpox, the first vaccine for any disease
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1800 Sir Humphry Davy discovers the anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide
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1816 James Blundell performs the first successful transfusion of human blood
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1818 James Blundell performs the first successful transfusion of human blood
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1842 Crawford W. Long uses ether as a general anesthetic
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1844 Dr. Horace Wells uses nitrous oxide as an anesthetic
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1846 William Morton, a dentist, is the first to publish the process of using anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide
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1847 Ignaz Semmelweis discovers how to the prevent the transmission of puerperal fever
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1849 Elizabeth Blackwell is the first woman to gain a medical degree from Geneva Medical College in New York
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1853 Charles Gabriel Pravaz and Alexander Wood develop the syringe
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1857 Louis Pasteur identifies germs as cause of disease
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1867 Joseph Lister develops the use of antiseptic surgical methods and publishes Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery
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1870 Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur establish the germ theory of disease
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1879 First vaccine developed for cholera
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1881First vaccine developed for anthrax by Louis Pasteur
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1882 First vaccine for developed for rabies by Louis Pasteur
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1887 First contact lenses developed
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1890 Emil von Behring discovers antioxins and develops tetanus and diphtheria vaccines
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1895 Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen discovers X rays
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1896 First vaccine developed for typhoid fever
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1897 First vaccine developed for Bubonic plague
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1899 Felix Hoffman develops aspirin
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1922 Insulin first used to treat diabetes.
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1923 First vaccine developed for diphtheria.
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Herophilus studies the nervous system
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Persian physician Rhazes identifies smallpox