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The discovery of the microscope in 1590 is attributed to Dutch lens makers Zacharias Janssen and his father, Hans Janssen. It is generally accepted that they built the first compound microscope, consisting of two convex lenses placed in a tube, although some scholars suggest their father may have played a key role in its creation, according to the Florida State University website. -
The discovery of the smallpox vaccine in 1796 was made by the English physician Edward Jenner, who observed that milkmaids who had contracted cowpox (a milder disease) did not contract smallpox. To test his theory, he inoculated an 8-year-old boy named James Phipps with material from a cowpox sore, and then, to confirm protection, exposed him to smallpox, which the boy did not develop. -
The discovery of penicillin was a key event in 1928 when scientist Alexander Fleming observed that a mold of the Penicillium genus produced a substance that killed bacteria. Although Fleming made the initial discovery, it was the subsequent work of Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain's team in the 1940s that succeeded in purifying and producing penicillin on a large scale for clinical use. -
In 1845, anesthesia in dentistry made significant progress, with dentist Horace Wells using nitrous oxide for tooth extractions, although his subsequent public demonstration at Massachusetts General Hospital was unsuccessful. The truly successful public demonstration of ether anesthesia occurred a year later, in 1846, thanks to William Morton, who used it for surgery at the same hospital. -
In 1867, English surgeon Joseph Lister laid the foundation for modern antisepsis by applying germ theory to surgery, using carbolic acid to sterilize instruments and wounds and prevent infection. This was a revolutionary discovery that dramatically reduced surgical mortality and laid the foundation for sterile techniques and asepsis. -
German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered X-rays accidentally in 1895. While experimenting with cathode ray tubes, he detected an unknown radiation that could pass through opaque objects, leading him to take the first X-ray of his wife's hand and name them "X-rays" because of their unknown nature. This discovery was fundamental to the development of radiology and medical diagnosis. -
The first implantable pacemaker was developed in 1958 by Swedish surgeon Åke Senning and physician Rune Elmqvist, and implanted in patient Arne Larsson on October 8. In parallel, American engineer Wilson Greatbatch created an implantable pacemaker in 1958, which, after successful testing in a human patient in 1960, became the most commonly used design. -
The discovery of computed tomography (CT) is attributed to the joint invention of British engineer Sir Godfrey Hounsfield and South African-American physicist Allan Cormack. Hounsfield designed the first clinical unit after Cormack's initial publications, and together they received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1979 for their work. The first image of a brain obtained with a clinical CT scanner was taken on October 1, 1971. -
The discovery of robotic surgery began with projects in the 1980s, such as the "Arthrobot" robot in Canada in 1983, which was one of the first to be used in an operating room. However, modern robotic surgery began to develop in the 1990s, with collaboration from NASA and private companies, and later gave way to Intuitive Surgical's "Da Vinci" system in 1999, which would become the pioneer in the field. -
The discovery of the human genome sequencing project was an international collaborative project that mapped and sequenced the entire human DNA, conducted from 1990 to 2003. A preliminary draft was announced in 2001, and the full sequence was published in 2003, marking the end of the initial project. A more comprehensive version was completed in 2022, closing the gaps in the previous draft.