| Timeline |
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| c. 0050 CE | The first century Greek physician, Dioscorides, recommended the use of orchid tubers as an aphrodisiac. | |
| 0180 CE | In his Methodus Medendo, Greek physician Galen devises a system of medicine that will influence medical thinking for over a thousand years | |
| c. 0201 CE | Claudius Galen (130?-?), a Greek Anatomist, wrote 'On the Natural Faculties'. | |
| c. 0500 CE | Susrata, an Indian medical book, was compiled. | |
| c. 0600 CE | Vaghbata, Indian medical book compiled. | |
| 0765 CE | A school of medicine is established in Baghdad. | |
| 1070 CE | Possible founding date of the Hospital of St. John in Jerusalem by Amalfi merchants. | |
| c. 1100 CE | (Between 1100-1200) The 12th century book 'Gyuschi' was a compilation of Tibetan medicine that described the making and applications of medications extracted from herbs, roots and minerals often served as hot teas. | |
| 1180 CE | In Montpellier, France, a medical school was founded. | |
| 1280 CE | Eyeglasses are invented and later improved in the late medieval period. | |
| 1322 CE | Arabian writers recorded ideas about artificial insemination. | |
| 1333 CE | The Black Death erupted in China. | |
| 1478 CE | Girolamo (Gerolamo) Fracastoro (Latin: Hieronymus Fracastorius) (1478-1553), Italian physician, scholar and poet was born in Verona. He was later educated at Padua University and lived and practised in his hometown. He was a friend and colleague of Copernicus. | |
| 1485 CE | The medical encyclopedia 'Gart der Gesundheit' described the female mandrake, thought to stop bleeding, and to scream when pulled by its roots. | |
| 1491 CE | Pietro Roccabonella, doctor of medicine and lecturer at the University of Padua, died. | |
| 1 May 1493 CE | Phillippus Paracelsus, physician and alchemist, was born. | |
| c. 1500 CE | (Between 1500s) Europe began to restrict the practice of medicine to qualified doctors. | |
| c. 1500 CE | (Between 1500-1600) Giulio Cesare Aranzi, Italian anatomist, name the hippocampus formation of the brain because of its resemblance to Hippocampus, the seahorse. | |
| 1518 CE | Henry VIII authorized a college of physicians and it was founded by Oxford physician Thomas Linacre. | |
| 1518 CE | Raphael painted a portrait of Leo X which showed spectacles with concave lenses for short-sightedness. | |
| 1520 CE | Spectacles were in use amongst Europe's educated. | |
| 1520 CE | A smallpox epidemic raged in Vera Cruz, Mexico. The 16th century smallpox epidemic in Mexico and Central America killed about half of the Aztecs. | |
| 1527 CE | Theophrastus von Hohenheim established chemotherapy and the modern school of medical thinking at the University of Basel in Switzerland. | |
| 1528 CE | Typhus swept through Italy and killed tens of thousands. | |
| 1530 CE | Opium known as laudanum was used as a pain reliever. | |
| 1530 CE | Girolamo Fracastoro wrote a long poem on syphilis 'Gaulish Syphilis sive de morbo' (Syphilis, or the French Disease), from the title of which the disease takes its name. Fracastoro took the name 'syphilis' from the legend of Syphylus, a young shepherd boy who, having neglected his flocks, was punished by Apollo with a terrible disease that covered his entire body with ulcers. | |
| 1533 CE | A professorship in botany created at the university in Padua established plant study as a discipline separate from medicine. | |
| 1537 CE | Andreas Vesalius, the Belgian 'father of anatomy', accepted the chair of anatomy at Padua. | |
| 1540 CE | The united companies of barbers and surgeons were incorporated in London. | |
| 1540 CE | The pulmonary circulation of the blood was discovered by Michael Servetus, a Spanish theologian and physician, who was later burned at the stake for heresy. | |
| 1540 CE | Ether was produced from alcohol and sulfuric acid. | |
| 1543 CE | Anatomist Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), publishes 'De Humani Corporis Fabrica' which corrects Greek medical errors and revolutionizes medicine. | |
| 1544 CE | The first herbarium was published by Italian botanist Luca Ghini. | |
| 1545 CE | A typhus epidemic killed hundreds of thousands of natives and colonists in Cuba and New Spain. | |
| 1546 CE | Gerolamo Fracastoro (1478-1553) writes 'De contagione ET contagiosis morbis' (On Contagion and Contagious Diseases). In which he proposes the earliest germ theory of disease that epidemic diseases are caused by transferable seedlike entities that could transmit infection by direct or indirect contact or even without contact over long distances. | |
| 1551 CE | Spanish sailors in the Caribbean became ill after eating a fish stew. Most likely caused by ciguatera, a disease caused by toxins of microorganisms eaten by reef fish. | |
| 1552 CE | Bartolommeo Eustachio, Italian anatomist, described the Eustachian tube of the ear and the Eustachian valve in the heart. | |
| 27 Oct 1553 CE | Michael Servetus, who discovered the pulmonary circulation of the blood, was burnt for heresy in Switzerland. | |
| 1553 CE | Michael Servetus (Miguel Serveto) (1511-1553), describes the circulation of blood into the heart after being mixed with air in the lungs. He was burnt alive for heresy in Geneva in the same year at the instigation of Calvin. | |
| 1554 CE | Fernelius, French physician, codified the medicine of the Renaissance. | |
| 1559 CE | Realdo Colombo (1516-1559), Italian anatomist, advanced the understanding of human blood circulation by describing the lesser circulation of blood through the lungs in detail. | |
| 1561 CE | Gabriel Fallopius, wrote one of the first studies in anatomy in 'Observationes anatomicae'. | |
| 1564 CE | Andreas Vesalius, the father of modern anatomy, was forced by the Inquisition to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He disappeared during the voyage. | |
| 1565 CE | The Royal College of Physicians in London was officially permitted to carry out human dissections. | |
| 2 Jul 1566 CE | French astrologer, physician and prophet, Nostradamus, died in Salon. | |
| 1567 CE | Typhoid fever swept through parts of South America and killed more than two million Indians. | |
| 1568 CE | Constanzo Varoli, Italian anatomist, studied the anatomy of the human brain. | |
| 1570 CE | Spanish viceroy Alva banishes Zutphen City's only physician, Joost Sweiter, 'because he is a Jew'. | |
| 1572 CE | Ambroise Pare, French surgeon, introduced more humane treatment for battlefield wounds. He substituted egg yolk and turpentine for boiling oil, and introduced arterial ligature instead of cauterization. | |
| 1575 CE | Plague swept through Italy and Sicily. | |
| 1578 CE | William Harvey (1578-1657), English physician, was born. He discovered the way the heart pumps blood through the arteries and veins of the body. | |
| 1578 CE | Li Shih-Chen summed up Chinese pharmacology in his 'Great Pharmacopoeia'. | |
| c. 1597 CE | The 'Materia Medica Pharmacopeia' was written and detailed some 1,900 herbs, minerals and animals used by the Chinese to treat ailments through the ages. | |
| 1601 CE | Jean Robin published a catalog for his medicinal herb garden. | |
| 1603 CE | Girolamo Fabrici studies leg veins and notices that they have valves which only allow blood to flow toward the heart. | |
| 1603 CE | Spigelius published instructions on making dried herbarium specimens which was a technique that had only come into practice during the previous 50 years. | |
| 1604 CE | The first official condemnation of tobacco was made by King James I, who cited the health hazards of smoking in his Counterblaste to Tobacco. | |
| 1618 CE | Pietro da Cortona, artist, made an atlas of human anatomy: 'Tabulae Anatomicae'. | |
| 1628 CE | British physician William Harvey explains circulation of blood, the vein-artery system and structure of the heart in 'De Motu Cordis et Sanguinis'. | |
| 1639 CE | Francois Citois, the physician of Cardinal Richeliue, published a book that described the disease colica Pictonum, and noted the prevalence of the disease to the wine region of Poitou, where tart wines needed sweetening. | |
| 1645 CE | The San Marcoul Hospital was established in Rheims, France, by a devout woman for the care of scrofulous (tubercular) patients. | |
| 1649 CE | In Seville, Spain, one in three died of the Black Plague. | |
| c. 1654 CE | Samuel Stockhausen, a physician in Goslar in the Harz Mountains of Germany, identified the ailment of Huttenkatze as stemming from lead poisoning in the local mining towns. This find later made possible Gockel's discovery of the cause of colica Pictonum. | |
| c. 1656 CE | Robben Island in Cape Town's Table Bay, South Africa, from this time on was variously used by European settlers as a mental institution, leper colony and prison. | |
| 1658 CE | Jan Swammerdam observes red blood cells under a microscope. | |
| 1663 CE | Robert Hooke sees cells in cork using a microscope. | |
| 1664 CE | There was no litigation in London, England due to the Black plague. | |
| 15 Aug 1665 CE | Between 15 August abd 22 August, The London weekly 'Bill of Mortality' recorded 5,568 fatalities. 4,237 were killed by the plaque. | |
| 1665 CE | The Great Plague of London killed a quarter of the population, an estimated 68,000 people. | |
| 1665 CE | The villagers of Eyam in Derbyshire, England, voluntarily isolated themselves so as not to spread the plague. 250 of 350 people died and the town became known as the Plague Village. | |
| 14 Nov 1666 CE | The first blood transfusion was performed. | |
| 1666 CE | Samuel Pepys reports on the first blood transfusion which was between dogs. | |
| 1666 CE | Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689), writes on treating fevers. | |
| 1672 CE | Regnier de Graaf discovers structures in the ovary (Graafian follicles). | |
| 1676 CE | Anton van Leeuwenhoek observes protozoa and calls them 'animalcules'. | |
| 1677 CE | Anton van Leeuwenhoek observes spermatazoa. | |
| 1677 CE | The first medical publication in America, a pamphlet on smallpox, was produced in Boston. | |
| 1677 CE | Cinchona bark included in the London Pharmacopoeia as a fever treatment. | |
| 1678 CE | First known American medical publication appears, from clergyman-physician Thomas Thacher, 'A Brief Rule to Guide the Common-people of New England How to Order Themselves and Theirs in the Small Pocks, or Measels'. | |
| 1683 CE | Anton van Leeuwenhoek observes bacteria | |
