Hippocrates's name is given to a new form of healing, setting aside superstition and religion in favor of keen observation, medical ethics, recording, and teaching.
Galen based his career on the idea that understanding disease required understanding the body. His influence was so overwhelming it took 1,400 years before his errors in that understanding began to surface.
An extraordinary volume by a Flemish medical student clarifies the understanding of anatomy of function in ways never imagined before.
Harvey's 1628 description of the heart's function and the continuous circulation of the body's blood supply is generally considered the greatest contribution ever made to the art of healing.
The Hippocratic thesis that illness originates in an entire person inhibits research, until the work of one man shows that virtually every symptom arises from a specific pathology in a particular structure.
At a time when surgeons merely amputated, lanced, and bled at the behest of physicians, John Hunter introduces the notion that they can also be researchers, and brings science into surgery.
Driven by his own embarrassment with the necessities of diagnostic procedure, an intensely shy doctor makes a dramatic advance.
In the 1840s, nitrous oxide, ether, and chloroform are discovered to have anesthetic properties. The great surge in the possibilities for treatment is accompanied by acrimonious debate among those claiming the credit.
Following the discovery of cells, a German pathologist introduces the concept that disease is caused by pathological change in a previously normal cell. His 1858 book becomes the bible of the new medicine.
An indomitable Quaker physician persists over two decades in his efforts to convince physicians of the causes of postsurgical mortal infection and how to prevent it, revolutionizing medical thinking.
A brilliant young surgeon develops a new paradigm of operating room procedure, transforming surgery and contributing to a new medical school's ascendancy as the model on which all others in the United States would be based.
The Johns Hopkins Medical School is founded on the principle that women must be admitted on the same basis as men. One of its greatest female graduates helps establish the new field of pediatric cardiology.
