A Selected
Chronological Bibliography of Biology and Medicine
Part 1A
Compiled by
James Southworth Steen, Ph.D.
Delta State
University
Dedicated to
my loving family
This document celebrates those secondary authors and laboratory
technicians without whom most of this great labor of discovery would have
proved impossible.
Please
forward any editorial comments to: James S. Steen, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus,
jsteen08@bellsouth.net
Prologue
“Reason was born, as it has since now discovered, into a world
already wonderfully organized, in which it found its precursor in what is
called life, its seat in an animal body of unusual plasticity, and its function
in rendering that body’s volatile instincts and sensations harmonious with one
another and with the outer world on which they depend.” George Santayana (1185).
“In all human affairs … there is a single dominant factor—time. To
make sense of the present state of science, we need to know how it got like
that: we cannot avoid an historical account…To extrapolate into the future we
must look backwards a little into the past.” John M. Ziman (1501).
"The proper concern of
natural science is not what God could do
if he wished, but what he has done; that is, what happens in the world
according to the inherent causes of nature." Albertus Magnus; Alberti
Magni; Albert of Cologne; Albert the Great (606; 1167).
"Admitting that vital phenomena rest upon
physico-chemical activities, which is the truth, the essence of the problem is
not thereby cleared up; for it is no chance encounter of physico-chemical
phenomena which constructs each being according to a pre-existing plan, and
produces the admirable subordination and the harmonious concert of organic
activity.
There is an arrangement in the living being, a
kind of regulated activity, which must never be neglected, because it is in
truth the most striking characteristic of living beings. . . .
Vital phenomena possess indeed their rigorously
determined physico-chemical conditions, but, at the same time, they subordinate
themselves and succeed one another in a pattern and according to a law which
pre-exists; they repeat themselves with order, regularity, constancy, and they
harmonize in such manner as to bring about the organization and growth of the
individual, animal or plant.
It is as if there existed a pre-established
design of each organism and of each organ such that, though considered
separately, each physiological process is dependent upon the general forces of
nature, yet taken in relation with the other physiological processes, it
reveals a special bond and seems directed by some invisible guide in the path
which it follows and toward the position which it occupies.
The simplest reflection reveals a primary
quality, a quid proprium of the living being, in this pre-established
organic harmony.” Claude Bernard (174).
Contents
c.
13.75 G (giga-annum = billion years)
Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaitre (BE)
proposed that the universe began as a primal
atom, an incredibly dense egg
containing all the material for the universe within a sphere about 30 times
larger than our Sun. This primal atom
rapidly expanded for c. 10-20 G scattering matter and energy in all directions (354; 795; 850; 851). This
theory is now known popularly as the Big
Bang Theory, a phrase coined by Fred Hoyle (GB) in a moment of
facetiousness, during a radio broadcast (710).
Alexander Friedmann (RU) proposed an expanding universe as early
as 1922 (150). Note:
Today, most physicists and cosmologists conceive of the primal atom as
having been smaller than Lemaitre's!
On February 12, 2003, Charles L. Bennett (US) and a team from the
National Aeronautics and Space administration (NASA) and the Goddard Space
Flight Center in Maryland announced that the age of the universe is 13.7 G with
a one percent margin for error (290; 359).
Eleanor Margaret Burbidge (US), Geoffrey R. Burbidge (US), William
A. Fowler (US), and Fred Hoyle (GB) suggested that the heavier elements are
formed in supernova explosions (259).
Lawrence Hugh Aller (US) concluded that nucleosyntheses in stellar
interiors generates carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and other biogenic
elements (50).
c.
5 G
c.
4.55 G
Clair Cameron Patterson (US), George Tilton (US), and Mark Ingham
(US) used uranium decay in rocks from Earth and in meteorites that struck Earth
to date our solar system at 4.55 G (1065-1067).
c.
4.4-3.9 G
Samuel A. Bowring (US) and Ian S. Williams (US) identified the
oldest rocks found on Earth as granite-like rocks called gneiss from the Acasta Gneiss Complex near Great Slave Lake,
Northwest Territory, Canada. Their age was determined to be 4.03 G. The Isua
Supracrustal rocks in West Greenland are a close second at 3.7 to 3.8 G. These
rocks were dated using the uranium 235 to lead 207 method (214).
Alessandro Morbidelli (IT), John Chambers (US), Jonathan I. Lunine
(US), Jean-Marc Petit (IT), Francois Robert (FR), Giovanni B. Valsecchi (IT),
and Kim E. Cyr (US) proposed that as the solar system formed, Jupiter's powerful gravity
perturbed asteroids to accrete into larger and larger objects resulting in
terrestrial "embryos" near the size of Mars. These "embryos were
tossed into very unstable elliptical orbits with the result that some collided
with Earth thereby delivering the water that now fills Earth's oceans. These
events occurred when Earth was about half its present size (973).
Alexander Ivanovich Oparin (RU) postulated that a long chemical
evolution in the oceans preceded the appearance of life on Earth (1015-1017).
John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (GB-IN), Harold Clayton Urey (US)
and John Desmond Bernal (GB) also forwarded the same hypothesis (172; 625; 1369). This is
often called the heterotroph hypothesis
of the origin of life.
Preston Ercelle Cloud, Jr. (US) and Stanley Lloyd Miller (US) made
the argument that the Earth’s primitive atmosphere was virtually devoid of oxygen (323; 964).
Kenneth M. Towe (US) made a compelling case that the Earth’s early
atmosphere contained significant quantities of oxygen (1359).
John Desmond Bernal (GB), Peter C. Sylvester-Bradley (GB), S.
Ichtiaque Rasool (US), Donald M. Hunten (US), William M. Kaula (US), Egon T.
Degens (DE), Kenneth M. Towe (US), Edward Anders (US), Gustaf Olaf Arrhenius
(SE-US), Bibhas Ranjan De (US), Hannes Olof Gosta Alfvén (SE-US), Anne Benlow
(GB), Arthur Jack Meadows (GB), Manfred A. Lange (DE), and Thomas J. Ahrens
(US) proposed that on the primitive Earth, impact accretions from
extraterrestrial objects represented a significant source of atmospheric and
biogenic elements (62; 92; 162; 173; 434; 820; 1123; 1317; 1358).
James F. Kasting (US), James B. Pollack (US), and David Crisp (US)
concluded that to keep the oceans from freezing on the primitive Earth a global
"greenhouse" was necessary. This "greenhouse" would have
offset the effects of a faint young Sun which was dimmer than today's by
25-30%. Climate models confirm that 100-1,000 times the present atmospheric
level of carbon dioxide would have been necessary to produce the ancient
"greenhouse" effect (767).
Arvid Gustaf Högbom (SE) suggested that Earth's primitive
atmosphere resulted from gradual, episodic, or rapid volcanic out-gassing and
weathering (688).
Steffen L. Thomsen (DE), Claude J. Allègre (FR), Thomas Staudacher
(FR), and Philippe Sarda (FR) determined that early catastrophic out-gassing
occurred on the young Earth (49; 1349). Note:
This would have released significant amounts of nitrogen, carbon dioxide,
carbon monoxide, methane, water, hydrogen, sulfur dioxide, and hydrogen
sulfide.
James C.G. Walker (US) and Peter Brimblecombe (GB) found that
abundant aqueous ferrous iron occurring in an oceanic hydrothermal system
resulted in the precipitation of otherwise highly insoluble iron sulfides. This
suggests that on the primitive Earth such a system would have served as a
highly effective sink for hydrogen sulfide (1423).
Bernard J. Wood (GB) and David Virgo (US) presented evidence that
Earth's primitive atmosphere was poised at a redox state buffered close to the
fayalite-quartz-magnetite system, which is consistent with a neutral redox
atmosphere and characteristic of basalts throughout the geological record (1480).
James F. Kasting (US), Donald R. Lowe (US), and John P. Grotzinger
(US) used greenhouse calculations and the sedimentary record to suggest that
prior to 3.8 G the Earth’s surface was a warm (80-100˚C), with a
bicarbonate-rich ocean at a pH perhaps as low as 6 (613; 767; 878).
Juan Oró (ES-US), Aubrey P. Kimball (US), Richard Reed Fritz (US),
and Fenil Master (US) synthesized amino acids from formaldehyde and
hydroxylamine under primitive Earth conditions (1022).
Juan Oró (US), E. Stephen-Sherwood (US), and Aubrey P. Kimball
(US) synthesized adenine, thymine, amino acids, and other biochemical compounds
from HCN in a primitive Earth environment (1020; 1021; 1296).
David W. Deamer (US) and Richard M. Pashley (AU) found
membrane-forming non-polar molecules within the Murchison carbonaceous
chondritic meteorite (432).
Keith A. Kvenvolden (US), James G. Lawless (US), Katherine Pering
(US), Etta Peterson (US), Jose Flores (US), Cyril Ponnamperuma (LK-US), Isaac
R. Kaplan (US), Carleton Moore (US) and John R. Cronin (US) examined the
Murchison carbonaceous chondritic meteorite and found racemic mixtures of 74
different amino acids: Eight that are present in proteins, eleven with other
biological roles (including, quite surprisingly, some neurotransmitters), and
fifty-five that have been found almost exclusively in extraterrestrial samples (365; 810; 811).
Joan Oró (US), E. Stephen-Sherwood (US), Joseph Eichberg (US), and
Dennis E. Epps (US) reported the synthesis of phospholipids under primitive Earth
conditions (1023).
Joseph P. Pinto (US), G. Randall Gladstone (US), Yuk Ling Yung
(US), Akiva Bar-Nun (IL), Sherwood Chang (US), and James F. Kasting (US) showed
that photochemistry in an atmosphere containing carbon dioxide or a mixture of
carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide yielded formaldehyde as a major product (123; 766; 1081).
Stanley Lloyd Miller (US), in Harold Clayton Urey’s (US)
laboratory, showed that a wet mixture of methane, hydrogen, and ammonia exposed
to electrical discharge for a while, formed traces of organic compounds,
including organic acids and amino-acids regarded as exclusive components of
living things (963).
William S. Brinigar (US), David B. Knaff (US), and Jui H. Wang
(US) mixed a porphyrin, AMP, and inorganic phosphate with an imidazole group as
a catalyst. Exposure of the mixture to ultraviolet or visible light resulted in
the direct synthesis of ATP (229).
Christopher Reid (GB), Leslie Eleazer Orgel (GB-US), and Cyril
Ponnamperuma (LK-US) have shown that random processes can form nucleotides and
dinucleotides. They have also demonstrated the formation of ATP through the
ultimate agency of solar energy (1137).
William R. Hargreaves (US), Sean J. Mulvihill (US), and David W.
Deamer (US) found that fatty acids and glycerol combine spontaneously to
produce phospholipids when heated to dryness at 65°C, as they might have been
in an evaporating tide pool along a primitive sea (634).
John Desmond Bernal (GB) proposed that one way in which organic
subunits may spontaneously combine into larger molecules is by adsorption of
the reacting molecules onto the highly ordered negatively charged
aluminosilicates of clays. The clay surface performs a catalytic function (171; 172).
Alexander Graham Cairns-Smith (GB), P. Ingram (GB), and Gregory L.
Walker (GB) also proposed that under primitive Earth conditions organic
polymers could have condensed on extremely thin layers of negatively charged
aluminosilicates separated by layers of water (263).
Sidney Walter Fox (US), Kaoru Harada (JP), and Allen Vegotsky (US)
showed how amino acids can be heated under Earth conditions to form proteinoids
or "thermal proteins," which when placed in water self-organize into
microspheres or protocells, possible precursors of the contemporary living cell
(533-536).
Noam Lahav (IL), David White (US), and Sherwood Chang (US) experimentally
produced peptide bonds under conditions where clay, water, and amino acids were
subjected to cyclic variations in temperature and water content (814).
James R. Hawker, Jr. (US) and Juan Oró (US) synthesized peptides
under plausible primitive Earth conditions (646).
E. Stephen-Sherwood (US), A. Joshi (US), and Juan Oró (US)
produced polynucleotide polymers under primitive Earth conditions (1295).
A. Mar (US), Jason P. Dworkin (US) and Juan Oró (US) synthesized
uridine diphosphate glucose, cytidine diphosphate choline, other phosphorylated
metabolic intermediates, the coenzymes adenosine diphosphate glucose (adPG),
guanosine diphosphate glucose (GDPG), and cytidine diphosphoethanolamine
(CDP-ethanolamine) under primitive Earth conditions (914; 915).
Carl R. Woese (US), Francis Harry Compton Crick (GB), and Leslie
Eleazer Orgel (GB-US) suggested that it would have been possible in a pre-DNA
world to have a primitive replicating and catalytic apparatus devoid of both
DNA and proteins and based solely on RNA molecules, i.e., an RNA world
(362; 1018; 1474).
Jennifer A. Doudna (US) and Jack W. Szostak (US) found that the Tetrahymena ribozyme could splice
together multiple oligonucleotides aligned on a template strand to yield a
fully complementary product strand. This reaction demonstrates the feasibility
of RNA-catalyzed RNA replications and supports the RNA world hypothesis (460).
Bruce Michael Alberts (US), Walter Gilbert (US), and Antonio
Lazcano (MX) proposed that DNA and proteins were derived from RNA-based cells
or cell-like units (36; 583; 823).
Antonio Lazcano (MX) postulated that DNA evolved to replace RNA as
the repository of hereditary information because, 1) DNA is much more resistant
to harsh environmental conditions, 2) DNA is less prone to mutations which
cannot be repaired, 3) cytosines in DNA are not as prone to spontaneously
deaminate to uracil as they are in RNA, and 4) the duplex nature of DNA offered
redundancy, which when coupled with repair mechanisms had a distinct advantage
over simplex RNA without a repair mechanism (824).
Carl R. Woese (US) originally described the progenote as the last common ancestor for archaebacteria (Archaea),
eubacteria (Bacteria), and eukaryotes (Eucarya). It contained informational
polymers, could synthesize polypeptides, and was still evolving a link between
genotype and phenotype (1475; 1476).
Francis Harry Compton Crick (GB), Sydney Brenner (ZA-GB), Aaron
Klug (ZA-GB), and George Pieczenik (US) proposed that the assignment of codons to particular amino acids was
simply an historical accident, there being no special reasons why a particular codon stands for a given amino acid (363).
J. William Schopf (US), John M. Hayes (US), and Malcolm R. Walter
(US), speculated that life on Earth might have arisen as early as 3.9 G (1215).
Norman Harold Horowitz (US) and Jerry S. Hubbard (US) proposed how
complex sequential metabolic pathways may have arisen as the result of
selective pressure. The retrograde model.
Suppose that a contemporary cellular pathway makes a required
substance such as an amino acid through the sequence A to B to C to D to E, in
which A is a simple inorganic substance and E is the final organic product.
Initially E was plentiful in the environment and was absorbed directly by
primitive aggregates. Later, as E became scarce because of use, chemical
selection favored pre-cells that could make E from D, a slightly less complex
organic substance still found in abundance in the environment. As D became
exhausted, selection favored assemblies that developed the pathway C to D to E,
in which the even simpler substance C could be absorbed and used as raw
material to make D. This process continued until the entire synthetic pathway, based
on an essentially inexhaustible inorganic substance, was established (703; 704).
Karl O. Stetter (DE) concluded that the origin of life probably
took place under conditions of high temperature because the hyperthermophiles
are grouped around and occupy all the deepest branches of the three-kingdom
phylogenetic scheme. He also concluded that an anaerobic hyperthermophilic
autotroph was very likely the original cell type
(1297).
Günter Wächtershäuser (DE) presented a hypothesis supporting
chemoautotrophy as the first form of metabolism to appear within life forms on
the primitive Earth. He argued that these life forms were coatings that adhered
to the positively charged surfaces of pyrite, a mineral composed of iron and
sulfur. The formation of pyrite from hydrogen sulfide provides a source of
electrons as an energy source (1414).
c.
3.5 G
Mark E. Barley (AU), John S.R. Dunlop (AU), Joseph John Edmund
Glover (AU), David I. Groves (AU), and Roger Buick (AU) concluded from their
studies of sedimentary rocks in Western Australia that near 3.5 G there existed
a shallow marine environment dominated by episodic island volcanism and
hydrothermal activity (129; 616).
Stanley M. Awramik (US), J. William Schopf (US), Malcolm R. Walter
(US), and Bonnie M. Packer (US) found rock bearing 3.5 G microfossils within
early Archean (Gk. archaios=ancient)
stromatolites (106; 1213; 1217). The
microfossils were interpreted to be prokaryotes and to represent the oldest
fossils known (1216).
Brian W. Logan (AU), Richard Rezak (US), and Robert N. Ginsburg
(US) discovered living cryptozoon and associate stromatolites at Shark Bay,
Western Australia (871; 872; 1090; 1091).
Harald Furnes (NO), Neil R. Banerjee (CA), Karlis Muehlenbachs
(CA), Hubert Staudigel (US), and Maarten De Wit (NL) found tiny holes in
volcanic glass. They believe microorganisms etched these tiny holes, c. 3.5 G (552).
Norman Richard Pace, Jr. (US) indicated that the Archaea and
Bacteria diverged from one another near the time that life arose on Earth. This
changed the notion of evolutionary unity among prokaryotes. The phylogenetic
data support the very early appearance of the eukaryotic nuclear line of
descent. The Eucarya is as old as the prokaryotic lines Archaea and Bacteria.
The idea that eukaryotes resulted from the fusion of two prokaryotes and are
late arrivals on the evolutionary stage (1-1.5 G) is incorrect (1036).
Carl R. Woese (US) proposed that the halophilic archaebacteria
(Archaea) are a group of aerobic or microaerophilic organisms that evolved from
a strictly anaerobic and nonhalophilic methanogen ancestor. Woese also
constructed a trifurcated, unrooted, universal evolutionary tree in which all
known organisms can be grouped in one of three major lineages: eubacteria
(Bacteria), the archaebacteria (Archaea), and the eukaryotic (Eucarya)
nucleocytoplasm. This is often referred to simply as the three-kingdom scheme (1476).
Mitchell Lloyd Sogin (US), John H. Gunderson (US), Hillie J.
Elwood (US), Rogelio A. Alonso (US), and Debra A. Peattie (US) determined that
the 16S-like rRNA of the diplomonad Giardia
lamblia has retained many of the features that may have been present in the
common ancestor of eukaryotes (Eucarya) and prokaryotes (Archaea or Bacteria).
They concluded that it represents the earliest-branching eukaryotic lineage (1278).
Mitchell Lloyd Sogin (US) declared that some microbial lineages
seem never to have had mitochondria and chloroplasts, so may have diverged from
the eukaryotic (Eucarya) line of descent prior to the incorporation of the
organelles (1277).
c.
3.235 G
Birger Rasmussen (AU) discovered pyritic filaments, the probable
fossil remains of thread-like microorganisms, in a 3,235-million-year-old
deep-sea volcanogenic massive sulfide deposit from the Pilbara Craton of
Australia (1122). Note:
From their mode of occurrence, the microorganisms were probably thermophilic
chemotropic prokaryotes, which inhabited sub-sea-floor hydrothermal
environments. They represent the first fossil evidence for microbial life in a
Precambrian submarine thermal spring system and extend the known range of
submarine hydrothermal biota by more than 2,700 million years. Such
environments may have hosted the first living systems on Earth, consistent with
proposals for a thermophilic origin of life.
See, Corliss, 1981.
c.
2.7 G
Roger E. Summons (AU), Linda L. Jahnke (AU),
Janet M. Hope (AU), Graham A. Logan (AU), Jochen J. Brocks (AU), and Roger Buick (AU) found
molecular fossils of biological lipids preserved in 2,700-million-year-old
shales from the Pilbara Craton, Australia. This makes these the oldest known
biomolecules. The presence of abundant 2 alpha-methylhopanes, which are
characteristic of cyanobacteria, indicates that oxygenic photosynthesis evolved
well before the atmosphere became oxidizing. The presence of steranes,
particularly cholestane and its 28- to 30-carbon analogs, provides persuasive
evidence for the existence of eukaryotes 500 million to 1 billion years before
the extant fossil record indicates that the lineage arose (231; 1310).
c.
2.5 G
The Proterozoic Era (Gk. proteros=early;
zoe=life) extended from 2.5 G to 544
Ma. It is considered to represent the most recent Era of the Precambrian Time.
c.
2.1 G
Preston Ercelle Cloud, Jr. (US) proposed a working model of the
primitive Earth in which he related atmospheric-geologic-biologic history of
the Precambrian (322).
Stanley A. Tyler (US) and Elso Sterrenberg Barghoorn (US) reported
the discovery of fossil microscopic organisms in an outcropping of
mid-Precambrian rocks called the Gunflint Iron formation near Lake Superior in
Ontario. Most of these fossils resemble present day bacteria and cyanobacteria.
This was the first indisputable evidence of Precambrian life (1366). Barghoorn,
Tyler, and Preston Ercelle Cloud, Jr. (US) later confirmed these findings and
discussed their significance (127; 321). Note:
Other
Precambriam fossil sites include: the Fig Tree Group, Africa; the Bulawayan
Formation, Africa; the Gunflint Iron Formation, Minnesota/Canada; the Belcher
Group, Hudson Bay; Bitter Springs, Australia; and the Ediacaran Sites,
Australia.
Tsu-Ming Han (US) and Bruce N. Runnegar (AU-US) found fossils of
the multi-cellular Grypania spiralis
(probably an alga) in the 2.1 G Negaunee Iron Formation in Michigan, U.S.A. (632).
Malcom R. Walter (US), Du Rulin (US), and Robert Joseph Horodyski
(US) had previously discovered multi-cellular fossils (c.1.4 G) in old Greyson
Shale, lower Belt Supergroup, in Montana, US, and from the similarly aged
Gaoyuzhuang Formation, upper Changcheng Group, in the Jixian section, Northern
China. The organism was identified as Grypania
spiralis, a coiled ribbon-like creature. It was judged to most likely have
been a multi-cellular eukaryotic alga (1427). Shale is
rock formed by condensation of layers of clay or mud, along with phytoplankton
and other debris, deposited at the bottoms of lakes or ocean basins.
Konstantin Sergejewitsch Mereschkowsky (RU) proposed the theory of
the symbiotic origin of the eukaryotic cell and introduced the term symbiogenesis to signify the emergence
of new species with identifiably new physiologies and structures as a
consequence of stable integration of symbionts.
It stated that the chloroplast and mitochondria of eukaryotic cells had their
origins from endosymbiotic
cyanobacteria and aerobic bacteria, respectively, whose ancestors were once
captured and incorporated by a primitive, anaerobic, heterotrophic host. Many
others would later refine this theory (284; 285; 783; 784; 917; 956).
c.
2 G
J. William Schopf (US) Elso Sterrenberg Barghoorn (US), Morton D.
Maser (US), and Robert O. Gordon (US) found microscopic formations that looked
very much like traces of cyanobacteria in 2-billion-year-old rock called
Gunflint chert. The find was near Lake Superior in Canada (1214). Cherts are
rocks composed of minute interlocking grains of silica, occurring as the mineral
quartz (SiO2).
Elso Sterrenberg Barghoorn (US) and J. William Schopf (US)
discovered fossils of microorganisms in stromatolitic cherts of the
Neoproterozoic Bitter Springs Formation of the Amadeus Basin of Central
Australia (126; 1210).
Other Precambrian fossil sites include: the Fig Tree Group,
Africa; the Bulawayan Formation, Africa; the Gunflint Iron Formation,
Minnesota/Canada; the Belcher Group, Hudson Bay; Bitter Springs, Australia; and
the Ediacaran Sites, Australia.
c.
1.8 G- 600 M (mega annum = million years)
Zh Zhang (CN) discovered large (40-200 micrometer) spherical
microfossils 1.8 to 1.9 billion years old in sedimentary rocks from China.
These microfossils were interpreted to be the earliest known eukaryotes
(Eucarya) (1499).
c. 1.4 G
c.
1 G
The ultraviolet absorbing ozone layer in Earth's atmosphere began
to appear. High in the atmosphere, some oxygen (O2) molecules
absorbed energy from the Sun's ultraviolet rays and split to form single oxygen
atoms. These atoms combined with remaining oxygen (O2) to form ozone
(O3) molecules, which are very effective at absorbing UV rays. Most
microorganisms had already evolved ways to protect themselves from ultraviolet
radiation, e.g. DNA repair systems, ultraviolet absorbing pigments, and outer
skeletons (1363).
Joseph Felsenstein (US) created evolutionary trees using rRNA
sequences and a maximum likelihood approach. He concluded that the Plantae,
Animalia, and Fungi along with two new evolutionary assemblages (alveolates and stramenophiles) diverged nearly simultaneously (509). Alveolates include dinoflagellates,
apicomplexans, and ciliated protozoans. The stramenopiles
include brown algae, labyrinthulids, chrysophytes, xanthophytes, diatoms, and
oomycetes (1064).
Elso Sterrenberg Barghoorn (US) and J. William Schopf (US) discovered
fossils of microorganisms in stromatolitic cherts of the Neoproterozoic Bitter
Springs Formation of the Amadeus Basin of central Australia (126; 1210). Cherts are
rocks composed of minute interlocking grains of silica, occurring as the
mineral quartz (SiO2).
Other Precambrian fossil sites include: the Fig Tree Group,
Africa; the Bulawayan Formation, Africa; the Gunflint Iron Formation,
Minnesota/Canada; the Belcher Group, Hudson Bay; Bitter Springs, Australia; and
the Ediacaran Sites, Australia.
Gerard Peter Kuiper (NL-US) proposed that the Earth’s early
atmosphere was rich in hydrogen and helium most of which would drift into space
over the next 1 billion years and be replaced by a secondary atmosphere rich in
heavier gases (806).
c.
700 M (mega-annum = million years)
J. William Schopf (US), Bonnie M. Packer (US), Roger Buick (AU),
and Stanley M. Awramik (US) presented evidence for a well-established community
of oxygenic photosynthesizers (105; 255; 1217).
Charles Doolittle Walcott (US) identified pillar shaped masses of
thinly layered limestone rock in Precambrian strata from the Grand Canyon in
Western North America. Although he did not understand their significance as
fossils he later interpreted these pillar like structures of limestone as
fossilized reefs laid down by algae (cyanobacteria) (1416). These
pillar-like structures called cryptozoon
(hidden life) are now called stromatolites.
Charles Doolittle Walcott (US) described an important clue in the
search for Precambrian life when he discovered fossils in Precambrian
carbon-rich shales on the slopes of a prominent butte deep within the Grand
Canyon. The shales belonged to what is known as the Chuar Group of strata, so,
Walcott named the fossils Chuaria. Chuaria is now known to be an unusually
large, originally spheroidal, single-celled planktonic alga, i.e., a megasphaeromorph acritarch. Walcott's specimens were indeed authentic fossils, the
first true Precambrian organisms where cellular detail is recorded (1417).
c. 635 M
Roger Mason (GB) Tina Negus (GB) and other school children
discovered in Charnwood Forest, England the Precambrian fossil remains of what
may very well be the oldest known multicellular animal (later named Charnia).
Trevor D. Ford (GB) reported this discovery. The position of the clade
for this organism in the tree of life remains uncertain (530).
Jonathan B.
Antcliffe (GB) and Martin D. Brasier (GB) note that Charnia is both temporally and geographically the most widespread
Ediacaran fossil (69).
Guy M.
Narbonne (CA) and James G. Gehling (AU) report that the greatest abundance of
specimens of Charnia, which are also the oldest reliably dated Ediacaran
fossils, are found along the southeast coast of Newfoundland (991). Note:
Other Precambrian fossil sites include: the Fig Tree Group, Africa; the
Bulawayan Formation, Africa; the Gunflint Iron Formation, Minnesota/Canada; the
Belcher Group, Hudson Bay; Bitter Springs, Australia; and the Ediacaran Sites,
Australia.
c.
600 M
Reginald Claude Sprigg (AU) discovered Precambrian metazoan
fossils in the Pound Quartzite at Ediacara Hills and in the Flinders Ranges of
South Australia. At the time of discovery, he thought these fossils were from
the Cambrian (1286; 1287).
Ilya Bobrovskiy (AU), Janet M. Hope (AU), Andrey Ivantsov (RU),
Benjamin J. Nettersheim (DE), Christian Hallmann (DE), Jochen J. Brooks (AU)
used lipid biomarkers obtained from Dickinsonia fossils and found that
the fossils contained almost exclusively cholesteroids, a marker found only in
animals. Thus, Dickinsonia were basal animals. This supports the idea
that the Ediacaran biota may have been a precursor to the explosion of animal
forms later observed in the Cambrian, about 500 million years ago (192).
Martin Fritz Glaessner (CZ-AU) and Mary Wade (AU) determined
fossils in the Ediacara Hills of South Australia (Ediacaran fauna) to be late
Precambrian in age, making them the oldest-known multi-celled organisms (586-589).
Mary L. Droser (US) and James G. Gehling (AU) believe they have
found the earliest fossil evidence for sexual reproduction in Funisia, an
Ediacaran "animal". Its relationship to other animals is
unknown (461).
c.
590-550 M
The Cambrian Period of the Paleozoic Era extended from 590 M to
505 M.
The word Cambrian is taken from Cambria, the Latin name for modern Wales. Other fossil rich
Cambrian sites include: Chengjiang, China; the Wheeler Formation in Utah; and
the Croixan Series in Minnesota/Wisconsin.
With one exception (the phylum Bryozoa), every metazoan phylum
with hard parts, and many that lack hard parts, made their first appearances in
the Cambrian. However, Cambrian marine life was quite different from modern biotas; the dominant invertebrates with
hard parts were trilobites, inarticulate brachiopods, archaeocyathids, and problematic conical fossils known as hyolithids. Many Early Cambrian
invertebrates are known only from small
shelly fossils - tiny plates and scales and spines and tubes and so on,
many of which were pieces of the skeletons of larger animals (1225). Note: This publication initiated the
early Paleozoic time scale. Many Cambrian fossils are found in shale (a rock
formed by condensation of layers of clay or mud, along with phytoplankton and
other debris, deposited at the bottoms of lakes or ocean basins).
The Phanerozoic Eon (Gk. phaneros=visible;
zoe=life) extends from 544 M to the
present. It contains three eras, the Paleozoic, the Mesozoic, and the Cenozoic.
c. 541 M
Alexandr Petrovich Karpinsky (RU) recorded his classic work on
Paleozoic fossil sharks of the family Edestidae (763; 765).
c. 513 M
Charles Doolittle Walcott (US), in 1909, discovered a rich
assemblage of algae and invertebrate fossils from the Middle Cambrian Period of
the Paleozoic Era in the Burgess shale located in Yoho National Park in the
Rocky Mountains, near Field, British Columbia, Canada (1418). Note:
The word Cambrian is taken from a Latin form of the Welsh name for Wales. Other
fossil rich Cambrian sites include Chengjiang, China, the Wheeler Formation in
Utah, and the Croixan Series in Minnesota-Wisconsin. (Shale is rock formed by
condensation of layers of clay or mud, along with phytoplankton and other
debris, sedimented at the bottoms of lakes or ocean basins.)
Harry Blackmore Whittington (GB), in 1966, began re-examining
Burgess Shale fossils originally identified by Charles Doolittle Walcott (US)
as early as 1909. Over the next two decades, Whittington, with the assistance
of his graduate students Simon Conway-Morris (GB) and Derek Briggs (GB),
eventually overturned Walcott's theories that these organisms all belonged to
modern phyla and proposed that most of the specimens are much more complex than
originally believed, and have left no living relatives (347; 1450; 1451).
c.
505 M
Charles Lapworth (GB), from his extensive analysis of graptolite
fossils in Scotland, proposed the Ordovician System of strata to resolve the
Murchison-Sedgwick conflict over their overlapping claims for their Silurain
and Cambrian systems (822). The
Ordovician (from the name of an ancient British tribe, the Ordovices) Period of
the Paleozoic Era extended from 505 M until 438 M. At the end of the Cambrian,
sea levels fell, causing extinctions. It was in the Ordovician that the first
animals with backbones arose, the Agnatha,
these jawless fishes were the first animals with true bony skeletons. The
Ordovician is best known for the presence of its diverse marine invertebrates,
including, corals, graptolites, trilobites, brachiopods, and the conodonts (early vertebrates). A typical
marine community consisted of these animals, plus red and green algae,
primitive fish, cephalopods, corals, crinoids, and gastropods. More recently,
there has been found evidence of tetrahedral spores that are like those of
primitive land plants, suggesting that plants invaded the land at this time.
Paul Kendrick (US) and Peter R. Crane (US) reasoned that the
actual colonization of land by plants could have begun during the Early
Cambrian, considering that the appearance of dispersed plant spores predated
the first land plant megafossils by c. 50 million years (776).
The Ordovician Period ended with a mass extinction. About 25% of
all families did not make it into the Silurian.
Classic fossil-bearing rocks of the Ordovician Period include:
Whiterock Formation, Utah; and the Nevada Cincinnatian Series, Ohio/Indiana/
Kentucky.
c. 466 M
444-359
M
Thomas Chrowder Chamberlain (US) was the first to suggest a
continental freshwater origin of vertebrates during the Silurian and Devonian
time (294). Currently
most scholars support a marine origin for vertebrates.
c.
439 M
Roderick Impey Murchison (GB) defined and named the Silurian Period
commemorating the Silures, an ancient tribe that had inhabited the type area in
the Welsh borderland region (987). The Silurian Period
of the Paleozoic Era lies between approximately 438 M and 408 M. No new major
groups of organisms appeared at this time, with old groups flourishing or declining.
It is at this time that our first good evidence of life on land is preserved,
including the earliest fossils of vascular plants and relatives of spiders and
centipedes. The insects arose in the Silurian, probably becoming the first
animal forms to venture out of the water. Increased ozone from photosynthetic
water plants provided protection from ultraviolet rays, making the terrestrial
environment hospitable to those organisms that could prevent desiccation. Coral
reefs made their first appearance during this time, and the Silurian was also a
remarkable time in the evolution of fishes. Not only does this period mark the
wide and rapid spread of jawless fish, but also the highly significant
appearances of both the first known freshwater fish as well as the first fish
with jaws.
Classic Fossil-Bearing rocks of the
Silurian Period include: Wadi Ram in Jordon; Brandon Bridge in Wisconsin; and
the Brownsport Group in Tennessee.
c. 429.5 M
c.
420 M
Dianne Edwards (GB) and E. Catherine W. Rogerson (GB) discovered Cooksonia pertonii near Brecon Beacons,
England in 420 M rock (475; 476). William H.
Lang (GB) had earlier positioned it as the earliest known land-living vascular
plant found in England and one of the earliest in the world (818).
c.
414 M
Leif Størmer (NO) reported that arthropods likely invaded the land during
late Silurian and early Devonian times (1305; 1306).
c.
408 M
Adam Sedgwick (GB) and Roderick Impey Murchison (GB) presented
researches on certain rocks in Devonshire, England, which had a distinctive
fossil assemblage that led them to propose a new division of the geological
time scale—the Devonian. They first used Devonian in a publication (1226). Note:
This represents the discovery of the Devonian Period—408 M to 360 M—of the
Paleozoic Era.
William Lonsdale (GB), in 1837, suggested
from a study of the fossils of the South Devon limestones that they would prove
to be of an age intermediate between the Carboniferous and Silurian systems. It
was Lonsdale who coined the term Devonian, commemorating Devon County, England (876).
The Devonian seas were dominated by brachiopods, such as the spiriferids, and by tabulate and rugose
corals, which built large bioherms,
or reefs, in shallow waters. Encrusting red algae also contributed to reef
building. In the Lower Devonian, ammonoids appeared, leaving us large limestone
deposits from their shells. Bivalves, crinoid and blastoid echinoderms,
graptolites, and trilobites were all present, though most groups of trilobites
disappeared by the close of the Devonian. The Devonian is also notable for the
rapid diversification in fish. Benthic armored fish are common by the Early
Devonian. These early fish are collectively called ostracoderms and include a number of different groups. By the
Mid-Devonian, placoderms, the first
jawed fish, appear. Many of these grew to large sizes and were fearsome
predators. Of the greatest interest to us is the rise of the first sarcopterygiians, i.e., the lobe-finned
fish, which eventually produced the first tetrapods just before the end of the
Devonian. By the Devonian Period, life was well underway in its colonization of
the land. Before this time, there is no organic accumulation in the soils,
causing these soil deposits to be a reddish color. This is indicative of the
underdeveloped landscape, probably colonized only by bacterial and algal mats. By
the start of the Devonian, however, early terrestrial vegetation had begun to
spread. These plants did not have roots or leaves like the plants most common
today, and many had no vascular tissue at all. They probably spread largely by
vegetative growth and did not grow much more than a few centimeters tall. These
plants included the now extinct zosterophylls
and trimerophytes. The early fauna
living among these plants were primarily arthropods: mites, trigonotarbids, wingless insects, and myriapods, though these early faunas are
not well known. By the Late Devonian, lycophytes,
sphenophytes, ferns, and progymnosperms had evolved. Most of
these plants have true roots and leaves, and many are rather tall plants. The
progymnosperm Archaeopteris was a
large tree with true wood. It is the oldest such tree known and produced some
of the world's first forests. This rapid appearance of so many plant groups and
growth forms has been called the Devonian
Explosion. Along with this diversification in terrestrial vegetation
structure, came a diversification of the arthropods.
Rocks rich in Devonian fossils include: Silica Shale in Ohio;
Bundenbach in Germany; Cleveland Shale in Ohio; and the Rhynie in Scotland.
Kesava Mukund Lele (GB) and John Walton (GB) reported that the
earliest plant stomata appeared in Zosterophyllum
myretonianum. These were more like stomata found in modern moss sporophytes.
The type found in vascular plants appeared 4-5 M
(849).
Tamara Anastasevna Ishchenko (RU) and R.N. Shylokov (RU)
discovered fossil Marchantiales in Lower Middle Devonian material from the
USSR. This provided evidence that some major bryophyte divisions were well
established by the Lower Devonian and that the bryophytes in general must have
played a part in the initial colonization of land by plants (732).
Alexandr Petrovich Karpinsky (RU) reported research on Devonian
algae, the so-called charophytes. His study of the contemporary charophytes
showed their closeness to extinct Devonian forms and indicated that they likely
had a common ancestor (764; 765).
Jennifer A. Clack (GB) and Michael I. Coates (GB) reported on
fossil specimens of the Devonian fish-like Acanthostega
gunneri they collected during 1987 in Greenland. Their work strongly
suggested that legs appeared in tetrapods well before they abandoned water and
not vice-versa as had been suggested by the popular dry pond theory first
articulated by Alfred Sherwood Romer (US) (314; 325-327).
Hagen Hass (DE), Thomas N. Taylor (US), Winfried Remy (PL-DE), and
Hans Kerp (DE) found fossil hyphae in association with wood decay and fossil chytrids
and Glomales-Endogenales representatives associated with plants of the Rhynie
Chert from the Devonian Period (408-360 mya) (644; 1138; 1139; 1326; 1327). These
findings strongly suggest that the ability to form an arbuscular-mycorrhizal
symbiosis occurred early in the evolution of vascular plants.
c.
396 M
John William Dawson (CA) discovered fossil plant remains (Psilophyton princeps) in Middle and
Lower Devonian rocks from the Gaspé Peninsula in Eastern Canada (382; 383).
Thore Gustaf Halle (SE), Robert Kidston (GB), and William H. Lang
(GB) later found similar confirming fossils in the Rhynie Chert and established
the order Psilophytes (627; 785).
Harlan Parker Banks (US) subsequently split the Psilophytes into
three divisions: Rhyniophytina (Rhyniophyta), Zosterophyllophyta, and
Trimerophytina (Trimerophytophyta) (122). One of the
most famous Early Devonian land plant localities is Rhynie in Aberdeenshire,
Scotland. The Rhynie Chert is one of the most important fossil plant
occurrences because it represents the oldest and most completely preserved
terrestrial ecosystem. The Rhynie Chert has been radiometrically dated at 396 mya
(Pragian). Plant remains show
excellent cellular preservation. Three groups of plants are represented: the
Rhyniophytes, the Zosterphyllophytes and a lycopod.
c. 387 M
c. 375 M
c.
360 M
The Carboniferous Period of the Paleozoic Era occurred from about
360 to 286 mya. The term carboniferous
comes from England and refers to the rich deposits of coal that occur there.
These deposits of coal occur throughout Northern Europe, Asia, and Midwestern
and Eastern North America. William Daniel Conybeare (GB) and William Phillips
(GB) named the Carboniferous Period
in their Outlines of Geology of England
and Wales (348). The term carboniferous is used throughout the
world to describe this period, although it has been separated into the Mississippian (Lower Carboniferous, 360 mya
to 323 mya) and the Pennsylvanian
(Upper Carboniferous, 323 mya to 286 mya) in the United States. This separation
was adopted to distinguish the coal-bearing layers of the Pennsylvanian from
the mostly limestone Mississippian and is a result of differing stratigraphy on
the different continents. The Pennsylvanian was named in 1858 by Henry Darwin
Rogers (US), and the Mississippian named by Alexander Winchell (US) in 1870;
both these divisions were given system/period status in Geology by Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin (US) and Rollin D. Salisbury
(US) (296; 1155; 1468). In addition
to having the ideal conditions for the beginnings of coal, several major
biological, geological, and climatic events occurred during this time. One of
the greatest biological evolutionary innovations of the Carboniferous was the
amniote egg, which allowed for the further exploitation of the land by certain
tetrapods. The amniote egg prevented the desiccation of the embryo inside thus
allowing the ancestors of birds, mammals, and reptiles to reproduce on land.
There was also a trend towards mild temperatures during the Carboniferous, as
evidenced by the decrease in lycopods and large insects and an increase in the
number of tree ferns.
Geologically, the Late Carboniferous collision of Laurussia (present-day
Europe and North America) into Godwanaland (present-day Africa and South
America) produced the Appalachian mountain belt of Eastern North America and
the Hercynian Mountains in the United Kingdom. A further collision of Siberia
and Eastern Europe created the Ural Mountains.
The stratigraphy of the Lower Carboniferous can be easily
distinguished from that of the Upper Carboniferous. The environment of the
Lower Carboniferous in North America was heavily marine when seas covered parts
of the continents. As a result, most of the mineral found in Lower
Carboniferous is limestone, which is composed of the remains of crinoids,
lime-encrusted green algae, or calcium carbonate shaped by waves. The North
American Upper Carboniferous environment was alternately terrestrial and
marine, with the transgression and regression of the seas caused by glaciation.
These environmental conditions, with the vast amount of plant material provided
by the extensive coal forests allowed the production of coal. Plant material
did not decay when the seas covered them. Pressure and heat built up over the
millions of years to transform the plant material to coal.
Rocks rich in Carboniferous fossils include: Mazon Creek,
Illinois, Joggins Formation, Nova Scotia, Edinburgh Coal Beds, Scotland, and
Anthracite Coal Beds, Eastern United States.
Robert Arbuckle Berner (US) reported that organic carbon
accumulated at an exceptionally high rate during the Carboniferous and Permian,
resulting in the formation of vast coal deposits, derived primarily from lignin
(175). Note: The sharp decline
in the rate of organic carbon burial at the end of the Permo-Carboniferous was
caused, at least in part, by the evolution of lignin decay capabilities in
white rot Agaricomycetes .
Andrew C. Scott (GB) and
William Gilbert Chaloner (GB) provided the earliest fossil record of a
gymnosperm, conifers from the Upper Carboniferous (1224).
John Walton (GB) presented evidence of mosses and liverworts from
the Carboniferous deposits in England (1428).
c. 340 M
Erik Andersson Stensiö (SE) and Gunnar Säve-Söderbergh (SE), of
the 1929-1930 Danish scientific expeditions, found ichthyostegid fossils in the
upper Devonian sediments in Eastern Greenland. They appear to be intermediate
between lobe-finned rhipidistians (Osteolepis) and early amphibians. These are
the oldest known fossils that can be classified as amphibians (1195; 1294).
c.
335 M
Stan Wood (GB) discovered the 20 cm long fossilized remains of Westlothiana lizziae in East Kirkton,
West Lothian, Scotland (near Edinburgh). Tim R. Smithson (GB), Robert Lynn
Carroll (US-CA), Alec L. Panchen (GB), S. Mahala Andrews (GB), Roberta L. Paton
(GB), and Jennifer Alice Clack (GB) clarified its taxonomic status and
concluded that it might be the oldest known reptile and thus the oldest known
amniote (1040; 1061; 1275; 1276).
c.
286 M
The Permian Period of the Paleozoic Era (from Perm, a Russian
province) lasted from 286 to 248 M. The Period was first defined by Roderick
Impey Murchison (GB) (988). The
distinction between the Paleozoic and the Mesozoic is made at the end of the
Permian in recognition of a large mass extinction of life on Earth. It affected
many groups of organisms in many different environments, but it affected marine
communities the most by far, causing the extinction of most of the marine
invertebrates of the time. Some groups survived the Permian mass extinction in
greatly diminished numbers, but they never again reached the ecological
dominance they once had, clearing the way for another group of sea life. On
land, a relatively smaller extinction of diapsids and synapsids cleared the way
for other forms to dominate and led to what has been called the Age of Dinosaurs. Also, the great
forests of fern-like plants shifted to gymnosperms, plants with their offspring
enclosed within seeds. Modern conifers, the most familiar gymnosperms of today,
first appear in the fossil record of the Permian. In all, the Permian was the last
of time for some organisms and a pivotal point for others, and life on earth
was never the same again.
The global geography of the Permian included massive areas of land
and water. By the beginning of the Permian, the motion of the Earth's crustal
plates had brought much of the total land together, fused in a supercontinent
known as Pangea. Many of the continents of today in somewhat intact form met in
Pangea (only Asia was broken up at the time), which stretched from the northern
to the southern pole. Most of the rest of the surface area of the Earth was
occupied by a corresponding single ocean, known as Panthalassa, with a smaller
sea to the east of Pangea known as Tethys.
Models indicate that the interior regions of this vast continent
were probably dry, with great seasonal fluctuations, because of the lack of the
moderating effect of nearby bodies of water, and that only portions received
rainfall throughout the year. The ocean itself still has little known about it.
There are indications that the climate of the Earth shifted at this time, and
that glaciation decreased, as the interiors of continents became drier.
Rocks rich in Permian fossils include: Glass Mountains, Texas; Abo
Formation, New Mexico; Kuperschiefer, Germany; and Glossopteris flora in
Gondwana localities.
Paul B. Wignall (GB) and Richard J. Twitchett (GB) presented data
on rocks from Spitsbergen and the equatorial sections of Italy and Slovenia
indicating that the world's oceans became anoxic at both low and high
paleolatitudes in the Late Permian. Such conditions may have been responsible
for the mass extinction at this time. This event affected a wide range of shelf
depths and extended into shallow water well above the storm wave base (1456).
Samual A. Bowring (US), Douglas H. Erwin (US), Yugan G. Jin (CN),
Mark W. Martin (US), Kathleen Davidek (US), and Wei Wang (CN) reported that
uranium/lead zircon data from Late Permian and Early Triassic rocks from south
China place the Permian-Triassic boundary at 251.4 ± 0.3 million years ago.
Biostratigraphic controls from strata intercalated with ash beds below the
boundary indicate that the Changhsingian pulse of the end-Permian extinction,
corresponding to the disappearance of about 85 percent of marine species,
lasted less than 1 million years (213). Note: Seth D. Burgess (US), Samuel A. Bowring (US), and Shu-zhong
Shen (CN) refined the date of the Permian extinction to between 251.941 ± 0.037
and 251.880 ± 0.031 Mya (260).
Svetoslav Georgiev (US), Holly J. Stein (US), Judith L. Hannah
(US), and Bernard Bingen (NO), Hermann M. Weiss (NO), and Stefan Piasecki (DK)
presented evidence that hot acidic Late Permian seas stifled life in record
time (573).
Andrei Vasilevich Martynov (RU) discovered the oldest undoubted
Coleoptera (beetles) fossils in Upper Permian deposits in North Russia (931).
Francis Wall Oliver (AU) and Dunkinfield Henry Scott (GB)
discovered evidence for the seed of Lyginodendron,
which led to the removal of the Cycadofilices from the Pteridophyta (ferns,
horsetails, and club-mosses) and their inclusion with the gymnosperms (1011).
“We now know that the true ferns were only present in the coal
measures in small and archaic forms (Coenopteridales)
very unlike living ferns and most likely all the conspicuous fern-like leaves
of that era belonged to seed plants” (913).
Charles H. Sternberg (US) discovered the fossil remains of a
creature showing both amphibian and reptilian characteristics. Ferdinand Broili
(DE) would name it Seymouria baylorensis
for Seymour, Texas in Baylor County (232).
Samuel Wendell Williston (US) and Ermine Cowles Case (US)
described Seymouria and other
labyrinthodont amphibian and reptile fossils from the Permian beds of Texas and
New Mexico (276; 1463-1465).
251.9 M
Yadong Sun (CN), Michael M. Joachimski (DE), Paul B. Wignall (GB),
Chunbo Yan (CN), Yanlong Chen (AT), Haishui Jiang (CN), Lina Wang (CN), and Xulong
Lai (CN) suggested that the "Siberian Traps" are the primary cause of
the Permian–Triassic extinction event, the most severe extinction event in the
geologic record (1312). Note: The "Siberian
Traps" is a large region of volcanic rock, known as a large igneous
province, in Siberia, Russia. The massive eruptive event that formed the traps is
one of the largest known volcanic events in the last 500 million years. The
eruptions continued for roughly two million years and spanned the Permian–Triassic
boundry, or P–T boundary, which occurred around 251.9 million years ago.
c.
248 M
Friedrich August von Alberti (DE) first used the term Triassic
(Trias) when he named the three-division sequence of sandstone: 1) variegated
(Bunter) sandstone, 2) shell (Muschelkalk) sandstone, and 3) Keuper sandstone (1399). The Triassic Period of the Mesozoic Era was a time of transition
following a mass extinction of life, with the survivors of that event spreading
and recolonizing.
The organisms of the Triassic can be considered to belong to one
of three groups: holdovers from the Permo-Triassic extinction, new groups which
flourished briefly, and new groups which went on to dominate the Mesozoic
world. The holdovers included the lycophytes,
glossopterids, and dicynodonts. While those that went on to
dominate the Mesozoic world include modern conifers, cycadeoids, and the
dinosaurs.
Rocks rich in Triassic fossils include: the Moenkopi Formation,
Arizona; Ischigualasto Badlands, Argentina; Newark Supergroup, Eastern U.S.A.;
Djadochta, Mongolia; and the Chinle Formation, Arizona.
Thomas M. Harris (GB) presented excellent evidence of mosses in
the Triassic of England (638; 639).
c.
245 M
S. Blair Hedges (US) and Laura L. Polong (US), Ying Cao (JP),
Michael D. Sorenson (US), Yoshinori Kumazawa (JP), David P. Mindell (US), and
Masami Hasegawa (JP) reported in a study of both nuclear DNA and mitochondrial
DNA that the turtle is anapsid and the closest living relative of the
crocodile. The results apparently establish a phylogenetic joining of
crocodilians with turtles and place squamates at the base of the tree. This
work presents molecular time estimates to support a Triassic origin for the
major groups of living reptiles and supports the previous findings of James E.
Platz (US), J. Michael Colon (US), John A.W. Kirsch (US), Gregory Christian
Mayer (US), Rafael Zardoya (ES), and Axel Meyer (DE) (269; 651; 790; 1089; 1496).
c.
223 M
During the Carnian-Norian mass extinction event whole categories
of animals abruptly vanished from the fossil record. Dinosaurs flourished,
probably filling niches left empty when earlier successful types of animals
suddenly were wiped out. Within a few million years, dinosaur remains accounted
for 25 to 60 percent of the fossils. By 202 million years before the present,
dinosaurs were diverse, sometimes gigantic, and dominant among land animals.
Paul E. Olsen (US), Dennis V. Kent (US), Hans-Dieter Sues (US),
Christian Koeberl (AT), Heinz Huber (US), Alessandro Montanari (IT), Emma C.
Rainforth (US), Sarah J. Fowell (US), Michael J. Szajna (US), and Brian W.
Hartline (US) located a crater of the proper size and age to mark the landfall
of an asteroid which could have had a devastating effect on many life forms.
Manicouagan in Quebec, Canada is the site of the asteroid crater credited with
eliminating competitors of early dinosaurs (1012).
c.
213 M
Alexandre-Theodore Brongniart, Jr. (FR) named the Jurassic Period
Jurassique in 1829 for extensive limestone deposits in the Jura Mountains of
Switzerland (233). This period
was characterized by Great plant-eating dinosaurs roaming the earth, feeding on
lush growths of ferns and palm-like cycads and bennettitaleans . . . smaller but vicious carnivores stalking the
great herbivores . . . oceans full of fish, squid, and coiled ammonites, plus
great ichthyosaurs and long-necked plesiosaurs . . . vertebrates taking to the
air, like the pterosaurs and the first birds . . . this was the Jurassic
Period, beginning 213 million years ago and lasting for 70 million years of the
Mesozoic Era.
Rocks rich in Jurassic fossils include: the Lias Formation,
England; Navajo Sandstone, Arizona; Solnhofen Limestone, Germany; and the
Morrison Formation, Colorado/Utah/Wyoming.
c. 200 M
S. Blair Hedges (US), Patrick H. Parker (US), Charles G. Sibley
(US), and Sushi Kumar (US) used a comprehensive set of genes that exhibit a
constant rate of substitution to estimate the time at which avian and mammalian
orders diverged. Their estimates of divergence times averaged about 50-90%
earlier than those predicted by the classical methods and show that the timing
of these divergences coincides with the Mesozoic fragmentation of emergent land
areas. This suggests that continental breakup may have been an important
mechanism in the ordinal diversification of birds and mammals (650).
Albert Charles Seward (GB) and Jane Gowan (GB) found fossil
records indicating that the ginkgo or maidenhair tree, Ginkgo biloba, has existed on Earth since the Liassic (early
Jurassic) period meaning it has inhabited earth longer than any other tree;
200-176 M (6; 115; 380; 891; 1245).
Randolph T. Major (US) found that resistance of Ginkgo biloba L. to pests accounts in
part for the longevity of this species (903).
c. 195 M
Mary Anning (GB) was celebrated as the outstanding fossil
collector of her time. Among the many fossils collected and prepared by her are
the first ichthyosaur skeleton and the first plesiosaur skeleton known to the
English community. The ichthyosaur fossil was probably discovered sometime between
1809 and 1811, when Mary was only 10 to 12 years old. And while Mary did find
the majority of the remains, her brother had discovered part of the animal
twelve months earlier. Most of Mary's finds ended up in museums and personal
collections without credit being given to her as the discoverer of the fossils (1355). Note:
Ichthyosaurs flourished c. 200-190M. Pleisosaurs flourished c. 203-66 M.
c.
180 M
Hermann von Meyer (DE) gave the name Archaeopteryx (Archeopteryx)
to a fossil discovered in fine sandstone, Jurassic strata, of a quarry near
Solenhofen, Bavaria in 1861. It appeared to be intermediate in character
between reptiles and birds. The Natural History Section of the British Museum
purchased the specimen subsequently described by Richard Owen (GB) (1035). In 1876
another fossil Archaeopteryx was
discovered. This fossil, which now resides in the Humboldt Museum für
Naturkunde in Berlin, is of such rare quality and importance that Dr. Alan
Feduccia says it, “may well be the most important natural history specimen in
existence, comparable perhaps in scientific and even monetary value to the
Rosetta stone” (508; 1227).
William Buckland (GB) published Notice on the Megalosaurus or Giant Fossil Lizard of Stonesfield.
This was the first time a dinosaur fossil was described and named (the term dinosaur did not yet exist). In the same
science meeting where he described Megalosaurus Buckland also announced
the first fossil mammal from the Age of Reptiles
(253). Note:
Megalosaurus was later dated to the Middle Jurassic period.
In 1822, Gideon Algernon Mantell (GB) found the fossilized tooth
of a Cretaceous animal he would characterize as herbivorous, reptilian, and
tens of feet long; he would name it Iguanodon. After he prepared a paper
reporting Iguanodon for the Royal Society the aforementioned William
Buckland urged Mantell to delay, consequently it was Buckland not Mantell who
first published on a dinosaur discovery. The Iguanodon is dated to late
Jurassic.
Gideon Algernon Mantell (GB), as an amateur paleontologist,
discovered and described from Cretaceous England many fossilized animals
including: Megalosaurus, Iguanodon, Pelorosaurus, the
first discovered brachiosaur, and Hylaeosaurus (911; 912).
George Poinar, Jr. (US) found members of an ancient genus of the Leishmania
parasite, Paleoleishmania, in fossilized
sand flies
dating back to the early Cretaceous period (1101).
161-145 M
Othniel Charles Marsh (US) introduced and briefly described Apatosaurus ajax, (now known to be
synonymous with Brontosaurus) (925; 926). Two years
later, he described and introduced Brontosaurus,
thinking they were different animals (927). Note: Apatosaurus means “deceptive lizard”; Brontosaurus means “thunder lizard”
c. 160 M
Qiang Ji
(CN), Zhe-Xi Luo (US), Chong-Xi Yuan (CN), John R. Wible (US), Jian-Ping Zhang
(CN), and Justin A. Georgi (US) described Juramaia sinensis, a small
shrew-like mammal that lived in China 160 million years ago during the Jurassic.
Juramaia is the earliest known fossil of eutherians–the group that
evolved to include all placental mammals, which provide nourishment to unborn
young via a placenta (743).
c.
150 M
George
Reber Wieland (US) researched plant material derived from the Upper Jurassic
and Lower Cretaceous beds of Maryland, Dakota, and Wyoming where he discovered
the hermaphroditic nature of the bennettitean
flower and recognized an affinity between the mesozoic cycadophyta and the
angiosperms. The angiosperm with which he specially compared the fossil type
was the Tulip tree (Liriodendron) and
certainly there is a remarkable analogy with the magnoliaceous flowers, and
with those of related orders such as Ranunculaceae and the water lilies (1453). Note:
Bennettitales is an extinct order of seed plants that first appeared in the
Permian period and became extinct in most areas toward the end of the
Cretaceous.
Thomas Henry Huxley (GB) was the first to propose that birds originated
from dinosaurs. All dinosaurs he examined had strong ornithic characteristics
in the tetraradiate arrangement of the ilium, ischium, pubis, and femur. He
combined the reptiles and birds into Sauropsida (722-724).
Wyn G. Jones (AU), Ken D. Hill (AU), and Jan M. Allen (AU)
reported the 1994 discovery by David Noble (AU) in the Wollemi National Park in
Australia of Wollemia nobilis, a new
living genus and species in the Araucariaceae. This type of pine may be 150
million years old (752).
Jean-Jacques Pouech (FR) was the first naturalist to discover
dinosaur eggshells. The material was Late Cretaceous rock from the Pyrenees
Mountains (1104).
Karl F. Hirsch (US), Kenneth L. Stadtman (US), Wade E. Miller
(US), and James H. Madsen, Jr. (US) discovered a fossilized
dinosaur egg that contains the oldest known animal embryo of any kind, probably
the embryo of an allosaur from about 150 mya. X-rays of the egg detected an
embryo less than 2 cm long (682).
c.
144 M
Jean-Baptiste-Julien d' Omalius d'Halloy (BE) first used the term Terrain Cretace (Cretaceous Period) in
1822 to describe chalk and greensand of Northern France (1013; 1014). The
Cretaceous is usually noted for being the last portion of the Age of Dinosaurs, but that does not mean
that new kinds of dinosaurs did not appear then. It is during the Cretaceous
that the first ceratopsian and
pachycepalosaurid dinosaurs appeared. During this time, we find the
first fossils of many insect groups, modern mammal and bird groups, and the
first flowering plants. The breakup of the world-continent Pangaea, which began
to disperse during the Jurassic, continued. This led to increased regional
differences in floras and faunas between the northern and southern continents.
The end of the Cretaceous brought the end of many previously successful and
diverse groups of organisms, such as non-avian dinosaurs and ammonites. This
laid open the stage for those groups which had previously taken secondary roles
to come to the forefront. The Cretaceous was thus the time in which life as it
now exists on Earth came together. Cretaceous deposits occur in Wealden of
England and Belgium; Early Cretaceous of Niger in Africa; Late Cretaceous of
Egypt; Cloverly Formation of Montana; Early Cretaceous of Mongolia; and Early
Cretaceous lacustrine deposits of Lioning Province, China. See, Ge Sun,
161-145 M
Henry Fairfield Osborn (US) described the Tyrannosaurus rex that Barnum Brown (US) discovered in 1902 in
Hell Creek, Montana (1025).
Mary Higby Schweitzer (US), Zhiyong Suo (US), John M. Asara
(US), Mark A. Allen (US), Fernando Teran Arce (US), and John R. Horner (US)
performed multiple analyses of Tyrannosaurus rex fibrous cortical and
medullary tissues remaining after demineralization. The results indicate that
collagen I, the main organic component of bone, has been preserved in low
concentrations in these tissues. The findings were independently confirmed by
mass spectrometry. They propose a possible chemical pathway that may contribute
to this preservation. The presence of endogenous protein in dinosaur bone may
validate hypotheses about evolutionary relationships, rates, and patterns of
molecular change and degradation, as well as the chemical stability of
molecules over time (1221).
c.
135 M
Kenneth A. Kermack (GB), Patricia M. Lees (GB), and Frances
Mussett (GB) described the Early Cretaceous fossil Aegialodon dawsoni as the oldest known fossil to be a common
ancestor to the marsupials and placentals (780).
c.
120 M
Robert Ashley Couper (GB) presented fossil evidence for the
earliest undisputed angiosperm pollen. It is from the Bargeman stage (late
early Cretaceous) (357).
Sushi Kumar (US) and S. Blair Hedges (US) presented evidence that
at least five lineages of placental mammals arose more than 100 million years
ago, and most of the modern orders seem to have diversified before the
Cretaceous/Tertiary extinction of the dinosaurs (807).
c. 108-115 M
c.
100 M
c.
83-70 M
Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden (US) and Fielding Bradford Meek (US),
near the confluence of the Missouri and the Judith Rivers, collected unusual
teeth later determined by paleontologist Joseph Leidy (US) to be those of the
dinosaurs Trachodon, Troodon and Deinodon, making the 1854
expedition by Hayden and Meek the first in North America to uncover dinosaur
remains (846).
Joseph Leidy (US) reported the findings by John Estaugh Hopkins
(US), in 1838, and William Parker Foulke (US), in 1858, of the first relatively
complete dinosaur skeleton. Leidy named this creature found in New Jersey, Hadrosaurus foulkii (847).
Henry Fairfield
Osborn (US) designated the skull and claw (which he assumed to come from the
hand) from a fossil collected in Mongolia as the type specimen of a new genus, Velociraptor.
This name is derived from the Latin words velox ('swift') and raptor
('robber' or 'plunderer') and refers to the animal's cursorial nature and
carnivorous diet. Osborn named the type species V. mongoliensis for its
country of origin (1026).
Zofia
Kielan-Jaworowska (PL) and Rinchen Barsbold (MN), with a team and Mongolian
paleontologists, discovered the entwined skeletons of a Protoceratops and a juvenile Velociraptor
in the Gobi Desert, most likely locked in mortal combat (786). These are
late Cretaceous animals.
Alcide Dessalines d’Orbigny (FR) is considered the founder of the
science of micropaleobotany. His most important work was the founding of the
science of stratigraphical paleontology based on observations of exposed
fossil-bearing strata in the Paraná Basin of South America between 1826 and
1834. He studied small marine fossils, pollen, grain and spores found in
sedimentary rocks for dating stages. Like his mentor Cuvier, he found that some
fossils occurred only in certain layers of a geological formation. He used
these fossils to subdivide what we today call the Jurassic into twenty-seven
stratigraphic stages, each with its particular fossils (371; 372).
c.
65 M
Wilhelm Philipp Schimper (DE), in 1874, recognized and
named the Paleocene Epoch (65 M B.C.E.—54.9 M B.C.E.) of the Cenozoic Era based
on a study of floral samples from the Paris Basin (1204).
The Palaeocene Epoch (meaning early
dawn of the recent) starts both the Cenozoic Era and Tertiary Period some
65 million years ago and extends until 55 million years ago. Charles Lyell (GB)
first used Tertiary as a period name (892). Following
the mass extinctions at the end of the Cretaceous Period, mammals became the
dominant land-living life form. By the Palaeocene the North American continent
had attained roughly its modern outline. The climate was much milder and more
uniform than at present.
An enormous (200 km) crater form structure just north of the
Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico is most likely the dino killing event that ended the Cretaceous. Luis Walter Alvarez
(US), Walter Alvarez (US), Frank Asarco (US) and Helen Michel (US) in 1978
found convincing physical and chemical evidence that the great extinctions,
which terminated the age of the dinosaurs, were related to the high-speed
impact on Earth of a great asteroid estimated to have been about 10 km in
diameter. The element of catastrophe was thus introduced into the studies of
the evolution of life forms (56-58).
Alan K. Hildebrand (US), Glen T. Penfield (US), David A. King
(US), Mark Pilkington (US), Z. Antonio Cam Argo (MX), Stein B. Jacobsen (US),
and William V. Boynton (US) discovered the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatán
Peninsula, supporting the asteroid impact theory first suggested in 1980 (671). See, Hildebrand, 1991 and Alvarez 1980.
It was during the Palaeocene that some common plant forms first
appeared: the pines, the cacti, and the palms.
During the Palaeocene, birds began to diversify and occupy new
niches. Most bird types had appeared by the middle Cenozoic, including
representatives of perching birds, cranes, hawks, pelicans, herons, owls,
ducks, pigeons, loons, and woodpeckers.
Rocks bearing fossils from this epoch include: The Sentinel Butte
Formation, Western U.S.; the Black Mingo Formation, S. Canada; and the Aquila
Formation, Eastern U.S.
c. 56-23 M
Charles William Andrews (GB) and Hugh John Llewellyn Beadnell
(GB), in 1900, discovered numerous early higher primate fossils in the Fayum
Depression region east of Cairo, Egypt. These Eocene and Oligocene fossils
include protomonkeys believed to be ancestral to Old World monkeys and thus in
the lineage to hominids. Aegyptopithecus is the best known of the
propliopithecids from the Fayum, about the size of a cat. Aegyptopithecus
is often placed at the base of the Catarrhine radiation (63-65; 147).
c.
54.9 M
The Eocene Epoch (meaning dawn
of the recent), named by Charles Lyell (GB), encompasses that time between
approximately 55 million years ago and 34 million years ago (892). It was
during the Eocene that mammals took over the large-animal niches previously
held by the dinosaurs. The Eocene was a time of warm climate and significant
volcanism in the western U.S. and central Mexico. Sea levels were high, and
much of the Southeastern United States was submerged. Europe was separated from
Asia by a narrow strait or sea. By the Early Eocene, practically all the modern
eutherian (placental) mammal orders were present.
As commonplace as it seems now, it wasn't until the Early Eocene
that grasses developed, and with them a host of grass-living animals. With new
growth originating near the root, rather than at the tip of the plant, grasses
are wonderfully protected from otherwise catastrophic damage caused by grazing
and fire. They quickly regenerate and create a renewable resource for
plant-eaters. Grass plains developed in those areas frequently ravaged by fire
(from lightning strikes, for instance), and animals rapidly evolved to utilize
this new environment.
Rocks rich in fossils from this epoch include: The Mussel Oil
Shale, Germany; the Baltic amber; and the Green River Formation, Western U.S.
The Green River Formation, found in various western states, provides wonderful
and prolific samples of fossils. The area around Kemmerer, Wyoming provides
world-class fish fossils of the Eocene age.
Kenneth A. Farley (US), Alessandro Montana (IT), Eugene M.
Shoemaker (US), and Carolyn Shoemaker (US) presented geochemical evidence from
a rock quarry in Northern Italy that a shower of comets hit Earth about 36
million years ago.
The findings not only account for the huge craters at Popayan in
Siberia and at Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, but posit that they were but a tiny
fraction of the comets active over a period of two or three million years
during the late Eocene period (505).
c.
32.8 M
The Oligocene Epoch (meaning few
recent), named by Heinrich
Ernst Bearish (DE), extended from 32.8 million years ago until 24.6 million years
ago, and was a time of great significance in the history of American mammals (176). Mammals,
which blossomed with the disappearance of the dinosaurs at the end of the
Cretaceous, expanded both in range and variety during this epoch. The Oligocene
is marked by the start of a generalized cooling, which culminated in the Ice
Ages of the Pleistocene, but it remained relatively warmer than today. The time
also saw a reintroduction of volcanism.
The first evidence for Australian marsupials comes from Late
Oligocene rocks in Tasmania, although these animals may have already been here
for a long time. See, K. A. Cormack,
135 M.
Rocks bearing fossils from this epoch include: the White River
Formation, South Dakota; the Dominican Republic amber; and the Florissant
Fossil Beds, Colorado.
c. 30 M
Max Schlosser (DE) conducted further excavations of Oligocene
primate remains from the Fayum of Egypt (1205).
c.
24.6 M
The Miocene Epoch (meaning moderately
recent), named by Charles Lyell (GB), extended from approximately 24.6
million years ago until 5.1 million years ago (892). It was
during the Miocene that a new ecological niche was filled, as grazing animals
became common after the rise of grasses in the Oligocene. Both the grazers and
their associated predators became fleet of foot to maneuver around the
relatively protection-free grass plains.
Rocks bearing fossils from this epoch include: the Calvert
Formation, Maryland; and the Agate Springs Fossil Beds, Nebraska.
c.
21 M
In Western Nebraska the Niobrara River, now a mere trickle, was
cutting valleys and laying down sand bars. The sediments carried by the river
turned to rock over time, and the layer is now known as the Harrison Formation.
A severe multi-year drought struck the region at some point, concentrating the
animals around the few remaining waterholes. Animals died by the thousands.
When, eventually, the rains reappeared, the carcasses of the animals were swept
downstream, congregating in river bends. The mass of bones was buried in the sand,
to be discovered years later (1878) by roaming explorers. Two small hills still
hold the remains of thousands of animals that died many years ago.
c.
16 M
Arthur Tindell
Hopwood (GB), in 1931, discovered the fossils of three hominids near Lake Victoria,
Africa. He would name them Proconsul
in 1933 (697; 698). This was the
oldest known ape found up to that time.
Wilfred E. Le Gross Clark (GB) and Louis Seymour Bizet Leakey
(GB-KE), reported on a hominid skull and jaw found by Mary Douglas Nicola
Leakey (GB-KE), in 1948, in Miocene deposits on Rising Island in Lake Victoria,
Western Kenya. It was an excellent sample of Proconsul africanus (sometimes called Dryopithicus africanus or "woodland ape"). The specimen
is aged approximately 16 M and a candidate for the distant ancestor from which
all modern species of apes and all hominids—human beings included—evolved (825; 834).
c.
14 M
Louis Seymour Bizet Leakey (GB-KE), in 1961, discovered the upper
jawbone of Kenyapithecus wicker (Rangwapithecus wicker) in 14 M deposits
in Kenya (832).
c.
6.5 M
Michel
Brunet (FR), Franck Guy
(FR), David Pilbeam (FR),
Hassan Taisso Mackaye (TD),
Andossa Likius (FR), Djimdoumalbaye Amount
(TD), Alain Beauvilain (FR),
Cécile Blondel (FR), Hervey Bocherens
(FR), Jean-Renaud Rotisserie (FR),
Louis De Bonis (FR), Yves Coppers
(FR), Jean Déjà (FR),
Christiane Denys (FR), Philippe Duringer
(FR), Véra Eisenmann (FR),
Gongdibé Fanon (TD), Pierre Front
(FR), Denis Geraads (FR),
Thomas Lehmann (FR), Fabrice Lihoreau
(FR), Antoine Louchart (FR),
Adoum Mahatma (TD), Gildas Merceron
(FR), Guy Mouchelin (FR),
Olga Otero (FR), Pablo Pelaez Campomanes
(ES), Marcia Ponce De Leon (CH),
Jean-Claude Rage (FR), Michel Sapanet
(FR), Mathieu Schuster (FR),
Jean Sure (FR), Pascal Tansy
(FR), Xavier Valentine (FR),
Patrick Vignaud (FR), Laurent Viriot
(FR), Antoine Jazz (FR)
and Christophe Zollikofer (CH) discovered
the skull of Sahelanthropus tchadensis
in the Sahel region of Chad. The skull possesses both human and ape-like
characteristics, with a chimpanzee-sized braincase, teeth that are human-like,
and a foramen magnum placed further
back than in a chimpanzee or gorilla. Based on the location of the foramen magnum, the French team
suggested that this creature was bipedal (246).
c.
6 M
Brigitte Senut (FR), Martin Pickford (FR), Dominique Gommery (FR),
Pierre Mein (FR), Kiptalam Cheboi (KE), and Yves Coppers (FR) of The Kenya
Paleontology Expedition (KPE) reported in December 2000 the discovery of what
is almost certainly a new species of hominid at Kalsomine in Kenya's Baring
district. It is called Orrorin tugenensis,
meaning original man from the Tugen Hills. The remains, found in 6 M rocks,
include a left femur, pieces of jaw with teeth, isolated upper and lower teeth,
arm bones, and a finger bone. Preliminary analyses suggest that this hominid,
the size of a chimpanzee, was an agile climber and that it walked on two legs
when on the ground. The tentative date of 6 M indicates a date very close to
the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees, although this date may now need
to be pushed back (1078; 1237; 1238).
c.
5.8 M
Yohannes Haile-Selassie (US) reported new hominid specimens from
the Middle Awash area of Ethiopia that date to 5.2-5.8 M and are associated
with a wooded paleoenvironment. These Late Miocene fossils are assigned to the
hominid genus Ardipithecus and
represent some of the earliest definitive evidence of the hominid clad (623). Note:
Ardipithecus kadabba is the holotype.
Edouard Lartet (FR) and Henry Christy (GB), in 1864, discovered an
engraved mammoth tusk at La Madeleine, France showing a drawing of a woolly
mammoth. This piece gave strong evidence that man coexisted with Pleistocene
animals (1180).
c.
5.1 M
The Pliocene Epoch (meaning very
recent), named by Charles Lyell (GB), comprises a relatively short time
between 5.1 and 2 M, and is the last epoch of the Tertiary Period (892). The
Pliocene saw general climatic cooling, with subtropical regions retreating
equatorially. During this time, India collided with Asia and gave rise to the
Himalaya Mountains. Significant in the fossil record of the Pliocene are the
early hominid remains from Africa. Also, the North American three-toed horse
Hipparion crossed the Bering Strait land bridge and entered Asia and Europe,
while mastodons reversed the passage and entered the Americas. The hominid
fossil record in Africa begins about 4 million years ago in the Early Pliocene,
with representatives of the genus Australopithecus
from Ethiopia and Tanzania. The australopithecine Homo hails was one of the later examples, surviving into the Early
Pleistocene. Homo erectus (upright
man) arose about two million years ago in the Pleistocene, giving rise to our
own genus.
Rocks bearing fossils from this epoch include: the Hemphill Beds,
Texas, US; Lake Turkana, Africa; Hadar, Africa; and Aetolia, Africa.
Elaine Morgan (US) proposed that man descended from apes that adapted
to an aquatic environment then returned to a terrestrial lifestyle. Man is seen
as retaining aquatic adaptations such as weeping, loss of body hair,
bipedalism, face-to-face copulation, and the diving reflex (976).
Vincent Sarich (US) and Allan C. Wilson (NZ-US) shook the human
family tree when they claimed, based on immunological comparisons of serum
albumens, that humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas had a common ancestor 5 M (1189).
c.
4.4 M
Tim D. White (US), Gen Suwa (ET), and Berhane Asfaw (ET)
discovered hominid fossil remains of Ardipithecus
ramidus at Aramis in Ethiopia dated to 4.4 M. Most remains are skull
fragments. Indirect evidence suggests that it was possibly bipedal, and that
some individuals were about 122 cm (4'0") tall (1448; 1449).
c.
4.2 M
Meave G. Leakey (GB-KE), Craig S. Feibel (US), Ian McDougall (AU),
Carol Ward (US) and Alan Cyril Walker (GB-US) discovered Australopithecus anamensis at Kanapoi on the shore of Lake
Turkana, Northern Kenya. The material consists of nine hominid dental, cranial
and post-cranial specimens from Kanapoi, Kenya, and 12 specimens from Allis
Bay, Kenya. Anamnesis existed between
4.2 and 3.9 M, and has a mixture of primitive features in the skull, and advanced
features in the body (836; 837).
Bryan Patterson (US) and William W. Howells (US), in 1965, discovered
but did not identify Australopithecus
anamensis
from a site on the west side of Lake Turkana in Kenya (1063).
Some
anthropologists regard this skeleton as exhibiting the earliest ‘clear evidence’
for bipedalism.
c.
4 M
John Desmond Clark (US), Berhane Asfaw (US), Getafe Assegai (ET),
Jack W.K. Harris (US), Hero Kurashina (GU), Robert C. Walter (CA), Tim D. White
(US), and Martin A.J. Williams (AU), in 1981, discovered fossil remains of Australopithecus sp., dated to 3.5 -4.0
M. These remains are the earliest evidence of Australopithecus from anywhere in the world and the earliest
evidence of hominid bipedalism yet discovered (317).
Katherine Coffing (US), Craig S. Feeble (US), Maeve G. Leakey
(GB-KE), and Alan Cyril Walker (US) described four-million-year-old hominids
from East Lake Turkana, Kenya (329).
c.
3.8 M
Simon Easteal (AU) and Genevieve Herbert (AU) presented molecular
evidence that humans and chimpanzees diverged 4.0-3.6 M. This post-dates the
occurrence of Ardipithecus ramidus
and the earliest occurrence of Australopithecus
afarensis, suggesting that the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees
was bipedal, and that the trait has been lost in chimpanzees but retained in
humans (473).
c.
3.5 M
Maeve G. Leakey (GB-KE), Fred Spoor (GB), Frank H. Brown (US),
Patrick N. Gathogo (US), Christopher Kiarie (KE), Louise N. Leakey (KE), and
Ian McDougall (AU) announced the discovery of the hominid Kenyanthropus platypus identified from a partial skull found on the
western shore of Lake Turkana in Northern Kenya. It is dated at 3.5 M. The size
of the skull is similar to Australopithecus
afarensis and Australopithecus
africanus, and has a large, flat face and small teeth (838). Note:
first described by Justus Erus
c.
3.26 M
Robert A. Broom (ZA) discovered the fossil remains of Australopithecus transvaalensis (Homo africanus) within Sterkfontein
dolomitic limestone cave deposits, northwest of Krugersdorp, near Johannesburg,
Transvaal, Republic of South Africa (234; 235). It was
dated at c. 3.26 M.
c.
2.9-3.0 M
Maurice Taieb (FR), Yves Coppers (FR), Donald Carl Johanson (US),
Jon Kalb (US), and Raymond Bonnefille (FR) discovered and described fossil
remains of Australopithecus afarensis
from the Hadar site in the Afar depression in the west central sedimentary
basin, northeast of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (747; 1320-1322). These
specimens were dated to c. 2.9-3.0 M.
Donald Carl Johanson (US), Maurice Taieb (FR), Tim D. White (US),
and Yves Coppers (FR) discovered a female fossil hominid at Hadar, Ethiopia (Australopithecus
afarensis) and named her Lucy. The discovery of Lucy established that
hominids walked upright before developing large brains, overturning many
long-held beliefs about hominid evolution. Australopithecus
afarensis is considered to be the first human, but this is now being
challenged by Maeve G. Leakey’s discovery of Kenyanthropus in 2001 (746; 749). Note: Lucy was named for the girl in Elton John’s current
musical hit, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”
Donald Carl Johanson (US) and Tim D. White (US) discovered more
specimens of Australopithecus afarensis (748). Australopithecus afarensis had an
apelike face with a low forehead, a bony ridge over the eyes, a flat nose, and
no chin. They had protruding jaws with large back teeth. Cranial capacity
varied from about 375 to 550 cc. The skull is similar to that of a chimpanzee,
except for the more humanlike teeth. The canine teeth are much smaller than
those of modern apes, but larger and more pointed than those of humans, and the
shape of the jaw is between the rectangular shape of apes and the parabolic
shape of humans. However, their pelvis and leg bones closely resemble those of
modern man, and leave no doubt that they were bipedal (although adapted to
walking rather than running (745).
Maeve G. Leakey (GB-KE) and Richard L. Hay (US) reported hominid
footprints preserved in Pliocene ash deposits in the Laetolil Beds at Aetolia,
Northern Tanzania. These footprints, discovered by the geochemist Paul I. Abell
(US) in 1978, constitute the earliest evidence of bipedalism in the hominid
fossil record. This hominid was very likely Australopithecus
afarensis (835).
Carol V. Ward (US), William H. Kimble (US) and Donald Carl
Johanson (US) found fossil feet confirming
that the A. afarensis foot was
functionally like that of modern humans and support the hypothesis that this
species was a committed terrestrial biped (1430).
Zeresenay Alemseged (DE), Fred Spoor
(GB), William H. Kimbel (US), René Bobe (US), Denis Geraads (FR), Denné Reed
(US) and Jonathan G. Wynn (GB-US) described a well-preserved
3.3-million-year-old juvenile partial skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis
discovered in the Dikika research area of Ethiopia (Dikika baby). The skull of
the approximately three-year-old presumed female shows that most features
diagnostic of the species are evident even at this early stage of development.
The find includes many previously unknown skeletal elements from the Pliocene
hominin record, including a hyoid bone that has a typical African ape
morphology. The foot and other evidence from the lower limb provide clear
evidence for bipedal locomotion, but the gorilla-like scapula and long and
curved manual phalanges raise new questions about the importance of arboreal
behaviour in the A. afarensis locomotor repertoire (45).
Michel Brunet (FR), Alain Beauvilain (FR), Yves Coppers (FR),
Emile Heinz (FR), Aladji H. Mouthy (FR), and David Roger Pilbeam (US)
discovered part of a fossilized jaw at Koru Toro, Chad (2,400 km west of the
Eastern Rift Valley), which closely resembles that of Australopithecus afarensis. They named it Australopithecus bahrelghazali and dated it to 3.3 to 3 M. (244; 245).
c.
2.61 M
Jonathan Leakey (KE), Phillip V. Tobias (ZA), and John R. Napier
(GB) found several fossilized bone fragments of a Homo habilis skull at Olduvai Gorge in Kenya. Leakey’s wife Meave
carefully assembled the fragments to make a nearly complete skull, minus the
lower jaw. The skull was named KNMER 1470 for its registration at the Kenya
National Museum in East Rudolf. Potassium argon dating placed it at 2.61 M (831; 839).
Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey (GB-KE), Phillip V. Tobias (ZA), and
John R. Napier (GB) proposed that KNMER 1470 be designated as a new species, Homo habilis (833).
Valerii P. Alexeev (RU) described KNMER 1470 as Pithecanthropus rudolfensis, (47). The name
was subsequently changed to Homo
rudolfensis.
c.
2.5 M
Raymond Arthur Dart (AU-ZA) found in material from a limestone
quarry at Taung (place of the lion), South Africa a fossil cast of the inside
of a primate skull which fitted into another lump of stone which possibly
contained a face. It took Dart about a month to remove enough stone to reveal
the face and jaw of a young fossil primate, which would be nicknamed the Taung
baby. Dart considered the fossil “an extinct race of apes intermediate between
living anthropoids and man.” He described it, named it Australopithecus africanus (Southern ape from Africa), and dated it
to between 3 and 2.3 M (381). It was
placed in early Pleistocene or late Pliocene.
Australopithecus
africanus
existed between 3 M and 2 M. It is similar to A. afarensis, and was
also bipedal, but body size was slightly greater. Brain size may also have been
slightly larger, ranging between 420 and 500 cc. This is a little larger than
chimp brains (despite a similar body size), but still not advanced in the areas
necessary for speech. The back teeth were a little larger than in A. afarensis.
Although the teeth and jaws of A. africanus are much larger than those of
humans, they are far more similar to human teeth than to those of apes. The
shape of the jaw is fully parabolic, like that of humans, and the size of the
canine teeth is reduced compared to A.
afarensis (329; 745).
Berhane Asfaw (ET), Tim D. White (US), C. Owen Lovejoy (US), Bruce
Latimer (US), Scott Simpson (US), and Gen Suwa (ET) discovered the hominid Australopithecus garhi near the village
of Bouri, in the Afar region of Ethiopia. This 2.5 M species is known from a
partial skull. The skull differs from previous australopithecine species in the
combination of its features, notably the extremely large size of its teeth,
especially the rear ones, and primitive skull morphology. Some nearby skeletal
remains may belong to the same species. They show a humanlike ratio of the
humerus and femur, but an apelike ratio of the lower and upper arm. This
small-brained, large-toothed hominid was found near antelope bones that had
been butchered by stone tools (95). Note:
Elizabeth Culotta (US) named this hominid (366).
Camille Arambourg (FR) and Yves Coppens (FR) discovered Paraustralopithecus aethiopicus; Australopithecus aethiopicus; Paranthropus aethiopicus in 1967 at a
site named Koobi Fora. Their work was largely ignored because of the scarcity
of fossils found (73; 74). It has
been dated to 2.5 M.
Alan Cyril Walker (US), Richard Erskine Frere Leakey (KE), John
Michael Harris (GB), and Frank H. Brown (US) also discovered the hominid Paraustralopithecus aethiopicus; Australopithecus aethiopicus; Paranthropus aethiopicus, WT 17000,
west of Lake Turkana in Kenya. This species is known from one major specimen,
the Black Skull, and a few other minor specimens that may belong to the same
species that existed between 2.6 M and 2.3 M. It may be an ancestor of robustus and boisei, but it has a baffling mixture of primitive and advanced
traits. The brain size is very small, at 410 cc, and parts of the skull,
particularly the hind portions, are very primitive, most resembling A. afarensis.
Other characteristics, like the massiveness of the face, jaws and single tooth
found, and the largest sagittal crest in any known hominid, are more
reminiscent of A. boisei (1421).
Sileshi Semaw (ET), Paul R. Renne (US), John W.K. Harris (US),
Craig S. Feibel (US), Ray L. Bernor (US), Nardos Fesseka (ET), and Kenneth
Mowbray (US) found 2.5 - 2.6 M. stone tools in Gona, Ethiopia (1229).
c.
2 M
The Pleistocene Epoch (meaning most
recent) represents that time in our Earth's history from approximately 2 M
until about 10 K. During this time, glaciers advanced and receded across the
northern quarter of the globe four times. At its maximum, the ice mass covered
about three times its current extent and reached heights of 13,000 feet (4,000
meters). With so much water trapped as ice, sea levels dropped to about 430
feet (130 m) below current levels. The glacial advances may have been due to
continental plate movements resulting in altered water circulation, solar
fluctuations, or to Milankovitch cycles (a combination of changes in the
Earth's orbit and degree and direction of tilt of the Earth).
Sites for fossils from this epoch include: Rancho la Brea Tar
Seeps (California), the Solo River (Java), and the Olduvai Gorge (Africa).
The la Brea Tar Pits are
not really pits at all, rather they are naturally occurring petroleum seeps
near present-day Los Angeles, California. Animals would occasionally become
trapped in the seep only to be discovered millennia later by roving fossil
hunters. Larger animals found at la Brea include mammoths, saber tooth cats,
giant ground sloths, dire wolves, and various birds.
Mastodons were large, elephant-like animals that roamed throughout
various parts of North American during the Pleistocene. In Michigan, they are
most commonly found in the southern half of the Lower Peninsula. A wide and
extensive glacial river system may have prevented them from moving north.
Mastodons were browsing animals, feeding on shoots and leaves. They thrived in
the cool glacial climate. The mastodon's fate may have been directly tied to the
influx of humans into the region. Recent findings show that mastodons were
actively hunted and their carcasses submerged for storage and preservation.
Jacques Boucher de Crèvecoeur de Perthes (FR) found near
Abbeville, France, the first evidence of Stone Age man. He determined that they
were from the Pleistocene epoch. De Perthes was the first to develop the idea
that prehistory could be measured on the basis of periods of geologic time (202; 203).
c.
1.75 M
Robert A. Broom (ZA) reported on and named the discovery of Australopithecus robustus; Paranthropus robustus (formerly Parathrops crassidens) by a schoolboy,
Gert Terblanche, in 1938 at Kromdraai in South Africa. It had a body like that
of A. africanus, but a larger and
more robust skull and teeth. It existed between 2-1.5 M. The massive face is
flat or dished, with no forehead and large brow ridges. It has relatively small
front teeth, but massive grinding teeth in a large lower jaw. Most specimens
have sagittal crests. Its diet would have been mostly coarse, tough food that
needed a lot of chewing. The average brain size is about 530 cc. Bones
excavated with robustus skeletons
indicate that they may have been used as digging tools (236).
Mary Douglas Nicol Leakey (GB-KE) found a hominid skull belonging
to the ultra robust Australopithecus
boisei; Zinjanthropus boisei at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania (830). Note:
Australopithecus boisei existed
between 2.1 and 1.1 M. It was similar to robustus,
but the face and cheek teeth were even more massive, some molars being up to 2
cm across. The brain size is very similar to robustus, about 530 cc. A few experts consider boisei and robustus to be
variants of the same species.
c. 1.7 M
Leo Gabunia (GE), Abesalom Vekua (GE), David Lordkipanidze (GE), Carl
C. Swisher, III (US), Reid Ferring (US), Antje Justus (DE), Medea Nioradze
(GE), Merab Tvalchrelidze (GE), Susan C. Antón (US), Gerhard Bosinski (DE), Olaf
Jöris (DE), Marie-A. de Lumley (FR), Givi Majsuradze (GE), and Aleksander
Mouskhelishvili (GE) at the site of Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia
uncovered two partial early Pleistocene hominid crania. Data from Dmanisi all
indicate an earliest Pleistocene age of about 1.7 M years. In contrast with
Pleistocene hominids (Homo erectus) from Western Europe and Eastern
Asia, they show clear African affinity and may represent the species that first
migrated out of Africa (554).
c.
1.6 M
The hominid Homo erectus (upright
man) has several synonyms, including: Sinanthropus
pekinensis, Pithecanthropus
pekinenses, Pithecanthropus erectus,
Homo ergaster, Peking man, Java man,
and Turkana boy (Narikotome boy).
There is evidence that erectus
was the first hominid to radiate out of Africa, probably used fire, and made
stone tools more sophisticated than those of Homo habilis.
Marie Eugène François Thomas Dubois (NL) found a fossil skullcap,
teeth, and femur in the Javan town of Trinil. He insisted that these fossils
belonged to the same type individual, a missing link between humans and apes (465-467). Opposition
to his claim remained widespread and many doubted that the bones all belonged
to the same individual. He adopted the name
Anthropithecus erectus then changed it to Pithecanthropus, which had been coined earlier by the German
zoologist Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel; Ernst Heinrich Philipp August
Häcke; Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Heckel, calling his discoveries Pithecanthropus erectus (upright
ape-man) (1341). This
specimen of Homo erectus is commonly
called Java man.
Richard Erskine Frere Leakey (KE) reported on Bernard Ngeneo’s
(KE) discovery of Homo ergaster; Homo erectus, KNMER 3733, at Koobi Fora in Kenya (840).
Colin P. Groves (AU) and Vratislav Mazák (CZ) proposed the name Homo ergaster (man the workman) (615).
Kamoya Kimeu (KE) discovered Turkana boy (Narikotome boy), a Homo ergaster; Homo erectus, KNMWT 15000, at Nariokotome near Lake Turkana in
Kenya, in 1984 (238; 841; 842; 1420). This
skeleton was dated at 1.6 M. The teeth indicated that he was 8-9 years old. He
weighed 48 kg with a cranial capacity of 880 cc.
Davidson Black (CA) coined the name Sinanthropus pekinensis
(Oriental Man from Peking), for what was popularly called Peking man (185; 186). Note:
Peking Man is a group of fossil specimens of Homo erectus, dated from
roughly 0.75 M years.
Franz Weidenreich (DE-US) and Lucile Swan (DE) prepared the
original reconstruction of Sinanthropus
pekinensis from the fossil remains of
several different individuals found in the caves at Zhoukoudian, China (1439; 1440). All of the
skullcaps had one thing in common, a hole through the top or back of the skull.
It was apparent to the researchers that the holes existed to suck out the
brains—all the "individuals" were victims of cannibalism.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (FR), a Jesuit priest, also did early
work on Peking man, a Homo erectus,
also known as Pithecanthropus pekinenses
and Sinanthropus pekinensis (1328; 1329).
Mr. Towikromo (ID) discovered another Homo erectus, Sangiran17, in 1969 in Java, Indonesia that was first
described in 1971 by Sastrohamidjojo Sartono (ID) as Pithecanthropus erectus (1191). Modern
paleontologists consider this Java man to be Homo erectus.
Guanjun Shen (CN), Xing Gao (CN), Bin Gao (CN), and Darryl E.
Granger (US) report 26Al/10Be
burial dating of quartz sediments and artifacts from the lower strata of
Locality 1 in the southwestern suburb of Beijing, China, where early
representatives of Zhoukoudian Homo erectus were discovered. The quartz
was dated in the range of 0.77 ± 0.08 M. These ages are substantially older
than previously supposed and may imply early hominin’s presence at the site in Northern
China through a relatively mild glacial period (1257). See, Peking man above.
c. 1.29 M
Dietrich Mania (DE), in 1972, discovered the first fossil skull
fragment of Homo erectus
bilzingslebenensis; Homo erectus;
Homo sapiens near Bilzingsleben in Central
Germany (908). This
fragment and those subsequently discovered have been dated to the Middle
Pleistocene; c. 1.29 M.
Fritz
Berckhemer (DE) found a fossil skull of a young female in the Sigrist gravel
pit north of Stuttgart, Germany and gave it to Karl Sigrist (164; 165).
This, so called, Steinheim skull can be considered a Homo erectus/Homo sapiens
transitional form from the Middle Pleistocene—c. 1.3 M.
c.
1 M- 500 K B.C.E.
Francoise Jouy-Avantin (FR), Claude Combes (FR), Henry de Lumley
(FR), Jean-Claude Miskovsky (FR), and Helene Mone (FR) discovered dicrocoelid
(liver-fluke) eggs in animal coprolites collected in an archeological layer
dated earlier than 550 K from the Caune de l'Arago cave (Tautavel,
Pyrenees-Orientales, France). It is the first trematode egg finding in an
isolated coprolite from the Middle Pleistocene (755).
Otto Schoetensack (DE) described and named archaic forms of Homo sapiens uncovered by gravel pit
workers in 1907 near Heidelberg, Germany. Estimated age is between 400 K and
700 K years. This find consisted of a lower jaw with a receding chin and all
its teeth. The jaw is extremely large and robust, like that of Homo erectus, but the teeth are at the
small end of the erectus range. They
were named Homo heidelbergensis (1209).
Arthur Smith Woodward (GB) described a more complete skull from
the Broken Hill Mine, Kabwe, Zambia and named it Homo rhodesiensis; Homo
sapiens rhodesiensis (1484). It is
dated at late Middle Pleistocene—c. 300 K .
Émile Ennouchi (FR) reported the discovery of fossil remains of
archaic Homo sapiens sapiens at Jebel
Ighoud southeast of Safi, Morocco (482; 483). The
fragments have been dated to c. 500 K .
Tanya M. Smith (DE), Paul Tafforeau (FR), Donald J. Reid
(GB),Rainer Grün (AU), Stephen Eggins (AU), Mohamed Boutakiout (MA), and
Jean-Jacques Hublin (DE) provided evidence from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco for
the earliest evidence of modern human life history in North African early Homo
sapiens dated at 160 K (1272).
Daniel Richter (DE), Rainer Grün (AU), Renaud Joannes-Boyau
(AU), Teresa E. Steele (DE), Fethi Amani (MA), Mathieu Rué (FR), Paul Fernandes
(FR), Jean-Paul Raynal (DE), Denis Geraads (DE), Abdelouahed Ben-Ncer (MC),
Jean-Jacques Hublin (DE), and Shannon P. McPherron (DE) reported, "the
ages, determined by thermoluminescence dating, of fire-heated flint artefacts
obtained from new excavations at the Middle Stone Age site of Jebel Irhoud,
Morocco, which are directly associated with newly discovered remains of Homo
sapiens. A weighted average age places these Middle Stone Age artefacts and
fossils at 315 ± 34 thousand years ago. Support is obtained through
the recalculated uranium series with electron spin resonance date of
286 ± 32 thousand years ago for a tooth from the Irhoud 3 hominin
mandible. These ages are also consistent with the faunal and microfaunal assemblages
and almost double the previous age estimates for the lower part of the
deposits. The north African site of Jebel Irhoud contains one of the earliest
directly dated Middle Stone Age assemblages, and its associated human remains
are the oldest reported for Homo sapiens. The emergence of our species
and of the Middle Stone Age appear to be close in time, and these data suggest
a larger scale, potentially pan-African, origin for both." (1148)
Marius Pièry (FR), Julien Roshem (FR), and Vilhelm
Moller-Christensen (DK) gave accounts of Stone Age hominid skeletons diagnosed
as exhibiting signs of tubercular damage. Evidence of pulmonary tuberculosis
remains but, in the nature of the case, it is meager (969; 1080).
c.
780 K B.C.E.
José M. Bermúdez de Castro (ES), Juan Luis Arsuaga (ES), Eudald
Carbonell (ES), Antonio Rosas (ES), Ignacio Martinez (ES), and Marina Mosquera
(ES) reported Homo fossils in Spain
which are the oldest confirmed European hominids. It is not yet clear what species
they belong to, although the discoverers have named them Homo antecessor (170).
c.
600 K B.C.E.
Camille Arambourg (FR) and Robert Hoffstetter (FR) discovered Homo erectus mandibles with teeth at
Ternifine, near the village of Palikao, east of Mascara, Oran, Algeria (72; 75). Note:
They were dated to c. 600 K.
c.
450 K B.C.E.
Henry de Lumley (FR) discovered the earliest human remains of Homo erectus (upright man) from Europe.
Dated at c. 450 K, they were unearthed from the Caune de l'Arago cave
(Tautavel, Pyrenees-Orientales, France) in 1971 (1114; 1470).
c.
400 K B.C.E.
Jean-Jacques Jaeger (FR) and M. Abdeslem Dakka (MA), in 1971,
discovered fossil remains of Homo erectus
near Rabat, Morocco (735; 736). Note:
It was dated to 400 K.
Petros Kokkoros (GR) and Antonis Kanellis (GR) reported on the
fossil remains of a Homo erectus; Homo erectus petraloniensis from near
Petralona in Eastern Greece (794). Note:
It is dated at 350-400 K.
c.
300 K B.C.E.
Henry de Lumley (FR), in the south of France at Terra Amata, found
red, purple, yellow, and brown ochre associated with Acheulian tools along with
lumps of the ochre showing signs of wear (416; 1168). Tribal
peoples alive today use ochre to treat animal skins, as an insect repellent, to
staunch bleeding, and as protection from the sun. Ochre may have been one of
the first medicaments used by primitive man.
Arthur Smith Woodward (GB) described a skull from the Broken Hill
Mine, Kabwe, Zambia and named it Homo
rhodesiensis; Homo sapiens
rhodesiensis (1484). Note:
It is dated at late Middle Pleistocene—c. 300 K.
c.
260 K B.C.E.
Michael R. Waters (US), Steve L. Forman (US), and James M. Pierson
(US) found Lower Paleolithic human artifacts at Diring Yuriakh, an
archaeological site in Central Siberia. Thermoluminescence age estimates from
eolian sediments indicate that the cultural horizon is greater than 260 K years
old. Diring Yuriakh is an order of magnitude older than documented Paleolithic
sites in Siberia and is important for understanding the timing of human
expansion into the far north, early adaptations to cold climates, and the
peopling of the Americas (1433).
c.
250 K B.C.E.
Rebecca L. Cann (US), Mark Stoneking (US), Allan C. Wilson (NZ),
Linda Vigilant (US), Henry C. Harpending (US), Kristen Hawkes (US), Alan R.
Templeton (US), S. Blair Hedges (US), Sudhir Kumar (US), and Koichiro Tamura
(US) proposed that all mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) types in contemporary humans
stems from a common female ancestor present in an African population extant
between 164 K and 247 K, i.e., a mitochondrial
Eve. All the populations examined except the African population have
multiple origins, implying that each area was colonized repeatedly. These results
support and extend the African origin hypothesis of human mtDNA evolution (268; 649; 1332; 1392).
c.
225 K B.C.E.
Alvan T. Marston (GB) found (225 K) Homo sapiens fossil remains at Swanscombe, England (928). This
specimen is sometimes referred to as Swanscombe Man.
c.
188 K B.C.E.
Michael F. Hammer (US) reported that the male-specific portion of
the Y chromosome is especially useful for studies of human origins. Using such
analysis he estimated the time back to a common ancestral human Y chromosome to
be 188 K (629).
c.
185 K B.C.E.
Miklós Kretzoi (HU) and Lazlo Vertes (HU), in 1964, found a
portion of the fossil remains of a specimen of Homo erectus; Homo sapiens
(archaic) near the village of Vértesszöllös west of Budapest, Hungary (800). Note:
The remains are dated at c. 185 K .
c.
150 K B.C.E.
Sarah A. Tishkoff (US), Andrew J. Pakstis (US), Mark Stoneking
(US), Judith R. Kidd (US), Giovanni Destro-Bisol (US), Antic Sanjantila (FI),
Ru Band Lu (US), Amos S. Deinard (US), Giorgio Sirugo (US), Trevor Jenkins
(US), Kenneth K. Kidd (US), and Andrew G. Clark (US) presented human genomic
evidence suggesting that about 150 K years ago, Homo sapiens emerged in Eastern Africa (1353).
c. 125 K B.C.E.
William Buckland (GB) published an account of how ancient hyenas
lived and fed, in Kirkdale cave near Kirkbymoorside in the Vale of Pickering,
North Yorkshire, England. Bones in the cave included hippopotamus (the farthest
north any such remains have been found), elephant, and the remains of numerous cave
hyenas and their coprolites. This is one of the first descriptions of living
habits based on fossil evidence (251). Note:
Material covering the bones dates them at c. 125 K. Note: The word
archaeologists now use for fossil feces —coprolites — is a word invented
by Buckland.
c.
130 K B.C.E.
Henry de
Lumley (FR) and Marie-Antoinette de Lumley (FR), in 1964, discovered the fossil
remains of a Homo erectus/Homo sapiens transitional form in the
Verdouble valley in Southeastern France. The age of this fossil man (Aragon
man) is uncertain at c. 130 K (417).
Michael H. Day (GB) discovered fossil Homo sapiens dated at c. 130 K in the lower basin of the Omro
River, Southwest Ethiopia (384).
c.
100 K B.C.E.
Rene Neville (FR), in 1933, was the first to excavate fossil Homo sapiens sapiens. The location was a
cave site near Nazareth, Israel, on the southwest flank of Mount Qafzeh (994).
Subsequently more human fossil remains have been discovered at this site, all
dated c. 100 K.
Hans Reck (DE) discovered rich deposits of early mammalian fossils
including Stone Age artifacts at Olduvai Gorge in East Africa. Among other
fossils he unearthed a fully human Late Pleistocene
skeleton on the northern slope of the gorge; naming it Olduvai Hominid 1 (OH 1) (1129; 1130).
"Along with fire, small objects of chipped flint represent
primitive man's earliest steps in the direction of civilization. From the time
of the arrival of the pre-Abevillian flint workers in Europe during the Second
Interglacial Period, one hundred thousand years ago, each successive race had
its peculiar technique of flint-chipping, its characteristic retouch, until the
crude biface stone hand axe of the abevillians became the exquisite
laurel-leaf points of Solutrean man (upper Paleolithic culture of central and
southwestern France and parts of Iberia). In the late Stone Age (Neolithic
Period) they were brought to a high point of specialization and polish, but in
shape and intention they have remained the same throughout geologic space and
time. Their employment in surgery by the ancient Egyptians, or in ritual
circumcision by Hebrews in the desert, goes to show the unusual veneration in
which they were held by these peoples on acount of their great antiquity. The
most interesting point about these prehistoric flints, called
"celts," is that they are to be found wherever traces of the
existence of man are found, changing in shape during the successive
interglacial and postglacial periods, but following his migrations over the
surface of the earth.
If we are to understand the attitude of the
primitive mind toward the diagnosis and treatment of disease we must recognize
that medicine, in our sense, was only one phase of a set of magic or mystic
processes designed to promote human well-being, such as averting the wrath of
angered gods or evil spirits, fire-making, making rain, purifying streams or
habitations, fertilizing soil, improving sexual potency or fecundity, preventing
or removing blight of crops and epidemic diseases, and that these powers,
originally united in one person, were he god, hero, king, sorcerer, priest,
prophet, or physician, formed the savage's generic concept of "making
medicine"…Thus primitive medicine, magic, and religion are inseparable,
although, as in ancient Egypt or some parts of modern Melanesia, leechcraft may
become specialized to the point of having a doctor for every disease. To
primitive man the natural and the supernatural were thoroughly intertwined.
Disease, in particular, was regarded at first as
an evil spirit or work of such a spirit to be appeased or cajoled, by burnt
offerings and sacrifice. A further association of ideas led him to regard
disease as something produced by a human enemy possessing supernatural powers,
which he aimed to ward off by appropriate spells and sorcery, similar to those
employed by the enemy himself. He frequently looked upon disease as the work of
offended spirits of the dead. These spirits must be satisfied in some "logical"
way.
Primitive man in widely separated countries
easily got to know the most fatal arrow-poisons—curare, ouabain, veratrin,
boundou—as well as the virtues of drugs, like opium, hashish, hemp, coca,
cinchona, eucalyptus, sarsaparilla, acacia, kousso, copaiba, guaiac, jalap,
podophyllin, or quassia.
Doubtless both prehistoric and early historic man
discovered that many plants were useful as treatments for a variety of
ailments. The early herbal apothecary was extensive.
The use of a soporific as a substitute for
anesthesia goes back to remote antiquity, as symbolized in the twenty-first
verse of the second chapter of Genesis: "And the Lord God caused a deep
sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed
up the flesh instead thereof." From the soothing Egyptian nepenthe of the
Odyssey, which Helen casts into the wine of Ulyssses, to the "samme de
shinta" of the Talmud, the "bhang" of the Arabian Nights, or the
"drowsy syrups" of Shakespeare's time, the soporific virtues of
opium, Indian hemp (Cannabis indica), the mandrake (Atropa mandragora),
henbane (Hyoscyamus), dewtry (Datura stramonium), hemlock (Conium),
and lettuce (Lactucarium) appear to have been well known to the
Orientals and the Greeks, and, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a
mixture of some of these ingredients ("oleum de lateribus") was
formally recommended for surgical anesthesia by the medieval masters, Nicolaus
Salernitanus, Copho, Hugh of Lucca and his son Theodoric, in the form of a
"spongia somnifera" or "confectio soporis"
for inhalation. The use of natural antiseptics such as exterme dryness, smoke
(creosote), honey, niter, and wine were long known to early man. In seeking an
artificial paradise by means of narcotics and intoxicants like alcohol, opium,
hashish, or mescal, priority certainly belongs to primitive man, to whom we owe
such private luxuries as tea, coffee, cocoa, and tobacco. Medicine is curiously
indebted to the non-medical man for many innovations." (567)
John Jacob Abel (US) and David I. Macht (US)
showed that the ancient European belief in the venomous nature of the toad and
the power of its dried skin to cure dropsy is explained by the two alkaloids, bufagin
and epinephrin, which they isolated from the tropical Bufo agua. Bufagin
has a marked diuretic action (14; 15).
c. 90 K B.C.E.
c.
80 K B.C.E.
In 1856, bones were discovered in a cave in the Neander River
Valley near Düsseldorf, Germany by quarrymen who gave them to a local
schoolteacher and amateur naturalist, Johan Karl Fuhlrott. Fuhlrott identified
them as human and thought them to be very old. He recognized them to be
different from the usual bones of humans and showed them to Hermann
Schaaffhausen, the Professor of Anatomy at the University of Bonn. Fuhlrott and
Schaaffhausen presented papers on the fossils and the geology of the Feldhofer
Cave at a meeting of the Niederrheinische Gesellschaft für Naturund Heilkunde
(Lower Rhine Medical and Natural History Society) in Bonn in 1857. They published independently at a later date (550; 1197).
William King, professor of geology at Queens College in Galway,
Ireland, presented a paper in 1864 where he argued the Neanderthal fossils of
Fuhlrott and Schaaffhausen belonged to an extinct species of early human that
he named Homo neanderthalensis (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis). He named
them for the Neander River Valley (tal = river in German) (788; 789). This
specimen probably lived around 80 K.
c.
69,625 B.C.E.
Ellen Solomon (GB) and Walter Fred Bodmer (GB) estimated that the
sickle variant gene first appeared 2,785 generations (or c. 69,625 years B.C.E.).
This suggests that the origin of the sickle allele might well predate the
origin of the major human racial groups, although its striking increase in
frequency was much more recent (1281).
c.
40-68 K B.C.E.
Amédée Bouyssonie (FR), Jean Bouyssonie (FR) and Louis Bardon (FR)
found skeletal remains of Homo sapiens
neanderthalensis; Homo
neanderthalensis near the village of La Chapelle-aux-Saints in France (208). The
remains were dated at c. 60 K.
c.
60 K B.C.E.
Baruch Arensburg (IL), Anne-Marie Tillier (FR), Bernard
Vandermeersch (FR), Henri Duday (FR), Lynne A. Schepartz (US), and Yoel Rak
(IL) reported the discovery of a well-preserved human (Neanderthal) hyoid bone
from Middle Paleolithic layers of Kebara Cave, Mount Carmel, Israel, dating
from about 60 K. The bone is almost identical in size and shape to the hyoid of
present-day humans, suggesting that there has been little or no change in the
visceral skeleton (including the hyoid, middle ear ossicles, and inferentially
the larynx) during the past 60 K years of human evolution. They concluded that
the morphological basis for human speech capability appears to have been fully
developed during the Middle Paleolithic (86).
Alan Thorne (AU), Rainer Grun (AU), Graham Mortimer (AU), Nigel A.
Spooner (AU), John J. Simpson (AU), Malcolm McCulloch (AU), Lois Taylor (AU),
and Darren Curnoe (AU) presented evidence that people who were skeletally
within the range of the present Australian indigenous population colonized the
continent during or before 69 K-55 K (1351).
Amadee Bouyssonie (FR), Jean Bouyssonie (FR) and Louis Bardon (FR)
found skeletal remains of Homo sapiens
neanderthalensis; Homo
neanderthalensis near the village of La Chapelle-aux-Saints in France (208). The
remains were dated at c. 58 K.
Dorothy Anne Elizabeth Garrod (GB), Dorothea Minola Alice Bate
(GB), Theodore Doney McCowan (GB), and Arthur Keith (GB) reported the discovery
of a fossilized female skeleton likely to be Homo sapiens neanderthalensis; Homo
neanderthalensis at Mugharet et-Tabun, Mount Carmel, southeast of Haifa,
Israel. They also discovered Homo remains from roughly the same time
period in a nearby cave named Mugharet es-Skhül (569; 942). These
specimens were dated at 58-28 K.
c.
48 K B.C.E.
c.
45 K B.C.E.
Ralph Stefan Solecki (US) and coworkers, from 1951-1960, examined
the Shanidar cave in North Central Iraq for fossil remains. Nine partial Homo sapiens neanderthalensis; Homo neanderthalensis skeletons were
removed (1279; 1280). The
specimens have been dated between 52-23 K.
Thomas Dale
Stewart (US), discovered Shanidar I at Shanidar cave in Iraq. This Neanderthal
male, 30-45 years of age, had an underdeveloped right shoulder blade, collar
bone, and upper right arm bone. He believes that Shanidar I was crippled, with
a useless right arm, which had been amputated in life just above the elbow (1300).
This is surely one of the earliest known examples of surgery.
c.
42 K B.C.E.
Arthur Keith (GB) discovered a human upper jaw in Southern England
and initially diagnosed it as Upper Paleolithic modern human (770).
Arturo Palma di Cesnola (IT) and Edoardo Borzatti von Löwenstein
(IT), in 1964, found two deciduous molars in the so-called Uluzzian
archaeological layers unearthed from the Grotta del Cavallo (Southern Italy).
They were classified as Neanderthal and dated to 45 K years ago, making them
the oldest known human remains on the continent (1038). In 2011,
the two deciduous teeth from Cavallo Cave, the only human remains associated
with the Uluzzian so far, were identified as belonging to anatomically modern
humans and not Neanderthals.
Stefano Benazzi (AT), Katerina Douka
(GB), Cinzia Fornai (AT), Catherine C. Bauer (DE), Ottmar Kullmer (DE), Jiří Svoboda (CZ), Ildikó Pap (HU), Francesco
Mallegni (IT), Priscilla Bayle (FR), Michael Coquerelle (ES), Silvana Condemi
(FR), Annamaria Ronchitelli (IT), Katerina Harvati (DE), and Gerhard W. Weber
(AT) reanalyzed the deciduous molars from the Grotta del Cavallo
(Southern Italy), associated with the Uluzzian and originally classified as
Neanderthal. Their new chronometric data for the Uluzzian layers of Grotta del
Cavallo obtained from associated shell beads and included within a Bayesian age
model show that the teeth must date to 43–41 K. The Cavallo human remains are
therefore the oldest known European anatomically modern humans, confirming a
rapid dispersal of modern humans across the continent before the Aurignacian
and the disappearance of Neanderthals (158).
Ubirr at Kakadu in the Northern Territory,
Australia contains rock shelters where the rock faces have been continuously
painted and repainted by humans since 40 K (305).
c.
39-20 K B.C.E.
Louis Capitan (FR) and Denis Peyrony (FR) found a fossil remains
of Homo sapiens neanderthalensis; Homo neanderthalensis that dated to c. 36
K. The site was near La Ferrassie, France (271).
The Tokyo
University Scientific Expedition to Western Asia (Director: Hisashi Suzuki)
discovered fossil remains of Homo sapiens
neanderthalensis; Homo
neanderthalensis in a cave in Wadi Amud, north of Tiberias, Israel (1372).
Note: The remains were dated from about 39-23 K.
Francois Lèvèque (FR) and Bernard Vandermeersch (FR), in 1979,
found fossil remains of a Homo sapiens
neanderthalensis; Homo
neanderthalensis near Saint-Césaire in Southwestern France (855). This may
well be the most recent Neandertal known at c.36 K..
Johannes Krause (DE), Qiaomei Fu (DE), Jeffrey
M. Good (US), Bence Viola (DE-AT), Michael V. Shunkov (RU), Anatoli P.
Derevianko (RU), and Svante Pääbo (DE), in March
2010, announced the discovery of a finger bone fragment that belonged to a
juvenile female who lived about 41 K years ago. It was found in the remote
Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains in Siberia, a cave that has also been inhabited
by Neanderthals and modern humans (799).
c. 35 K B.C.E.
David
Emil Reich (US), Nick Patterson (US), Desmond Campbell (US), Arti Tandon (US),
Stéphane Mazieres (US), Nicolas Ray (US), Maria V. Parra (US), Winston Rojas
(US), Constanza Duque (US), Natalia Mesa (US), Luis F. García (US), Omar Triana
(US), Silvia Blair (US), Amanda Maestre (US), Juan C. Dib (US), Claudio M.
Bravi (US), Graciela Bailliet (US), Daniel Corach (US), Tábita Hünemeier (US),
Maria Cátira Bortolini (US), Francisco M. Salzano (US), María Luiza Petzl-Erler
(US), Victor Acuña-Alonzo (US), Carlos Aguilar-Salinas (US), Samuel
Canizales-Quinteros (US), Teresa Tusié-Luna (US), Laura Riba (US), Maricela
Rodríguez-Cruz (US), Mardia Lopez-Alarcón (US), Ramón Coral-Vazquez (US),
Thelma Canto-Cetina (US), Irma Silva-Zolezzi (US), Juan Carlos Fernandez-Lopez
(US), Alejandra V. Contreras (US), Gerardo Jimenez-Sanchez (US), Maria José
Gómez-Vázquez (US), Julio Molina (US), Ángel Carracedo (US), Antonio Salas
(US), Carla Gallo (US), Giovanni Poletti (US), David B. Witonsky (US), Gorka
Alkorta-Aranburu (US), Rem I. Sukernik (US), Ludmila Osipova (US), Sardana A.
Fedorova (US), René Vasquez (US), Mercedes Villena (US), Claudia Moreau (US),
Ramiro Barrantes (US), David Pauls (US), Laurent Excoffier (US), Gabriel Bedoya
(US), Francisco Rothhammer (US), Jean-Michel Dugoujon (US), Georges Larrouy
(US), William Klitz (US), Damian Labuda (US-CA), Judith Kidd (US), Kenneth Kidd
(US), Anna Di Rienzo (US), Nelson B. Freimer (US), Alkes L. Price (US), and
Andrés Ruiz-Linares (US) analyzed more than 300,000 DNA sequence variations
from Native American and Siberian human populations. They revealed that North
and South America were populated in three ancient waves of migration (1134).
c.
30 K B.C.E.
c.
29.4 K B.C.E.
Reidar Nydal (NO) radiocarbon dated a total of six wooly mammoths
yielding an average age of c. 29.4 K. (1005).
c.
29 K B.C.E.
Jean-Marie Chauvet (FR), Éliette Brunel-Deschamps (FR), and
Christian Hillaire (FR) discovered the Chauvet-Pont-D’Arc cave in Ardéche
France, in 1994. It was occupied by Paleolithic man of the Aurignacian culture
and contains magnificent drawings of mammoths, rhinoceroses, lions, and cave
bears dated to between 28.3 and 30.4 K. These drawings are unmatched in their
sophistication (243).
Coliboaia Cave located in the Sighistel Valley, near the village
of Campani, Bihor County, Romania was found in the Autumn of 2009 to contain
cave paintings from c. 29 K, corresponding to the Aurignacian and Gravettian
cultures of the Paleolithic period. Tudor Rus (RU), Spedova Stei (RU), Mihai
Besesek (RU), Valentin Alexandru Radu (RU), Roxana Laura Toiciu (RU), and
Marius Kenesz (RU) discovered the paintings. A French team of archaeologists
composed of Marcel Meyssonnier, Valerie Plichon, Michel Philippe, Francoise
Prudhomme, Jean Clottes, and Bernard Gély attested to the authenticity of the
paintings (121; 320; 1504).
The Serra da Capivara National Park in Northeast
Brazil near the town of Sao Raimundo
Nonato contains exceptional testimony to one of the oldest populations
to inhabit South America. It constitutes and preserves the largest ensemble of
archaeological sites, and the oldest examples of rock art in the Americas.
Moreover, the iconography of the paintings allows us to identify information
about the region’s early peoples. The dating of the rock art suggests
continuous occupation from 30,160 ± 100
to 4,160 ± 130 years (620).
Wolfgang Ernst Wendt (DE) discovered seven
limestone slabs of rock with traces of animal figures in the Apollo 11 Cave in
the Huns Mountains of Southwestern Namibia. They have been dated with unusual
precision for ancient rock art. Their age is between 30-26 K (1445).
c.
27-20 K B.C.E.
Louis Lartet (FR), in 1868, was the first to find fossil remains
of Homo sapiens sapiens (Cro-Magnon
man). These were in a rock shelter site near the village of Les Eyzies in
Southwestern France (230). The name
Cro-Magnon comes from Abri Cro-Magnon, Les Eyzies, France where the remains
were found. Though spelled magnon the correct pronunciation is "man
yon". Louis Lartet was a geologist and son of solicitor and prehistorian
Edouard Lartet (FR).
Discarded bones at their ancient campsites testify that Cro-Magnon
often fed on vertebrates such as horses and reindeer (971).
William Buckland (GB) found a human skeleton within the Paviland
Cave on the south coast of the Gower peninsula, South Wales. It was covered
with red ocher and ceremonially buried with ivory ornaments and perforated
seashells, the circumstances hinting at a ritual or shamanic use of the site.
Buckland thought it dated from the Roman occupation and called it the Red Lady (252). Note:
The skeleton was later identified as Cro-Magnon and dated from roughly 28 K-18 K;
the Early Upper Paleolithic (Early Stone Age).
John Desmond Clark (US) attributed the great success of Homo sapiens sapiens over other hominids
to the development of speech. “The achievement of awareness and integration, as
with the transmission of knowledge, is in the main through speech” (316).
Antonio Torroni (IT), Rem I. Sukernik (RU), Yelena B. Starikovskaya
(RU), Margaret F. Cabell (US), Michael H. Crawford (US), Anthony G. Comuzzie
(US), James van Gundia Neel (US), Ramiro Barrantes (CR), Theodore G. Schurr
(US), and Douglas C. Wallace (US) compared several DNA markers found in modern
Native Americans and modern Siberians and estimated that if the Amerinds
entered the New World as a single group, that entry would have occurred
approximately 25 K-18 K (1356; 1357).
Johanna Nichols (US) suggests that the diversity of languages
found among Native Americans could have arisen only after humans had been in
the New World for at least 30K-20K years (998).
Joseph M. McAvoy (US) and Lynn D. McAvoy (US) noted that the
location, dating and technology represented by the Cactus Hill, Meadowcroft and
Page-Ladson sites in the eastern United States provide the ‘missing’
chronological and technological links between Solutrean and Clovis cultures (940). Note:
Cactus Hill was occupied 12K-16K B.C.E.
Bruce A. Bradley (GB) and Dennis J. Stanford (US) placed the technological
antecedents of North America's Clovis culture in Europe and posit that the
first Americans crossed the Atlantic by boat and arrived earlier than
previously thought. Presenting archaeological and oceanographic evidence to
support this assertion, they dismantle the old paradigm while persuasively
linking Clovis technology with the culture of Silurian people who occupied
France and Spain more than 18 K years ago. "Silurian" is named after
the type-site of Croat du Charier at Solute in the Macon district,
Saone-et-Loire, Eastern France, and appeared around 19 K (220; 1289).
Nelson
J.R. Fagundes (BR), Ricardo Kanitz (BR), Roberta Eckert (BR), Ana C.S. Valls
(BR), Mauricio R. Bogo (BR), Francisco M. Salzano (BR), David Glenn Smith (US),
Wilson A. Silva, Jr. (BR), Marco A. Zago (BR), Andrea K. Ribeiro-dos-Santos
(BR), Sidney E.B. Santos (BR), Maria Luiza Petzl-Erler (BR) and Sandro L.
Bonatto (BR) found that mitochondrial population genomics supports a single
pre-Clovis origin with a coastal route for the peopling of the Americas (500).
c.
19.5-12.5 K B.C.E.
Darren Curnoe (AU), Ji Xueping (CN), Andy I. R. Herries (AU), Bai
Kanning (CN), Paul S. C. Taçon (AU), Bao Zhende (CN), David Fink (AU), Zhu
Yunsheng (CN), John Hellstrom (AU), Luo Yun (CN), Gerasimos Cassis (AU), Su
Bing (CN), Stephen Wroe (AU), Hong Shi (CN), William C. H. Parr (AU), Huang
Shengmin (CN), and Natalie Rogers (AU) reported that the Red Deer Cave People
were the most recent known prehistoric archaic human population. Their fossils,
dated to between 19.5 K B.C.E. and 12.5 K B.C.E., were found in Red Deer Cave
and Longlin Cave in China. Tentatively they are thought to be a separate
species of humans that persisted until recent times and became extinct without
contributing to the gene pool of modern human (368).
c. 16.5-10.5 K B.C.E.
Tom D. Dillehay (US-CL), from 1977 to 1985, excavated at Monte
Verde, some 31 miles (50 km) inland from the Pacific Ocean in Southern Chile.
He found evidence of a known site of human habitation in the Americas c. 12K
B.C.E. (446; 447).
Tom D. Dillehay (US-CL), Carlos Ocampo (CL), José Saavedra (CL),
Andre Oliveira Sawakuchi (BR), Rodrigo M. Vega (CL), Mario Pino (CL), Michael
B. Collins (US), Linda Scott Cummings (US), Iván Arregui (CL), Ximena S. Villagran
(BR), Gelvam A. Hartmann (BR), Mauricio Mella (CL), Andrea González (CL), and
George Dix (CA) found that radiocarbon dating of fire-charred plants and bones
suggests that people built cooking fires and made stone tools at Monte Verde
16.5 K or earlier (448).
c.
13 K B.C.E.
Jean Louis Rudolph Agassiz (CH-US) was the first to conclude—from
his studies of glaciers—that there had been an Ice Age. He borrowed the phrase ice age (Disseat) from a poem by his friend Karl Schemer (25-27; 916). Note:
The last great ice age occurred 2.6 M—9 K.
James Hutton (GB), in 1795, had speculated that some strange
erratic boulders near Geneva had been carried and left there by glaciers that had
since retreated (721).
Luther Sided (PL-AR) found eggs of the fish tapeworm, Diphyllobothrium latum, in the
intestines of two human bodies preserved in a peat bog in East Prussia since
the early glacial period (1318).
Marcel Ravidat (FR), Jacques Marsal (FR), Georges Agnel (FR), and
Simon Coencas (FR), in 1940, discovered the cave at Lascaux, France where man
produced representational art on the walls. It contains a great collection of
Paleolithic art 13 K—8 K (7).
Marcelino de Santuola (ES), in 1869, discovered the Altamira Caves
near Santillana del Mar, Spain. These caves contain important Paleolithic art 14
K—12 K (97).
c. 12.6-9.6 K B.C.E.
c. 13.5 -11.2-K B.C.E.
Michael R. Waters (US), Steven L. Foreman (US), Thomas A. Jennings
(US), Lee C. Nordt (US), Steven G. Driese (US), Joshua M. Feinberg (US), Joshua
L. Keene (US), Jessi Halligan (US), James Pierson (US), Charles T. Hallmark
(US), Michael B. Collins (US), and James E. Wiederhold (US) provided
archaeological evidence of a human presence in the Americas that pre-dates the Clovis
peoples, who until recently were thought to be the first humans to explore and
settle North America. The site's pre-Clovis occupation is supported by numerous
lines of evidence including optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dates
ranging from 13.5 K-11.2 K before present, undisturbed stratigraphy, and an
extensive stone tool assemblage (1432). Note: OSL is a technique
that analyzes light energy trapped in sediment particles to identify the last
time the soil was exposed to sunlight.
c.
11 K B.C.E.
Knut R. Fladmark (CA) has been one of the most vocal supporters of
the proposal that humans from Siberia may have traveled along the Pacific
coastlines as they populated North and South America (526).
c. 10.3 K B.C.E.
M. Thomas P. Gilbert (DK), Dennis L. Jenkins (US), Anders
Götherstrom (SE), Nuria Naveran (ES), Juan J. Sanchez (ES), Michael Hofreiter
(DE), Philip Francis Thomsen (DK), Jonas Binladen (DK), Thomas F.G. Higham (GB),
Robert M. Yohe, II (US), Robert Parr (US), Linda Scott Cummings (US), and Eske
Willerslev (DK) established that humans were present at Paisley 5 Mile Point
Caves, in South-central Oregon, by 10.3 K, through the recovery of human
mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from coprolites, directly dated by accelerator mass
spectrometry (581).
c.
10 K B.C.E.
The Holocene or Recent Epoch includes the time since the end of
the last Ice Age, approximately 10,000 year ago. It was during this time that Homo sapiens completed worldwide radiation
and became technologically advanced. The beginning of the Holocene saw a
warming trend and the receding of the Wisconsinan Ice at the end of the
Pleistocene. Many of the larger animals associated with the ice ages, such as
mammoths and mastodons, did not survive into Recent times. It is probable that
a combination of climatic change and human predation resulted in the extinction
of these species.
Malcolm Lillie (UK), Michael P. Richards (UK), and Kenneth Jacobs
(CA) analysed bone collagen extracted from 21 humans from the Epipalaeolithic
cemetery of Vasilyevka III. This particular cemetery is one of the three early
sites from the Dnieper Rapids region, Ukraine, with Vasilyevka III being dated
to the period c. 10,400–9200 B.C.E. on the basis of three radiocarbon
determinations. Analyses provided insights into the nature of the diet of these
populations during a stage of major restructuring of the landscapes in the
European mainland (860).
Man (Homo sapiens) first started eating a crude form of
flat bread - a baked combination of flour and water. Man (Homo sapiens) domesticated
dogs, pigs, sheep, goats, fowl, and other animals in Europe, Northern Africa
and the Near East (1131).
Historians
speculate that smallpox (red plague)
probably emerged sometime after the first agricultural settlements (946).
Just Marie Marcelin Lucas-Championnière (FR) described Neolithic
human skulls from nearly all parts of the world with disks of bone removed.
This process, called trephining,
represents the first evidence of man’s intervention in an attempt to heal his
fellow man. This surgical procedure was likely done to release confined demons
associated with epilepsy, infantile convulsions, headache, and various cerebral
diseases (884). See,
Stewart, c. 45 K B.C.E.
c. 9.7 - 7.7 K B.C.E.
c.
9.5 K B.C.E.
Jesse D. Figgins (US) found large, heavy fluted stone points near
Clovis, New Mexico. Mammoth bones in a deposit beneath a layer containing "Folsom
points" and bison skeletons accompanied them. The robust points, now named
"Clovis", were recognized as even older than the Folsom points.
Characteristic of both points is a flute, a flake struck off the base along the
length of the point, presumably to facilitate hafting (520).
C. Vance Haynes, Jr. (US) used radiocarbon dating to place the
Clovis points at about 9.5 K - 9 K, and none before 10 K (647).
c. 9 K B.C.E.
c.
8 K B.C.E.
In the Middle East, Early Neolithic man began the domestication of
plants (304).
Chester Gorman (US) found evidence to support Carl Ortwin Sauer’s
(US) hypothesis of plant domestication by the Hoabinhian people. They lived at
Spirit Cave in Northern Thailand and grew domesticated beans, peas, gourds and
water chestnuts around 6 - 9 K (601-603; 1192).
Solomon H. Katz (US) and Mary M. Voigt (US) report that the
earliest evidence for domesticated grains comes from Tell Aswad, Jericho, and
Nasal Oren. Excavations at these sites have surrendered a few grains of barley,
wheat, and lentils morphologically different than wild-type strains (768).
c.
7 K B.C.E.
Kurt W. Alt (DE) and his colleagues discovered a 5 K burial at
Ensisheim, in the French region of Alsace, which yielded unequivocal evidence
for trephination (1419).
Grafton Elliott Smith (AU-GB), in 1901, discovered the oldest
urological object on record, a bladder calculus, in a prehistoric Egyptian
tomb, in the pelvis of a mummy. The calculus has a uric acid nucleus with
concentric laminations of calcium oxalate and ammonium magnesium phosphate (1161; 1254).
Patrick E. McGovern (US), Juzhong Zhang (CN), Jigen Tang (CN), Zhiqing
Zhang (CN), Gretchen R. Hall (US), Robert A. Moreau (US), Alberto Nuñez (US), Eric
D. Butrym (DE), Michael P. Richards (DE), Chen-shan Wang (US), Guangsheng Cheng
(CN), Zhijun Zhao (CN), and Changsui Wang (CN) found evidence that the Chinese
made an alcoholic beverage from fruit, rice, and honey, in the Neolithic
Chinese village of Jiahu (945).
Iain Mathieson (US), Songül Alpaslan-Roodenberg (US), Cosimo Posth
(DE), Anna Szécsényi-Nagy (HU), Nadin Rohland (US), Swapan Mallick (US), Iñigo
Olalde (US), Nasreen Broomandkhoshbacht (US), Francesca Candilio (IE), Olivia
Cheronet (IE), Daniel Fernandes (PT), Matthew Ferry (US), Beatriz Gamarra (IE),
Gloria González Fortes (IT), Wolfgang Haak (DE-AU), Eadaoin Harney (US), Eppie
Jones (IE-GB), Denise Keating (IE), Ben Krause-Kyora (DE), Isil Kucukkalipci
(DE), Megan Michel (US), Alissa Mittnik (DE), Kathrin Nägele (DE), Mario Novak
(IE-HR), Jonas Oppenheimer (US), Nick Patterson (US), Saskia Pfrengle (DE),
Kendra Sirak (IE-US), Kristin Stewardson (US), Stefania Vai (IT), Stefan
Alexandrov (BG), Kurt W. Alt (AT), Radian Andreescu (RO), Dragana
Antonović (CS), Abigail Ash (IE), Nadezhda Atanassova (BU), Krum Bacvarov
(BG), Mende Balázs Gusztáv (HU), Hervé Bocherens (DE), Michael Bolus (DE),
Adina Boroneanţ (RO), Yavor Boyadzhiev (BG), Alicja Budnik (PL), Josip
Burmaz (HR), Stefan Chohadzhiev (BG), Nicholas J. Conard (DE), Richard Cottiaux
(FR), Maja Čuka (HR), Christophe Cupillard (FR), Dorothée G. Drucker (DE),
Nedko Elenski (BG), Michael Francken (DE), Borislava Galabova (BG), Georgi
Ganetsovski BG), Bernard Gély (FR), Tamás Hajdu (HU), Veneta Handzhyiska (BG),
Katerina Harvati (DE), Thomas Higham (GB), Stanislav Iliev (BG), Ivor
Janković (HR), Ivor Karavanić (BG), Douglas J. Kennett (US), Darko
Komšo (HR), Alexandra Kozak (UA), Damian Labuda (CA), Martina Lari (IT),
Catalin Lazar (RO), Maleen Leppek (DE), Krassimir Leshtakov (BG), Domenico Lo
Vetro (IT), Dženi Los (HR), Ivaylo Lozanov (BG), Maria Malina (DE), Fabio
Martini (IT), Kath McSweeney (GB), Harald Meller (DE), Marko Menđušić
(HR), Pavel Mirea (RO), Vyacheslav Moiseyev (RU), Vanya Petrova (BG), T.
Douglas Price (US), Angela Simalcsik (RO), Luca Sineo (IT), Mario Šlaus (HR),
Vladimir Slavchev (BG), Petar Stanev (BG), Andrej Starović (CS), Tamás
Szeniczey (HU), Sahra Talamo (DE), Maria Teschler-Nicola (AT), Corinne Thevenet
FR), Ivan Valchev (BG), Frédérique Valentin (FR), Sergey Vasilyev (RU), Fanica
Veljanovska (MK), Svetlana Venelinova (BG), Elizaveta Veselovskaya (RU), Bence
Viola (CA-RU), Cristian Virag (RO), Joško Zaninović (BG), Steve Zäuner
(DE), Philipp W. Stockhammer (DE), Giulio Catalano (IT), Raiko Krauß (DE),
David Caramelli (IT), Gunita Zariņa (LV), Bisserka Gaydarska (GB), Malcolm
Lillie (GB), Alexey G. Nikitin (US), Inna Potekhina (UA), Anastasia
Papathanasiou (GR), Dušan Borić (US), Clive Bonsall (GB), Johannes Krause
(DE), Ron Pinhasi (IE), and David Emil Reich (US) analyzed genome-wide
ancient DNA data from 225 individuals who lived in Southeastern Europe and
surrounding regions between 12,000 and 500 B.C.E. They documented a west–east cline of ancestry
in indigenous hunter-gatherers and, in Eastern Europe, the early stages in the
formation of Bronze Age steppe ancestry. They show that the first farmers of Northern
and Western Europe dispersed through Southeastern Europe with limited
hunter-gatherer admixture, but that some early groups in the southeast mixed
extensively with hunter-gatherers without the sex-biased admixture that
prevailed later in the north and west. They also show that Southeastern Europe
continued to be a nexus between east and west after the arrival of farmers,
with intermittent genetic contact with steppe populations occurring up to 2,000
years earlier than the migrations from the steppe that ultimately replaced much
of the population of Northern Europe (936). Note: Farming was first introduced to
Europe in the mid-seventh millennium B.C.E., and was associated with migrants
from Anatolia who settled in the southeast before spreading throughout Europe.
c. 6.5 K B.C.E.
Aurochs, ancestor of domestic cattle, would be domesticated in the
next two centuries if not earlier (Obre I, Yugoslavia). This was the last major
food animal to be tamed for use as a source of milk, meat, power, and leather
in the Old World.
c.
6 K B.C.E.
The production of cheese is thought to have originated in
Southwestern Asia (796).
“The opium poppy, the source of both morphine and heroin, seems to
have been domesticated by Old European farmers in the Western Mediterranean
area” (1168).
The Sumerians, of lower Mesopotamia, are the first culture known
to have used opium. Their name for "poppy" translates to "flower
of joy"—a name that almost certainly indicates that opium was used
recreationally.
c.5-4.5 K B.C.E.
E. Smith (GB) found a bladder stone from a 4.5 K – 5 K year-old
mummy in El Amrah, Egypt (960; 1247).
c.
5.4-5 K B.C.E.
Patrick E. McGovern (US), Donald L. Glusker (US), Robert A. Moreau
(US), Alberto Nuñez (US), Curt W. Beck (US), Elizabeth Simpson (US), Eric D.
Butrym (US), Lawrence J. Exner (US), Mary M. Voigt (US), and Edith C. Stout
(US) found the oldest evidence for the existence of wine. It came from wine
jars at Hajji Firuz Tepe in the Northern Zagros Mountains of Iran. These are Neolithic
villagers in the Zagros Mountains, in what is now Northwestern Iran. Evidence
of wine was found in jars that were once placed along the kitchen walls of a
mud-brick structure. The wine may have resembled Greek retsina. Recent chemical and related tests of a yellowish residue
found in the jars point to wine. First, salts of tartaric acid, found naturally
in large amounts only in grapes, were identified. Secondly, resin from the
terebinth tree, used in antiquity to preserve wine, was also discovered. Additionally,
the jars had narrow necks and stoppers were found nearby (943; 944).
c. 4.5-2.5 K B.C.E.
c.
4.3 K B.C.E.
Babylonian clay tablets detail recipes for making beer in
a hymn to the Sumerian goddess of beer, Ninkasi.
c.
4 K B.C.E.
The Egyptian kingdoms were controlling the production of wine and
other fermented drinks (750).
Solomon H. Katz (US) and Mary M. Voigt (US) reported that direct
evidence of beer consumption comes from a stamp seal from Tepe Gawra in Northwest
Iraq; it shows two figures drinking beer using traditional straws and container (768).
c.
3.7 K B.C.E.
A skeleton from ancient Egypt unearthed near Cairo, showed a
marked shortening of the left leg consistent with poliomyelitis (1503).
Theis Z. T. Jensen (DK), Jonas Niemann (DK), Katrine Højholt
Iversen (DK), Anna K. Fotakis (DK), Shyam Gopalakrishnan (DK), Åshild J. Vågene
(DK), Mikkel Winther Pedersen (DK), Mikkel-Holger S. Sinding (DK), Martin R.
Ellegaard (DK), Morten E. Allentoft (DK), Liam T. Lanigan (DK), Alberto J.
Taurozzi (DK), Sofie Holtsmark Nielsen (DK), Michael W. Dee (DK), Martin N.
Mortensen (DK), Mads C. Christensen (DK), Søren A. Sørensen (DK), Matthew J.
Collins (DK), M. Thomas P. Gilbert (DK), Martin Sikora (DK), Simon Rasmussen
(DK), and Hannes Schroeder (DK) presented a complete ancient human genome and
oral microbiome sequenced from a 5.7 K year-old piece of chewed birch pitch
from Denmark. They sequenced the human genome to an average depth of 2.3× and found
that the individual who chewed the pitch was female and genetically more
closely related to western hunter-gatherers from mainland Europe than
hunter-gatherers from Central Scandinavia. They also found that she likely had
dark skin, dark brown hair and blue eyes. In addition, they identified DNA fragments
from several bacterial and viral taxa, including Epstein-Barr virus, as well as
animal and plant DNA, which may have derived from a recent meal (742).
3.3 K B.C.E.
Felix Eijgenraam (NL) and Alun Anderson (NL) described a 4
K-year-old Bronze Age man (nicknamed Ötzi) found frozen since his death in the
Italian Alps. It is hoped that this body—found by Helmut and Erika Simon— will
shed light on the racial structure and culture of early Europe (478). Note:
A subsequent radiocarbon analysis performed on Ötzi found that he was even older
than 4,000 years. Radiocarbon dating determined that the iceman was about 5,300
years old, dating to 3300 B.C.E. This meant that Ötzi lived during the era of
history known as the Copper Age, the transition period between the Neolithic,
or the "New Stone Age," and the late Bronze Age.
The Copper Age (3500 B.C.E. to 1700 B.C.E.), also known as the
Chalcolithic period, represents the time when the populations of what is now
Europe began to make widespread use of metals while still using stone tools but
had not yet smelted copper and tin to make bronze. It was also a time when the
first complex social hierarchies developed and populations began to erect
large, monumental structures made of stone — the famous megalithic tombs,
standing stones and dolmens of Europe.
Leopold Dorfer (AT), Maximilian Moser (AT), Frank Bahr (DE),
Konrad Spindler (AT), Eduard Egarter-Vigl (IT), Sonia Guillen (PE), Gottfried
Dohr (AT), and Thomas Kenner (AT) reported that the Bronze Age “Ice Man,” (see
above) found in the Italian Alps near the Austrian border, possesses many
"tattoos" corresponding very near or on acupuncture points and
meridians, including the 'master point for back pain'. If these are acupuncture
sites then this is the oldest known example of such treatment (459). See, Shen Nung c. 2.7 K B.C.E.
Eugen Hollander (DE) reports that the
characteristic signs of amputation have been found in prehistoric bones and
that Bronze Age surgical saws and files were plentiful everywhere, from Egypt
to Middle Europe (689).
3.2 K B.C.E.
David G. Mandelbaum (US) found documentary evidence of alcoholic
beverages written in Sumerian around 3.2 K. It most certainly concerns beer
rather than wine production and employs a specific pictograph for beer itself (905). Beer was
very likely produced much earlier than this in the Eastern Mediterranean and
Mesopotamia.
Carvings in the tombs of the Old Kingdom at Sakkara, Egypt
(ancient Memphis) depict methods for producing wine by fermentation, c. 2.2 K.
c.
3 K B.C.E.
Rosamund M. J. Cleal (GB), Karen E. Walker (GB), and Richard
Montague (GB) radiocarbon dated the first phase of Stonehenge, the outer ditch,
which lies far outside the iconic stone structure. The ditch forms a nearly
complete circle with an earthen bank on the inner side. (Now the bank is almost
level with the ground due to age.) Radiocarbon dating of material found in the
ditch in 1993-94 suggests it was built more than five thousand years ago,
somewhat before 3 K (318).
Lara M. Cassidy (IE), Ros Ó Maoldúin
(IE), Thomas Kador (GB), Ann Lynch (IE), Carleton Jones (IE), Peter C. Woodman
(IE), Eileen Murphy (GB), Greer Ramsey (GB), Marion Dowd (IE), Alice Noonan
(IE), Ciarán Campbell (IE), Eppie R. Jones (GB), Valeria Mattiangeli (IE), and
Daniel G. Bradley (IE), from their survey of ancient Irish genomes, suggested that
a man buried in Newgrange passage tomb in Ireland (c. 3 K) belonged to a
dynastic elite. Their analyses allowed them to confirm that his parents were
first-degree relatives. Matings of this type (e.g. brother-sister unions) are a
near universal taboo for entwined cultural and biological reasons. The only
confirmed social acceptances of first-degree incest are found among the elites—
typically within a deified royal family. By breaking the rules, the elite
separates itself from the general population, intensifying hierarchy and
legitimizing power. Public ritual and extravagant monumental architecture often
co-occur with dynastic incest, to achieve the same ends (281).
Edwin Smith (US), in 1862, obtained from an Egyptian artifacts
dealer what became known as the Edwin
Smith Surgical Papyrus. It reveals that the ancient Egyptians are
responsible for the oldest written record using the word brain and have provided the first written accounts of the anatomy
of the brain, the meninges (coverings of the brain) and cerebrospinal fluid.
This document was written around the year 1.7 K B.C.E. but is based on texts
that go back to about 3 K B.C.E. and is considered to be the first medical
document in the history of mankind. The 48 cases mentioned in the Edwin Smith
Surgical Papyrus concern:
27 head injuries (cases
#1-27)
6 throat and neck injuries
(cases #28-33)
2 injuries to the clavicle
(collarbone) (cases #34-35)
3 injuries to the arm
(cases #36-38)
8 injuries to the sternum
(breastbone) and ribs (cases #39-46)
1 injury to the shoulder
(case #47)
1 injury to the spine (case
#48)
This papyrus contains the first known reference to wound closure
by suturing, a statement translated as, “Thou shouldst draw together for him
his gash with stitching." advice for infected wounds includes a
recommendation to apply a decoction of willow (which contains salicin) and
astringents of copper and sodium salts. There is also a mention of breast
cancer.
Case #31 refers to the spinal cord injury as follows: “If thou
examinest a man having a dislocation in a vertebra of his neck, shouldst thou
find him unconscious of his two arms (and) his two legs on account of it, while
his phallus is erected on account of it, (and) urine drops from his member
without his knowing it; his flesh has received wind; his two eyes are
bloodshot; it is a dislocation of a vertebra of his neck extending to his
backbone which causes him to be unconscious of his two arms (and) his two
legs.”
A mixture of
grease and honey is recommended to prevent infection from occurring in an open
wound (225).
Esmond Ray Long (US) reported that from investigations on the
mummies of ancient Egypt we know that bone tumors and tuberculosis of the spine
occurred, that osteomyelitis and arthritis
deformans were common, that, arteriosclerosis of the senile (atheromatous
type with deposit of calcium salts) was at least as frequent as it is with us,
and possibly more so, and that pneumonias, anthracosis, pleurisies, renal
atrophies and abscesses, splenomegalies and gallstones troubled or cut off the
Pharaohs and priests of Ammon, with the same kind of gross and microscopic
change to be seen in the fresher human clay of the twenty-first century (873).
Marc Armand Ruffer (FR-GB) was the first to identify inflammatory
diseases of the joints among Egyptian mummies, thereby describing the presence
of arthritis and spondylitis in an atypically young Egyptian population. His
examination of the internal organs found that arteriosclerosis with
calcification was also common (1172-1174). Note:
Ruffer originated paleopathology
Among disasters mentioned in the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh as
preferable to the Flood was visitation from the god of pestilence, and an
Egyptian text of about the same age compares fear of Pharaoh with fear of the
god of disease in a year of pestilence (1109).
Samuel Noah Kramer (US) reported that Sumerian cuneiform tablets
list various drugs to be used in the treatment of common ailments (798).
The first description of what was probably hepatitis was
found in Sumeria with the first description of jaundice on clay tablets that
were the first handbook of medicine. The etiological agent was a devil name
Ahhazu who attacked the liver, which in those days was the home of the soul (1069; 1070).
Hindu physicians in the Ayur-Veda
developed the first clinical test for diabetes. They observed that flies
and ants were attracted to the sweet tasting urine of people afflicted with
certain diseases (1471).
The Egyptians were using frayed, fibrous chew sticks as a form of
toothbrush. Toothpaste was first used c. 2 K (1039).
Imhotep (EG) is the earliest physician (magician-physician) to be
recorded by name (264).
c.
2.7 K B.C.E.
Shen Nung; Pinyin Shen Nong; Yen Ti (CN) was the second of China's
mythical emperors. He is credited with inventing the cart and plow, taming the
ox and yoking the horse, teaching his people to clear the land with fire,
establishing a stable agricultural society in China, and prescribing the use of
seaweed for the treatment of goiter. His catalog of 365 species of medicinal
plants became the basis of later herbological studies. It is also claimed that
he originated acupuncture (866; 1128). Note:
This is likely the earliest use of an iodine containing substance to treat
goiter.
2.641
K B.C.E.
Ménes of Memphis (Aha), founding Pharaoh of the 1st Dynasty of
Egypt, died following a hornet sting or being trampled by a hippopotamus. This
may be the first recorded allergic reaction (anaphylactic shock) (906). The
confusion arises because the ancient Egyptian word for hornet and hippopotamus
are the same.
c.
2.6 K B.C.E.
The Egyptians, in approximately 2.6 K, were lucky enough to have a
sufficient amount of wild yeasts in the air from the beer brewing to
accidentally discover its uses in leavening bread. Workers were often paid in
loaves of bread. Paintings in the pyramids show that the dead were buried with
loaves of bread, to provide sustenance in the afterlife. (The British Museum
has one of these loaves--4 K years old!)
c. 2.5 K B.C.E.
The ancient Egyptians named some 202 different kinds of plants in hieroglyphics (877).
c.
2.3 K B.C.E.
A Chinese rice beer, kiu,
is mentioned. It was made from barley, wheat and spelt, as well as rice (1071).
c.
2.277 K B.C.E.
Raúl Patrucco (PE), Raúl Tello (PE), and Duccio Bonavia (PE) found
Ascaris lumbricoides eggs in human
coprolites from Peru (700; 1062).
c.
2.2 K B.C.E.
The first illustration of a surgical procedure is a bas-relief
found in a tomb in Sakkara, Egypt. It depicts a circumcision scene (633).
c.
2.25 K B.C.E.
From Nippur, Babylonia a clay tablet reveals a remedy for pain of
dental cavities. The tooth cement used was made by mixing henbane seed with
gum.
c.
2.04-1.783 K B.C.E.
One of the earliest written records of a urine-based pregnancy
test can be found in an ancient Egyptian document, the Berlin Papyrus. “Means for knowing if a woman will
give birth or will not give birth: (Put) some barley and some wheat (into two
bags of cloth) which the woman will moisten with her urine every day, equally
barley and grain in the two bags. If both the barley and the wheat sprout she
will give birth. If (only) the barley germinates it will be a boy, if it is the
wheat, which alone germinates it, will be a girl. If neither germinates she
will not give birth.” Testing of this theory in 1963 found that 70 percent of the
time, the urine of pregnant women did promote growth, while the urine of
non-pregnant women and men did not. Scholars have identified this as perhaps
the first test to detect a unique substance in the urine of pregnant women and
have speculated that elevated levels of estrogens in pregnant women’s urine may
have been the key to its success (578; 843; 1457).
Leprosy
is mentioned in the Brugsch Papyrus
of Egypt (242). Note:
The Brugsch
Papyrus,
also known as the Greater Berlin Papyrus, or simply Berlin Papyrus is an
important ancient Egyptian medical papyrus considered a copy of a much older
medical treatise from the Middle Kingdom (2040-1782 B.C.E.).
c.
2 K B.C.E.
" Diagnostic procedures
for injuries and diseases were common and extensive in Egyptian medical
practice. The physicians consulted texts and made their own observations. Each
physician listed the symptoms evident in a patient and then decided whether he
had the skill to treat the condition. If a priest determined that a cure was
possible, he reconsidered the remedies or therapeutic regimens available and
proceeded accordingly." (258)
Felipe Guhl (CO), Carlos Jaramillo (CO), Roxana Yockteng (CO),
Gutavo adolfo Vallejo (US), and Felipe Cardenas-Arroyo (CO) detected Trypanosoma cruzi DNA in the heart and
esophagus of mummified bodies from Peru and Northern Chile dating from 2 K B.C.E.
to 1.4 C.E. (618). Trypanosoma cruzi is the etiological
agent of Chagas (American
trypanosomiasis).
Descriptions of Old World
cutaneous leishmaniasis, known as oriental
sore, are found on tablets in the library of King Ashurbanipal from the 7th
century B.C.E., some of which are thought to have been derived from earlier
texts from 1.5-2.5 K B.C.E. (910).
Emily E. Stevens (US), Thelma E. Patrick (US), and Rita Pickler
(US) reported that wet nursing began as early as 2K B.C.E. and extended until
the 20th century. Throughout this time period, wet nursing evolved from an
alternative of need (2K B.C.E.) to an alternative of choice (950 B.C.E. to 1.8K
C.E.). Wet nursing is discussed in the Egyptian Papyrus Ebers, in
ancient Greece, The Bible (Moses had a wet nurse), ancient Rome and many texts
from the middle ages and later.
In 1865, chemist Johann Justus von Liebig (DE) developed,
patented, and marketed an infant food, first in a liquid form and then in a
powdered form for better preservation. In 1865, Justus von Liebig (DE) devised Liebig's
formula—consisting of cow's milk, wheat and malt flour, and potassium
bicarbonate. It was considered the perfect infant food .
The differences in digestion and absorption of breastfeeding
versus formula-feeding have been linked to key issues involving poor child
health outcomes. Three key issues are atopy, diabetes mellitus,
and childhood obesity (1298).
The Rgveda describes a healed tracheostomy incision (975).
Anonymous (Babylonian) “If the tips of [the patient's] fingers are
falling off and are black, he will die” (1466). Doubtless
this describes very serious gangrene.
Domestication of the silkworm in China
Arthur John Evans (GB) unearthed the palace of Knossos on the Greek
island of Crete. Based on the structures and artefacts found there and
throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, Evans found that he needed to distinguish
the Minoan civilization from that of Mycenaean Greece. Evans was also the first
to define Cretan scripts Linear A and Linear B, as well as an earlier
pictographic writing (494-496). Michael George
Francis Ventris (GB), in 1952, deciphered the Minoan Linear B script and showed
it to be Greek in its oldest known form; the Linear A script is yet to be
deciphered. Note: The Minoans flourished between 2000 and 1500 B.C.E.
c.
1.9 K B.C.E.
From the Mesopotamian Laws
of Eshnunna comes this statement: “If a dog is mad and the authorities have
brought the fact to the knowledge of its owner; if he does not keep it in and
it bites a man and causes his death, then the owner shall pay two-thirds of a
mina (40 shekels) of silver. If it bites a slave and causes his death, he shall
pay 15 shekels of silver.” (1492)
Wild or domesticated carnivores belonging to the family Felidae
(cats) were kept in a captive or semi-domesticated state by the Egyptians (1497).
c.
1.85 K B.C.E.
The
Petrie Papyri; Hieratic Papyri from Kahun and Gurob, contains
the oldest written reference to birth control measures that has been found to
date. It refers to a pessary (vaginal
suppository) of crocodile dung and fermented dough (612).
c.
1.8 K B.C.E.
Although the Code of
Hammurabi mentions the practice of hand pollinating date palms, the
sexuality of plants was not understood until 1694. This Code also includes a
set of rules for the regulation of both surgical practices and the surgeon’s
fees. If a physician healed a man's broken bone, the patient owed his doctor
five shekels. But if the healer accidently killed a patient of high status
during an operation, his hands would be cut off (630). See, Civitas
Hippocratica, c. 900 for surgeon’s fees.
c.
1.7 K B.C.E.
c.
1.55 K B.C.E..
George Moritz Ebers (DE) obtained an Egyptian papyrus now referred
to as the Papyrus Ebers. The papyrus
was discovered about 1862 and subsequently purchased by Ebers in Luxor, Thebes,
in 1873. In this medical treatise is recorded the use of castor oil as a
cathartic, sea onion (Urginea scilla
maritima) to treat dropsy, a remedy
to prevent the excessive crying of children which was probably like
paregoric, extract from acacia as a contraceptive, and red squill a rat poison.
These are all plant products. A disease most likely to be diabetes was
described. Tetanus is described. Parasitic worms such as Dracunculus (Guinea worm) and what was likely schistosomiasis are
also mentioned. Regarding abscesses it states, “If you examine a swelling of
pus in any limb of a man and you find it [with] its head raised and it is
enclosed and it is rounded, you shall say concerning it: ‘a swelling of pus, an
illness which will be treated by me with the knife treatment.’ There is something
in it like mucus. Something comes forth like wax. It makes a pocket. If
anything [remains] in its pocket, it recurs.” A relationship between heartbeat
and the peripheral pulse is noted. It is recommended that night-blindness be
treated with raw liver, a rich source of vitamin A (retinol)—case 57 in the Papyrus Ebers.
"If you examine a man because of suffering in his stomach,
and he suffers in his arm, his breast and the side of his stomach, one says
concerning him: It is the wadj-disease.
Then you shall say concerning it: Something has entered his mouth. Death is
approaching." Doubtless this is a description of coronary artery disease (250; 474).
Studies of Egyptian mummies have revealed that atherosclerosis and
arterial calcification were relatively common 3.5 K years ago (1265). The writer of the Ebers papyrus
clearly identified arterial aneurysms, probably peripheral aneurysms, and
recommended the following treatment: “Treat it with a knife and burn it with a
fire so that it bleeds not too much” (128).
The earliest credible clinical evidence of smallpox
(red plague)
is found in the smallpox-like disease in medical writings from ancient India (1256).
1.552 K B.C.E.
Hesy-Ra (EG) observed that there was a mysterious illness which
caused patients to weaken and wither away, and one of the symptoms was frequent
urination (which we now know is a major symptom of diabetes) (9).
c. 1.5 K B.C.E.
c. 1.4 K B.C.E.
c.
1.358-1.34 K B.C.E.
Akhenaten (EG), pharaoh of Egypt for 18 years, was thought because
of his physique in paintings to be the first recorded Klinefelter's syndrome
case in history. He also became the first known monotheistic ruler in history
when he established Aten (the sun god) as the one-and-only god of Egypt (899).
Medical analysis of Akhenaten's body, including DNA tests,
concluded that his appearance was not due to genetic disorders.
c.
1.3 K B.C.E.
c.
1.27 K B.C.E.
The “fiery serpent” was very likely the “Guinea worm” (Dracunculus medinensis) (803).Even before
Greeks, there are mentions of treatment of dracunculiasis in Syria and
India where a stick was used to wind around the worm as it emerged from a
lesion. This resembles with the rod of Asclepius.
c.
1.25-1 K B.C.E.
Marc Armand Ruffer (FR-GB) discovered and identified Shistosoma hematobium
bilharzia-calcified eggs in the kidneys of Egyptian mummies dating from 1.25 K-1
K B.C.E., revealing for the first time the existence of schistosomiasis in
ancient Egypt (1171; 1174). Note: This finding is
generally regarded as the beginning of paleoparasitology.
c.
1.2 K B.C.E.
Ancient Chinese literature from 1.2 K B.C.E. mentions parasitic
potter wasps that are misinterpreted as the stepfathers of caterpillars (762).
c.
1.157 K B.C.E.
Marc Armand Ruffer (FR-GB) analyzed the mummified remains of
Rhamses (Ramses) V, Egyptian pharoah from 1153-1157 B.C.E., and found that he
suffered from smallpox (red plague) (5; 696; 924; 1172; 1174).
According to Homer’s Odyssey
the daughter of Zeus cast a drug (likely opium) into wine "to assuage
suffering and to dispel anger, and to cause forgetfulness of all ills."
c.
1 K B.C.E.
Samuel (Hebrew) records that an epidemic was visited upon the
Philistines as punishment for the seizure of the Ark of the Covenant. The cause
of the epidemic was most likely dysentery (bloody flux) leading to severe cases
of hemorrhoids and anal bleeding (793; 1182).
Grafton Elliot Smith (GB), Marc Armand Ruffer (FR-GB), and Karl
Sudhoff (DE) described Pott's disease
(a
kind of tuberculous arthritis of the intervertebral joints) in another
Egyptian mummy, opening the debate about the occurrence of tuberculosis in
ancient times (1308).
There were numerous techniques of variolation to treat smallpox
(red plague). The Chinese avoided direct contact with the sick; instead the
child was induced to inhale a powder made from the crusts shed by a recovering
patient. In the Near East and in Africa fresh material from a diseased
patient’s pustules was rubbed into a cut or scratch in the skin of the person
being immunized (594; 895; 993).
c.
930 B.C.E.
Samuel (Hebrew) describes how 70,000 people in Judah and Israel
were killed by a pestilence as punishment for David’s sin of numbering the
people. (David, although he begged the Lord to do so, was not punished for this
transgression, i.e., sovereign immunity) (1183).
c.
850-550 B.C.E.
Homer (GR) seems to have realized the true origin of flies that
arose in putrefying carcasses. In the Iliad
he says:
“Yet fear I for Menoetius’ noble Son
Lest in his spear-inflicted wounds the flies
May gender worms and desecrate the dead
And, life extinct, corruption reach his flesh.”
Also, in the Iliad,
Achilles calls Hector a “rabid dog”.
Homer (GR) mentions the use of sulfur as a pesticide (fungicide)
against plant disease (694).
The mule is mentioned in Homer’s Iliad, “ . . . and before them went the mules; And ever upward,
downward, sideward and aslant they fared” (694).
c.
775 B.C.E.
Isaiah (Hebrew) recalls the fatal visitation that “slew in the
camp of the Assyrians 185,000” overnight, and caused the Assyrian king,
Sennacherib, to withdraw from Judah without capturing Jerusalem (730).
c.
766 B.C.E.
Amos of Tekoa (Hebrew) says, “I struck you with blight and searing
wind; your many gardens and vineyards, your fig trees and olive trees the
locust devoured; yet you returned not to me, says the Lord” (1330).
c.
740 B.C.E.
Azari´ah (Hebrew), King of Judah, was made leprous by the Lord as
a punishment. He remained leprous until his death, forced to live out his days
in a house for lepers (quarantined) (1).
c.
660 B.C.E.
Archilochus (GR) described phymatiasis (tuberculosis) which apparently
included abscesses and tubercles (84).
Venerabili D'havantare (IN) in his System Medicine describes an incurable disease called "closing
of the throat, arising from phlegm combined with blood." This could hardly
be any other disease than diphtheria (1314). Quoted by
Morell Mackenzie (898).
c.
620 B.C.E.
Elijah (Hebrew) may have performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on
a child suffering from heat stroke. This was the first example of assisted
respiration (2).
An Assyrian tablet warns against “a noxious pustule in the ear of
grain”. This was very likely ergot (Fr. argo, spur).
In 400 B.C.E the Parsees (followers of Zoroaster) wrote, “Among
the evil things created … are noxious grasses that cause pregnant women to drop
the womb and die in childbirth” (595). Again,
this likely refers to ergot.
Grains infected with the fungus Claviceps purpurea produce a complex mixture of chemicals which,
depending on dosage, are associated with ergotism, St. Anthony’s fire,
contraction of the uterus and relief of migraine headache.
Adam Lonitzer; Adam Lonicer (DE) wrote
that midwives used low doses of ergot to stimulate uterine contraction (875).
John Stearns (US) described the value of ergot, “It expedites
lingering parturition, and saves to the accoucheur a considerable portion of
time, without producing any bad effects on the patient…. In most cases you will
be surprised with the suddenness of its operation…. Since I have adopted the
use of this powder I have seldom found a case that detained me more than three
hours…. It is a vegetable and appears to be a spurious growth of rye” (1293).
William J. Dieckmann (US) J.B. Forman (US), and G.W. Phillips (US)
reported that ergonovine, an alkaloid
isolated from ergot, has a powerful action upon contractions of the pregnant
uterus (445). It is safe
only in the third stage of labor.
Synonyms for ergotism
include: St. Anthony's fire, holy fire, evil fire, devil's fire, and saints'
fire.
c.
610 B.C.E.
Thales of Miletus (GR), the philosopher and geometrician, was the
first person to attempt to explain the variety of nature as the modification of
something in nature. He believed that all vegetable and animal substances were
derived from water.
It was Thales, who observed that yellow amber, when rubbed, had
the power to attract light objects, such as feathers. The word electricity is
derived from the Greek word for amber (1454).
Western philosophy and science begin with Thales (1179).
Erwin Schrödinger (AT) reasoned that science had begun at Ionia,
the western fringe of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and the islands off the coast.
According to him there are three main reasons why science began here. First,
the region did not belong to a powerful state, which are usually hostile to
free thinking. Second, the Ionians were a seafaring people, who had to solve
practical problems— navigation, means of transport, water supply, and
handicraft techniques. Third, the area was not ‘priest-ridden’; there was not,
as in Babylon or Egypt, a hereditary, privileged priestly caste with a vested
interest in the status quo (1218).
600 B.C.E.
The
Sushruta Samhita tells of nasal reconstruction. The
mutilation of the nose was rampant as a form of punishment in the past and this
necessitated skin grafting for the repair of the mutilated nose (66; 999; 1313).
c.
580 B.C.E.
Anaximander (GR) saw spontaneous generation as a unique historical
event, followed by the transmutation of and evolution of different forms. He
held that the human young need a long period of care and protection, therefore
had man always been as he is now, he could not have survived. Ergo man must
once have been different, that is, he must have evolved from an animal which
can fend for itself more quickly. He went on to state that man derives from the
fish of the sea, and this he backed up by observations on fossil remains and on
how sharks feed their young. Anaximander also theorized the existence of four
basic elements, which were earth, air, fire, and water (758; 1228).
c.
570-480 B.C.E.
Xenophanes (GR) observed that fossils of seashells are sometimes
found on mountain heights. From this he concluded that the sea at one time
covered the material of the mountains (1488).
c.
550 B.C.E.
Cyrus the Great, King of Persia (550-529 B.C.E.), who established
a board of health and a medical dispensary for his citizens, had water drawn
from a designated stream then "boiled, and very many four-wheeled wagons
drawn by mules carry it in silver vessels, following the king whithersoever he
goes at any time" (661).
Susruta (Hindu) wrote the Sushruta
Samhita, in which he mentions dissection of the human body, leprosy,
scurvy, diabetes (he noted the difference between thin people who
develop the disease at a young age and heavier people who develop diabetes
at an older age. He also noted that the older heavier group seemed to live
longer. This method of classifying diabetics remains with us today), heart pain
which may be angina pectoris,
phthisis (pulmonary tuberculosis), many diseases of the eye, couching or
reclination of cataracts (the cataractous lens was displaced away from the
pupil to lie in the vitreous cavity in the back of the eye), removal of iron
from the eye with a magnet, and a Caesarean section procedure. Many medicinal
plants are mentioned and some specific drugs and chemicals such as Hyoscyamus niger (henbane), opium,
cinnamon, ginger, chenopodium, croton oil, castor oil, pomegranate, Cannabis indica (cannabis), solanum,
acacia, aconite, cassia, powders of Caesaepinia
sappon (sappon wood), licorice root, Berberis
asiatica (barberry), Terra japonica,
antimony, copper sulfate, borax, mercury, silver, and sodium carbonate.
There are numerous contributions made by Sushruta to the field of
surgery. Surgical demonstration of techniques of making incisions, probing,
extraction of foreign bodies, alkali and thermal cauterization, tooth
extraction, excisions, trocars for draining abscess draining hydrocele and
ascitic fluid. Described removal of the prostate gland, urethral stricture
dilatation, vesiculolithotomy, hernia surgery, caesarian section, management of
hemorrhoids, fistulae, laparotomy and management of intestinal obstruction,
perforated intestines, accidental perforation of the abdomen with protrusion of
omentum. It classified details of the six types of dislocations, twelve
varieties of fractures and classification of the bones and their reaction to
the injuries. It described principles of fracture management, viz., traction,
manipulation, appositions and stabilization including some measures of
rehabilitation and fitting of prosthetics. It classified eye diseases (76) with
signs, symptoms, prognosis, medical/surgical interventions and cataract
surgery. Description of method of stitching the intestines by using ant-heads
as stitching material. It was the first to deal with embryology and sequential
development of the structures of the fetus. It discussed dissection and the
study of human anatomy. It introduced wine to dull the pain of surgical
incisions. It enumerates 1120 illnesses and recommends diagnosis by inspection,
palpation and auscultation (177; 1252). It is
difficult to determine the age of particular aspects of this medical knowledge;
some of it is doubtless much older.
c. 539 B.C.E.
Persians of the Achaemenid Empire, after their conquest of Babylon
in 539 B.C.E. agreed to grant Jerusalem a large measure of local autonomy
within the empire but required the local authorities to produce a single law
code accepted by the entire community. The two powerful groups making up the
community—the priestly families who controlled the Second Temple and who traced
their origin to Moses and the wilderness wanderings, and the major landowning
families who made up the "elders" and who traced their own origins to
Abraham, who had "given" them the land—were in conflict over many
issues, and each had its own "history of origins", but the Persian
promise of greatly increased local autonomy for all provided a powerful
incentive to cooperate in producing a single text (31). Note: A significant
number of biblical scholars now suggest that the Pentateuch, while describing prehistoric
events, was assembled c. 550-529 B.C.E.
Moses (Hebrew) brought down upon Egypt "sores that break into
pustules on man and beast" (979). Could this
have been smallpox (red plague)?
Moses (Hebrew) states, “…and all the water of the river was
changed to blood. The fish in the river died, and the river itself became so
polluted that the Egyptians could not drink its water…” (978). Could this
be the first recorded case of red tide?
Moses (Hebrew) states that, “Furthermore, a lethal visitation upon
Egypt’s firstborn in a single night left "not a house where there was not
someone dead" (980).
God made Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron, leprous. The Lord
ordered that she be shut up—quarantined—outside
the camp for seven days (982).
Moses (Hebrew) writes in Numbers 21:8, “And the Lord said unto
Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to
pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live” (983). Could this
be the origin of the caduceus? Note: In 1912 the American Medical
Association (AMA) abandoned the caduceus and took Asclepius as the symbol of
medicine.
Asclepius
(also spelled as Asklepios or Aesculapius) was the Greek god of medicine. The
original Hippocratic oath starts with “I swear by Apollo the physician and by
Asclepius and by Hygieia and Panacea and by all the gods…”. Asclepius is often
depicted carrying a staff with one snake wrapped around it. Ancient Greeks
believed snakes had healing power. To them snakes represented regeneration
(relate to ecdysis or molting of skin in snakes).
Moses (Hebrew) “And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron, saying,
when a man shall have in the skin of his flesh a rising, a scab, or bright
spot, and it be in the skin of his flesh like the plague of leprosy; then he
shall be brought unto Aaron the priest, or unto one of his sons the priests:
and the priest shall look on the plague in the skin of his flesh: and when the
hair in the plague is turned white, and the plague in sight be deeper than the
skin of his flesh, it is a plague of leprosy… (981). Note: The skin disease described in
Leviticus may not have been what we today call leprosy. Early physicians
applied the word lepra to all scaly
skin eruptions such as psoriasis.
The obstetric chair, first mentioned in the Bible
and by Greek writers, appears to be of great antiquity. In Exodus 1:16 Moses
(Hebrew) tells us that pharoah commands the hebrew midwives, "When you do
the office of a midwife, and see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye
shall kill him: but if it be a daughter, then she shall live." (983)
The use of the primitive chipped flint in ritual
circumcision is referred to in Exodus 4:25 where Moses tell us, "Then
Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it
at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me." (983)
522
B.C.E.
Democedes founds a medical school at Athens.
c.
520 B.C.E.
Alcmaèon; Alkmaeon of Crotona (GR) was one of the first physicians
to routinely dissect the human body and made many valuable discoveries in
anatomy. He described the optic nerve and Eustachian tube, distinguished
arteries from veins, taught that the brain is the center of thought, and
refuted the belief that sperm originate from the spinal cord. He suggested that
health might be defined as maintenance of equilibrium, or isonomy in the material of the body (874; 1075). See, milieu
intériieur of Claude Bernard (FR), 1865 and homeostasis of Walter Bradford Cannon (US), 1926.
Plant diseases, most likely blight and mildew of grain, are
mentioned in Israel (3; 4).
c.
500 B.C.E.
“Everything in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity.”
Democritus (GR) (813).
“The first principles of the universe are atoms and empty space;
everything else is merely thought to exist. Further, the atoms are unlimited in
size and number, and they are borne along in the whole universe in a vortex,
and thereby generate all composite things—fire, water, air, and earth; for even
these are conglomerations of given atoms.” Democritus (GR) (813).
“The world is made of two parts, the full (pleres, steron) and the
empty, the vacuum (cenon, manon). The fullness is divided into
small particles called atoms (atomon,
that cannot be cut, indivisible). The atoms are infinite in number, eternal,
absolutely simple; they are all alike in quality but differ in shape, order,
and position. Every substance, every single object, is made up of those atoms,
the possible combinations of which are infinite in an infinity of ways. The
objects exist as long as the atoms constituting them remain together; they
cease to exist when their atoms move away from one another. The endless changes
of reality are due to the continual aggregation and disaggregation of atoms.”
Democritus (GR) (1190).
Democritus (GR) and Leucippus (GR) were the first to teach that
all matter is composed of infinitesimally small particles—the atomic theory. The motions and behavior
of the atoms are not the result of the whims of the gods. Even the creation of
the universe was a chance event once the atoms had been set into motion (228; 438).
“Man does not realize how that which varies is a unity. There is a
harmony of opposite tensions as there is one of bow and lyre.” Heraclitus of
Ephesus (GR) (659)
Plato (GR) discussed abortion as follows: “It is the midwives who
have the power to bring on the pains [in childbirth], and also, if they think
it fit, to relieve them; they do it by the use of simple drugs, and by singing
incantations. In difficult cases, too, they can bring about the birth; or, if
they consider it advisable, they can promote a miscarriage” (1084).
Leonard Erskine Hill (GB) reported that the Greeks used carotid
restriction as an anesthetic for surgery (672).
The ancients knew
that compressing the carotid arteries, the principal arteries of the neck, causes
loss of consciousness. The Greek word carotid means drowsiness, and
carotid artery means the artery of sleep. Pressure on the jugular veins of the
neck—the cutthroat veins—likewise causes insensibility. In a passage in his History
of Animals, Aristotle says of the jugular veins: "If these veins are
pressed externally, men, though not actually choked, become insensible, shut
their eyes, and fall flat on the ground" (130; 1153).
480
B.C.E.
The "Plague of Xerxes", probably an outbreak of dysentery (bloody flux), hit the Persian army, facilitating its defeat by
the Greeks in Asia Minor. The Greek historian Herodotus probably exaggerated
its impact, but it is nonetheless significant as one of the first epidemics
recorded in a lengthy written account (793).
c.
460 B.C.E.
“Man is the measure of all things, of those that are in so far as
they are, and those that are not in so far as they are not.”
Protagoras of Abdera (605).
Anaxagoras of
Clazomene (GR) was the first to teach that all heavenly bodies were brought
into existence by the same processes that formed the earth and that all of
these objects are made of the same materials (61).
Herodotus (GR) reported artificial pollination of date palms by
the Arabs. He also noted that the skulls of slain Egyptian and Libyan soldiers
were much thicker and less fragile than those of Persian soldiers. The
Egyptians attributed this to the fact that they went bareheaded from birth
while the Persians wrapped their heads in turbans. This may be the first
reference to a relationship between bone quality and sunlight (660).
Empedocles of Agrigentum (GR) was the first to teach that the
heart is the center of the blood-vessel system. He postulated that all bodies
are made from four elements: air, water, earth and fire, with life being
derived from them and based on the existence of four essential qualities: heat,
cold, moisture, and dryness. Later physicians would attach the four humors:
blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile to this concept (the doctrine of
humors) (481). The
Humoral Theory first received explicit discussion in Nature of Man by
Polybus, Hippocrates' son-in-law (678).
c.
450 B.C.E.
"Blessed is he who contemplates the ageless order of immortal
nature, how it is constituted and when and why" Euripides (488).
“The vessels communicate with one another and the blood flows from
one to another. I do not know where the commencement is to be found, for in a
circle you can find neither commencement nor end, but from the heart the
arteries take their origin and through the vessel, the blood is distributed to
all the body, to which it gives warmth and life; they are the sources of human
nature and are like rivers that purl through the body and supply the human body
with life; the heart and the vessels are perpetually moving, and we may compare
the movement of the blood with courses of rivers returning to their sources
after a passage through numerous channels." On the Localities of Man (522; 673; 1452). Note: Here is the first mention of connections between different
types of blood vessels transporting blood, as well as a suggestion that blood
circulates.
"The heart is a powerful muscle . . . [with] two distinct
ventricles quite dissimilar; the right is in front . . . is spacious and less
firm than the left; it does not reach the apex. The left ventricle is located
beneath, exactly behind the left nipple where its beat can be felt; it has a
thick wall. The lungs envelop the ventricle . . . [and] thus moderate the
excess heat, since [they] are cold and refreshed by respiration. . .. soft and
hollow structures surround the ventricle . . . called auricles . . . thanks to
them the heart regulates respiration; . . [after the ventricles cease to
contract] they may continue to be inflated and deflated isolatedly. . . after
resection [of the apex of the ventricles and the upper part of the auricles]
two apertures appear in each ventricle. It remains to speak about hidden
membranes and of fibers stretched in the ventricles like spider webs completely
surrounding the apertures. At the origin of the two arteries [which originate
from the ventricles] are placed very ingeniously on the right and on the left
side three rounded membranes, with their free edge disposed in semicircle; when
these come together, it is admirable to observe how they obstruct the lumen of
the arteries. If someone . . . after extracting the heart from a human cadaver,
first separates and then brings together the leaflets, neither the injection of
water nor of air will force these in the heart; this is particularly true of
the left side where the leaflets are built with great precision. With regard to
the vessel originating from the right ventricle, it also presents the
commissure of the leaflets, but they do not obliterate the orifice completely
because they are too weak. This vessel opens up also toward the lung to supply
it with blood which serves as its nourishment, whereas it is closed toward the
heart, not hermetically sealed, but enough, however, to let some air pass
through in small quantity.” Philistion of Locroi (GR) (179; 676). Note: The date of this treatise has been
questioned, yet it is ancient and remarkable.
Pien Ts’Io (CN) recognized the pulse beat as a diagnostic and
prognostic criterion of pathology (712).
Caelius
Aurelianus
(Roman) credits Apollonius Memphites; Apollonius Memfites; Apollonius
Stratonicus
(EG) with coining the name diabetes
for an affliction he considered a form of dropsy. The name he chose was derived
from the Ionian Greek verb diabainein, meaning to
pass through (dia - through, betes - to go). Caelius Aurelianus’
medical works consist of a translation of Soranus of
Ephesus (2nd century) —Tardae [Chronicae Passiones], in five books, and
Celeres [Acutae Passiones] in three books. His most famous work, De
Morbis Acuts et Chronicis (“Concerning Acute and Chronic Diseases”), is a
thorough exposition of classical medical knowledge (101).
John Rollo (GB) was the first to add the adjective mellitus to diabetes when he
published a paper entitled, An Account of
Two Cases of Diabetes Mellitus. He applied the name mellitus, derived from the Latin and Greek roots for honey, to
distinguish diabetes mellitus from
other causes of polyuria (excessive urine production) in which the urine has no
sweet taste. He termed the other causes of polyuria diabetes insipidus (from the Latin for tasteless), a term still in
use today. Rollo applied his understanding of diabetes toward the
development of a treatment, which included a high protein, low carbohydrate
diet and compounds that would suppress the appetite such as antimony, digitalis
and opium. On this regimen, some of his patients' symptoms improved (1157). See, Willis 1684.
451
B.C.E.
A severe outbreak of an unidentified disease struck Rome and was
recorded by the historians Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnasus. Most likely an
epidemic of tuberculosis or anthrax (793).
Susruta
(Hindu) described a procedure called couching, in which a cataractous lens is
displaced with a sharp instrument so that it falls into the vitreous cavity,
clearing the visual axis. Since there were no corrective glasses or lenses,
vision was still significantly blurred. This earliest written reference to
cataract surgery was found in Sanskrit manuscripts dating from the fifth
century B.C.E. (8).
c.
430 B.C.E.
Thucydides (GR) recognized contagion in the great plague of Athens
during the Peloponnesian War. “Appalling too was the rapidity with which men
caught the infection; dying like sheep if they attended on one another; and this
was the principle cause of mortality. When they were afraid to visit one
another, the sufferers died in solitude, so that many houses were empty because
there had been no one left to take care of the sick; or if they ventured, they
perished, those who aspired to heroism…. No one was ever attacked a second time
or not with a fatal result.” This is recognition of specific immunity. The
cause of this infection, which killed off a quarter of the Athenian army,
cannot be firmly identified with any modern infection (1261). From other
sources it is known that Pericles, the leader of the Athenians was a victim of
this plague. Note: Suspects include: smallpox (red plague), typhoid, plague,
and typhus (camp fever).
Philip A. Mackowiak (US) deduced that smallpox (red plague) was the most likely cause of this plague in
Athens (899).
Manolis J. Papagrigorakis (GR), Christos Yapijakis (GR),
Philippos N. Synodinos (GR), and Effie Baziotopoulou-Valavani (GR) analyzed
teeth recovered from a mass grave dated to 430 B.C.E., underneath Athens. They
confirmed typhoid as the probable
cause of the plague (182; 1042).
Hippocrates; Hippocratus (GR) records an
epidemic of jaundice on the island of Thassos, during which the people were
first afflicted with fever and vomiting, then developed jaundice and stiffness
over the next seven days.The disease was usually fatal in those who did not
suffer a fever, but those who did usually survived. This description is almost
certainly a viral hepatitis, although it is subtly different from modern
forms and thought to be attributable to an extinct viral strain (929). Note:
The word icterus (Jaundice) appears for the first time in these
writings.
Hippocrates; Hippocratus (GR) states that the liver is the root of
the veins and the source of blood and heat: 'Root of veins, liver; root of
arteries, heart: from these blood, breath and heat flow out to all parts'. (677)
c.
410 B.C.E.
“Swellings appeared about the ears…. In all cases they disappeared
without giving trouble, neither did any of them come to suppuration, as is
common in swellings from other causes. They were of a lax, large, diffused
character, without inflammation or pain… In some instances, earlier, and in
others later, inflammations with pain seized sometimes one of the testicles,
and sometimes both” Hippocrates (19).
Note: This is the first recorded epidemic of mumps as described
by Hippocrates, who was probably present on the Island of Thasos where the
epidemic struck around 410 B.C.E. (793). He also
recognized orchitis (inflammation of
a testis) as its most frequent complication.
Robert Hamilton (GB) wrote of orchitis
in mumps and suggested that the central nervous system was involved (628).
Hippocrates; Hippocratus (GR) described the hydatid cyst
associated with echinococcosis (19).
c.
400 B.C.E.
“Life is short, and the Art long; the occasion fleeting;
experience fallacious, and judgment difficult.” Hippocrates (674).
Pyrethrum from the dried flower heads of Chrysanthemum cinerariifolium and Chrysanthemum coccineum was
introduced as an insecticide in Persia (1041).
Hermann
Staudinger (DE) and Lavoslav Ružička (NL) identified the active substances
(pyrethrins) and their structure from the
Dalmatian pyrethrum extract (1292).
Nina Helt Nielsen (DK), Peter Steen Henriksen (DK), Renée Enevold
(DK), Cartsten Scavenius (DK), Morten Fischer Mortensen (DK), Martin Nordvig
Mortensen (DK), and Jan J. Enghild (DK) described the last meal of "Tollund
Man", a bog body from Early Iron Age Denmark, his bowl contents were
reexamined using new analyses of plant macrofossils, pollen, non-pollen
palynomorphs, steroid markers and proteins found in his gut. Some 12-24 hours
before he was killed, he ate a porridge containing barley, pale persicaria and
flax, and probably some fish. Proteins and eggs from intestinal worms—whipworms,
tapeworms, and mawworms—indicate that he was infected with parasites (1001). Note: "Tollund
Man", a naturally mummified corpse of a man who lived during the 5th
century B.C.E., during the period characterised in Scandinavia as the Pre-Roman
Iron Age. He was found in 1950, preserved as a bog body, on the Jutland
peninsula, in Denmark and remains the best preserved of the bog people. Common
to them is that they show signs of untimely and very violent deaths and that
they received an extraordinary burial in a watery place.
cf
Hippocrates; Hippocratus (GR) is the name given to as many as
seven Greek physicians of whom the second is regarded as the most famous. He
was born on the island of Cos in 460 or 459 B.C.E. and died at Larissa about 375
B.C.E.. He founded a medical school on Cos at which students were taught that
disease is a purely physical phenomenon, not ascribable to the gods; that
moderation in diet is good, and that cleanliness and rest are important for
those recovering from an illness or injury. Illness was regarded as an
imbalance of the four: blood, which was made in the liver; phlegm, associated
with the lungs; yellow bile, associated with the gall bladder; and black bile,
associated with the spleen. The four main diseases characterized by an excess
of one of the humors were sanguine (an excess of blood), phlegmatic (excess of
phlegm), choleric (excess of yellow bile), and melancholic (excess of black
bile). Good health was achieved when the four humors returned to their normal
equilibrium concentrations. Bad air was also believed to cause disease when it
contained a miasma (pollutant) inimical to mankind. The physician was
encouraged to not interfere with the patient’s natural healing process. The
lasting fame of the hippocratic approach rests on the fact that it put medicine
on a scientific footing. The first rule was the observation of patient followed
by the use of principles gradually derived from experience. In this way
deductive reason could be brought to bear on the nature of the disease, its
course and treatment. This is the source of the famous Aphorismi, short rules which contain at times principles derived
from experience and at times conclusions drawn from the same source (675; 677; 679).
Hippocrates; Hippocratus (GR) mentions oral thrush; aphthae
in the mouth (677).
Hippocrates; Hippocratus (GR) was the first to advocate the use of
ligatures to tie off bleeders (677).
The Hippopcratic Treatise
states that the heart has four chambers with two auricles and two ventricles
and reveals knowledge of the action of the semi-lunar valves of the aorta and
pulmonary artery (717).
The Hippopcratic Treatise
states that night-blindness can be successfully treated with liver (675; 677).
The Hippopcratic Treatise
describes empyema is this manner, "Empyema may be recognized in all cases
by the following symptoms: In the first place, the fever does not go off, but
is slight during the day, and increases at night, and copious sweats intervene,
there is a desire to cough, and the patients expectorate nothing worth
mentioning, the eyes become hollow…the nails of the hand are bent, the fingers
are hot" (675).
The Hippocratic Treatise
describes gout (675).
Hippocrates; Hippocratus (GR) gives a splendid description of a
woman from Thasus who suffered from many of the features that we now recognize
to be associated with the acute attack of porphyria (675).
The Hippopcratic Treatise
states that, "Such persons as are seized with tetanus die within four
days, or if they pass these they recover" (675).
The Hippocratic Treatise
describes an epidemic on the island of Thasos. From the description of the
disease it was very likely relapsing
fever that is caused by the bacterium Borrelia
recurrentis (675).
The Hippocratic Treatise
describes a case of pleuritis (1073).
The Hippopcratic Treatise
discusses epilepsy as a disturbance of the brain and states that the
brain is involved with sensation and is the seat of intelligence. It emphasized
that heredity plays an important role in the etiology of epilepsy (675).
The Hippocratic Treatise
refers to a disease whose symptoms include tertian (every 48 hours) or quartan
(every 72 hours) fever and an enlarged spleen. There is a high probability that
the disease was malaria (ague) (215).
Hippocrates (GR) mentions Queen Anne's Lace, or Wild Carrot, in
his writings as a highly effective oral contraceptive and as an abortifacient,
i.e., causing abortion (675).
David L. Keenan (US), Arunasalam M. Dharmarajan (AU), and Howard
A. Zacur (US) found that Wild Carrot in a rabbits diet results in diminished
ovarian progesterone secretion, whereas a metabolite, retinoic acid, stimulates
progesterone secretion in the in vitro
perfused rabbit ovary (769). It
continues to be used to this day as a sort of morning-after contraceptive, with
women in parts of the rural United States drinking a teaspoonful of the seeds
with a glass of water immediately after sex. Note: Queen Anne's Lace is
also known as Mother Die, because if you brought it into your house, according
to superstition, your mother would die.
Hippocrates (GR) recorded an outbreak of a cough followed by
pneumonia and other symptoms, at Perinthus in Northern Greece (now part of
Turkey). Several possible identifications have been suggested, including influenza (grippe), whooping cough
and diphtheria (Boulogne sore throat) (793).
Hippocrates (GR) recommended that food should be thoroughly chewed
before swallowing, and consumed in moderation to maintain good health. Ref
Bronze, S-shaped, urethral catheters with one terminal eye and
size proportionate to age and sex were in common use (288).
Chalmers L. Gemmill (US) notes that one of the oldest known
effective birth controls was a plant called silphium, a member of the Ferula genus. Apparently, it was
extremely effective and was used to extinction by the third or fourth century A.D.(572).
c. 396 B.C.E.
There was an epidemic in Carthage, North Africa (Tunisia); likely
caused by smallpox or plague (793).
c.
355-280 B.C.E.
Praxagoras of Cos (GR) established the diagnostic importance of
the pulse and was probably the first to distinguish arteries from veins,
believing that the arteries carried air. He created an entero-cutaneous fistula
to relieve obstruction of the bowels (1105). See, earlier references to pulse,
arteries, and veins.
c.
350 B.C.E.
"It is not hyperbole for us to say that all of biology is a
footnote to Aristotle. He defined the field, outlined the major problems, and
accumulated data to provide answers—he set the course" (971).
"It is to Aristotle in the first place that we owe the
distinction between those who describe the world in terms of myth and the
supernatural, and those who first attempted to account for it by natural causes.
The former he called theologi, the
latter physici or physiologi, and he ascribes the
beginning of the new, physical
outlook to Thales and his successors at Miletus, hailing Thales himself as
first founder of this kind of philosophy" (622). See, Thales of Miletus, c. 610 B.C.E.
"Does the female contribute nothing whatever to generation,
merely providing a place where generation may happen; or does it contribute
something else, and if so, how and in what manner does it do so?’ … Very often
the female conceives although she has derived no pleasure from the act of
coitus; Women sometimes derive pleasure from it comparable to the male and also
produce a fluid secretion. This fluid, however, is not seminal; There is a
discharge from the uterus, which though it happens in some women does not in
others. Speaking generally, this happens in fair-skinned women who are
typically feminine, and not in dark women of a masculine appearance. This
discharge is sometimes on quite a different scale from the semen discharged by
the male, and greatly exceeds it in bulk." Aristotle (90).
Aristotle (GR) wrote the Historia
Animalium, the first monograph on general biology, in which he discussed
the structure, breeding habits, reproduction, behavior, ecology, distribution,
and relationships of animals. He knew about parthenogenesis. He taught that
nature is not capricious and can best be explained by observation rather than
belief thus laying the foundation for all scientists who would follow.
Aristotle sought to reduce the great diversity of natural phenomena into a
comprehensible scheme by looking for unifying principles, without which
rational thought is difficult. He maintained that there are natural groups
among life forms which can be recognized by their common structure, physiology,
behavior, and mode of action; realized that general concepts might emerge from
the study of the same phenomenon in a variety of species; developed the
concepts of homology versus analogy as a way of comparing life forms; used the
term eidos (species) to describe animals that are so alike that they are
obviously of the same kind; observed the development of the chick and other
eggs and noted that, “development from the egg proceeds in an identical manner
in all birds”; recognized the oviparous, ovoviviparous, and viviparous patterns
of generation; recognized the fundamental similarity of development in fish,
bird, and mammal; argued for a physical basis of inheritance; realized that
nails, hair, and horns all form from skin; provided argument and observation to
support epigenesis; and suspected that problems of development and regeneration
are similar. Aristotle also used the term genos (genus) in a context very similar to the way in which it is used
today.
Aristotle (GR) linked consumption of figs and sweet foods with the
development of tooth decay.
Aristotle (GR) provided the earliest taxonomic classification of
fish, accurately describing 117 species of Mediterranean fish. Furthermore, he
documented anatomical and behavioral differences between fish and marine
mammals.
Aristotle (GR) was the first to explain deductive reasoning, the
science of drawing conclusions from premises in formal syllogisms. He thought
this was the basic tool for understanding any subject.
He termed the coelenterates Acalephae
or Cnidae (Gk. akalephe, nettle; cnidos,
thread) since he knew they could sting; and noted what was probably the larval
stage (cysticerci) of the cestode parasite Taenia
solium in the tongue of the hog, describing it as “hail.”
He did support some incorrect assumptions such as the belief that
many animals arise spontaneously and not from kindred stock. According to him
some animals came from dew falling on leaves, ßothers from decaying mud, dung,
or timber. Some were supposed to develop in the fur of animals or in the
excrement after it had been voided or even while still within the living body.
He states that flies come from grubs that develop in the dung that farmers have
gathered up in heaps. Fleas, bugs, and lice were supposed to be produced from
moisture and filth, and it was believed that some fish proceed from mud, sand,
or decayed matter. Eels were thought by Aristotle to come from so-called Earth’s guts that grows in mud and humid
ground.
Aristotle (GR) described experiments supporting the concept of
internal secretions by the testicles.
Aristotle (GR) postulated an intrinsic directionality, or
unfolding process in nature (orthogenesis),
which was distilled in his concept of physis.
He also inspired the concept of an ascending ladder of perfection, or
hierarchy, that later came to be associated with the Latin phrase scala naturae (130).
Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz (DE), in 1686, would expand upon this subject as the “great chain of
being.” The sense of permanence in the chain is crucial to understanding
this conception of reality. One does not abandon one's place in the chain; it
is not only unthinkable, but generally impossible (845).
Androsthenes (GR),
a ship's captain serving under Alexander the Great (MK), described diurnal leaf
movements of the tamarind tree (226).
The earliest
record of buildings dedicated as hospitals comes from Mihintale in Sri Lanka.
The identification is based on a tenth century inscription found at the site (1121).
323 B.C.E.
Alexander the Great (MK) very likely died of typhoid fever
complicated by bowel perforation and ascending paralysis (899; 1010).
c.
320 B.C.E.
Theophrastus of Ereus; Theophrastos of Eresus (GR) produced two
great works on plants: Historia Plantarum,
and De Causis Plantarum, in which he
pursued the classification and physiology of plants. They include descriptions
of 500 plants, many of which were promoted as having medicinal use including
the first written record of the use of opium (See, Papyrus Ebers, 1500 B.C.E.).
In addition to medicinal properties he discussed seeds, grafting, budding, and
the effects of disease and weather on plants. He compared the formation of the
plant in the seed to the fetus of an animal, something produced by it but not a
part of it (1336-1340). These
works are the oldest distinctively botanical treatise extant. The plant genus
Theophrasta was dedicated to him by Linnaeus in 1740 (1382). He is also
commemorated in the family Theophrastaceae.
Theophrastus of Ereus; Theophrastos of Eresus (GR) composed a
treatise on amphibious fish (1253).
c.
300 B.C.E.
"The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth; and he
that is wise will not abhor them." Ecclesiasticus 38:4
The
first ever book on medicinal plants was published in China in 300–200 B.C.E.
J. Jansen, Jr. (NL) and Hans J. Over (NL) revealed the presence of
the parasitic worm Trichuris trichiura
(whipworm) in a 2100 to 2500 year old human refuge mound in Northwest Germany (739).
Erasistratus of Julis (of Ceos); Eristratos of Iulis (of Ceos)
(GR-EG) explained his Air-Pneuma Theory. He believed in various types of
interconnected pneuma, but they had a different course through the body. The
first type, vital pneuma, came from air drawn through the trachea that was then
changed into lung tissue. The vital pneuma, mixed with blood and then traveled
in the arteries to the base of the brain where it was transformed into psychic
pneuma. The psychic pneuma, sometimes referred to as animal spirit, aided the
functioning of the brain and nerves. Erasistratus held that health and disease
and, in fact, the nature of life were intimately connected with the pneuma.
Erasistratus' theory of circulation states that the right side of
the heart receives blood and pumps it to the lungs, while the left side
receives air from arteries in the lung and then pumps it throughout the body
via the arterial system. Galen (Galeni), physician of Rome, attributes this
theory to Greek physician Erasistratus of Julis (551).
Erasistratus of Julis was noted for his anatomical studies and
rigorous seeking of causal explanations of diseases. For example, he described
the valves of the heart, distinguished sensory and motor nerves, and accurately
described the movement of food in the body (761; 1274).
Herophilus of Alexandria; Herophilos of Chalcedon; Herofilos
of Chalkedon
(GR) was probably the first to perform human dissections in public. He was very
interested in comparing the human body with that of other animals. He described
the brain, noting cerebrum and cerebellum, fourth ventricle, meninges, calamus scriptorius, and the torcular Herophilii; described the brain
as the center of the nervous system,
demonstrated the caudal extension of the hindbrain, naming it the ‘spinal
cord’, and stated that ‘the neura that make voluntary motion possible have
their origin in the cerebrum (enkephalos)
and spinal marrow’. He divided nerves into sensory and motor, differentiated nerves
from tendons, described the liver, pancreas, salivary glands, chyliferous
vessels, genital organs, spleen, and eye; naming the retina. He named the
duodenum and the prostate; described the ovaries and the tubes leading from
them to the uterus. He observed that arteries pulsate and carry blood and are
much thicker walled than veins. He regarded the pulse as an indicator of the
strength of the heart and counted it with a water clock (549; 864; 967; 1410-1412). See, Praxagoras of Cos, 355-280 B.C.E.
From the time of Herophilus the ancient Greeks believed the
cerebral ventricles were where the animal spirits resided and the principal functional
elements of the brain. The anterior or lateral ventricles were the receptacles
of imagination, information, and sensory input; the middle or third ventricle
was the seat of cogitation and judgment; the posterior or fourth ventricle
housed the spirits of motion and memory. The liver provided the force for
nourishing the body. This was the prevailing viewpoint for nearly 2000 years (1307).
Nei
Ching
[Canon of Medicine] is the greatest
Chinese medical classic. It mentions four methods of examination: observation,
hearing, inquiry, and palpation of the pulse. It contains a special section on
acupuncture (711).
Wang Shu-He (CN) wrote a treatise on pulse evaluation. In it he
recognizes that decreased heart rate variability is a predictor for sudden
death (681).
Diocles of Carystus (GR) wrote the first known anatomy book and
was the first to use the term anatomy (1379).
Alexandria, Egypt was the sight of the greatest museum and library
of antiquity. Here also was the first great medical school that included
laboratories, libraries and clinics. Ptolemy I, founder of the library and
school gave permission for human dissection that allowed knowledge of the
structure of the human body to rapidly advance. Religious prejudice had
previously prevented the legal dissection of humans (1030). See,
Hippocrates, 400 B.C.E.
c.
279 B.C.E.
Erasistratus of Julis; Eristratos of Iulis (GR-EG) described how
the human brain is divided into a larger (cerebrum) and a smaller (cerebellum)
part; noted the convolutions on the brain’s surface and decided that the
complexity of the convolutions is related to intelligence. He correctly
interpreted the action of both sets of heart valves in relation to the heart
beat and thought that all parts of the human body were served by a vein,
artery, and nerve. Erasistratus described muscles as organs of contraction and
discovered the chyliferous vessels in mesenteries and the epiglottis (485; 556; 864).
c.
276-25 B.C.E.
Demetrius of Apamea (SY) was one of the first to discern a
difference between diabetes and other
causes of polyuria (1410). Apamea is
in modern day Syria.
c.
275 B.C.E.
Nikandros of Colophon; Nicander of Colophon (EG) wrote two medical
poems, Theriaca and Alexipharmac. In Theriaca he describes poisonous animals such as the asp, viper,
spider, scorpion, lizard, rat, flies, and some mythological creatures. In Alexipharmaca he mentions poisonous
substances such as hemlock, cantharides (Cantharis
is a genus of beetle, called the Spanish fly, which produces a lactone of
cantharidic acid that will blister the skin. In moderate internal doses it is a
diuretic and stimulant to reproductive organs hence its legendary status as the
aphrodisiac, Spanish fly. In large
doses it is a poison.), hyoscymus (a genus of solanaceous plants, henbane,
which is narcotic, mydriatic, and analgesic), aconite, lead, opium, and
mushrooms. This is the earliest mention in medical history of lead poisoning.
He also describes the therapeutic use of leeches
(342). The plant
genus Nicandra was dedicated to him
in 1763 (21). He is
credited with being one of the earliest toxicologists.
c. 250-243 B.C.E.
The "Hunpox" epidemic occured in China. It was likely smallpox
(red plague)
(793).
c.
230 B.C.E.
Ammonios; Lithotomos (EG) is the first physician reported to have
performed lithotrity. He passed a hook over the stone to secure it in position
and then took a thin but blunt instrument “and this when applied to the stone
and forcibly struck at the other end, splits it in twain” (287).
212
B.C.E.
The Roman army in Syracuse (Sicily) was struck by an infectious
disease, perhaps influenza (grippe)
described by the historian Livy (793).
c.
190 B.C.E.
Marcus Porcius Cato (Roman) wrote De Re Rustica [De Agri
Cultura], the first book of botanical interest in the Latin language. It
contains much information on the propagation of desirable plant varieties and
the various methods of grafting (283). The plant
genus Catonia was dedicated to him in
1756 (241).
Li Zhaoguo (CN) and Philip Reichart (US) report that a whole
system of diagnostic medicine in China dating back thousands of years was based
upon a tactile study of the pulse (1136; 1352).
c.
150 B.C.E.
“… no essential part of the drink is absorbed by the body while
great masses of the flesh are liquefied into urine.”Aretaeus of Cappadocia (88). Note: Aretaeus is
credited with coining diabetes as a medical term from the Greek meaning
'siphon.' See, Aurelianus, 450 B.C.E.
Aretaios; Aretaeus the Cappadocian (Roman) included detailed
descriptions of an unnamed disease in his writings. When describing his
patients he referred to them as "koiliakos," which meant
"suffering in the bowels." Francis Adams (GB) translated these
observations from Greek to English for the Sydenham Society of England in 1856.
He gave sufferers the moniker "celiacs" or "coeliacs." Thus
Europe uses the spelling coeliac disease with the "o" (20; 88).
c.
140 B.C.E.
Agatharchides of Cnidus (GR) refers to the disease now known to be
caused by the parasitic nematode Dracunculus
medinensis. This disease is called dracontiasis,
dracunculiasis, dracunculosis, Medina worm
infection, and Guinea worm infection (1304).
c.
120 B.C.E.
Ssu-ma Chien (CN) tells us that, "In the area south of the
Yangtse the land is low and the climate humid; adult males die young." (1002)
c.
100 B.C.E.
Asclepiades of Bithynia (GR) advocated humane treatment of mental
disorders, he had insane persons freed from confinement and treated them with
natural therapy, such as diet and massages. He described a tracheostomy
incision for improving the airway (93).
c. 95 B.C.E.
Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus) (Roman, 96?–55 B.C.E.) spent his
whole life writing one poem (still unfinished), called De Rerum Natura[On
the Nature of Things]. The first three books provide a fundamental account
of being and nothingness, matter and space, the atoms and their movement, the
infinity of the universe both as regards time and space, the regularity of
reproduction (no prodigies, everything in its proper habitat), the nature of
mind (animus, directing thought) and spirit (anima, sentience) as
material bodily entities, and their mortality. The last three books give an
atomic and materialist explanation of phenomena preoccupying human reflection,
such as vision and the senses, sex and reproduction, natural forces and
agriculture, the heavens, and disease. This introduces a detailed description
of the great pestilence that devastated Athens during the Peloponnesian War (274; 275; 997).
c. 70 B.C.E.
Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil) (70–19 B.C.E.) was a famous Roman
poet. His poems Bucolics (42–37 B.C.E.) and Georgics (37–30 B.C.E.)
hold much information on animal husbandry and farm life. His Aeneid (published
posthumously) has many references to the zoology of his time (923). Note: The plant genus Virgilia was dedicated to him by Lamarck
in 1793.
c.
58-51 B.C.E.
Catuvolcus (DE), a chieftain of the Eburones, committed suicide
during the Gallic Wars by taking extracts from the yew tree. This is the first
mention in history of what was very likely taxol poisoning (909; 1273).
Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (Roman) described how the people of the
Psylli tribe of North Africa had the long standing practice of mixing the dried
and pulverized poison glands from different venomous snakes and placing them
under the skin to produce immunity to snakebite. He fabricated the word
immunity from the Latin immunitas and
immunis derived from the notion of
being exempt from service to the state (883; 1263).
c.
50 B.C.E.
Tseen Han Shoo (CN) says, “On passing the Great Big Headache
Mountain, and the Little Headache Mountain, the Red Land and the Fever Slope,
men's bodies become feverish, they lose color, and are attacked with headache
and vomiting; the asses and cattle being all in like condition” (631). Note: This is possibly
the earliest reference to high-altitude mountain sickness.
Cleopatra, the Queen of Egypt (EG), to help her physicians learn
about the development of the human embryo through dissection, presented them
with maids in various stages of pregnancy and condemned to death (797).
46
B.C.E.
c.
45 B.C.E.
"Nature has planted in our minds an insatiable longing to see
the truth." Marcus Tullius Cicero (309).
“But for my part I wonder at memory in a still greater degree. For
what is it that enables us to remember, what character has it, or what is its
origin?… Do we think there is … a sort of roominess into which the things we
remember can be poured as if into a kind of vessel? … Or do we think that
…memory consists of the traces of things registered in the mind? What can be
the traces of words, of actual objects, what further could be the enormous
space adequate to the representation of such a mass of material?” Marcus
Tullius Cicero (309).
Titus Lucretius Carus (Roman), in what is very likely a reference
to hypersensitivity says, “What is food to one man may be fierce poison to
another” (885).
c.
30 B.C.E.
Aulus Aurelius Cornelius Celsus (Roman), in the time of Tiberius
and Augustus, wrote De Re Medica Libri
VIII in which he surveyed the medical sciences from Hippocrates to imperial
times. He described peripneumonia (obviously our pneumonia) and spleens so
large as to be felt and firm enough to resist pressure; certainly, some of
these were the result of malaria (ague). There is mention of a “distemper
seated in the large intestine principally affecting that part I mentioned the
caecum to be, and accompanied by violent inflammation and vehement pains,
particularly on the right side,” yet appendicitis did not enter the death
records until after 1880. He describes in this work the practice of needling,
or discission, of cataracts, a
technique in which the cataract is broken up into smaller particles, thereby
facilitating their absorption. He recommended suturing the edges of a fresh
wound to seal it. Celsus advised that amputation incision should leave enough
healthy skin to close over the tip of the amputated member. Before closure, he
removed clotted blood, "for it becomes converted into pus, and by exciting
inflammation impedes the agglutination of the wound. Celsus was the first to
describe human rabies. He used the term hydrophobia
(fear of water). He thought that the saliva of a sick animal transmitted the
infection. Celsus was the first to discuss warts. He is possibly the first to
mention reconstructive surgery and very likely the first to describe collateral
circulation of blood (Celsus 29; Celsus 1814; Celsus 1935; Long 1965).
Aulus Aurelius Cornelius Celsus (Roman) in his liber 3, cap. 10 is
credited with the famous statement: "Notae vero inflammationis sunt
quatuor: rubor et tumor cum calore et dolore" (The signs of
inflammation are four: redness, swelling, fever and pain). He reasoned that
inflammation was a reaction of tissue to injury (287; 288). Note: A fifth element
was later added "loss of organ function" and attributed to Rudolf
Virchow (DE) or Thomas Sydenham (GB).
Julius
Friedrich Cohnheim (DE) observed that during inflammation there was capillary
vasodilation, leakage of plasma, and migration of leukocytes out of blood
vessels and into the surrounding tissue (330).
Carl Weigert
(DE) confirmed that the well-known cardinal manifestations of inflammation—that
is redness, swelling, heat and pain—can mostly be accounted for by altered
interactions between the blood and the blood vessels cells (1441).
Julius
Friedrich Cohnheim (DE) suggested that the migrated leukocytes leads to pus at the site of injury (331).
Aulus Aurelius Cornelius Celsus (Roman) states, “Now there follows
the treatment of fevers, a class of disease which both affects the body as a
whole, and is exceedingly common. Of fevers, one is quotidian, another tertian,
a third quartan” (288). Doubtless
this fever is malarial (ague).
27
B.C.E.
Marcus Terentius Varro (Roman) in advice to those about to select
a place for a dwelling said, "Precautions must also be taken in the
neighborhood of swamps, both for the reasons given, and because there are bred
certain minute creatures which cannot be seen by the eyes, which float in the
air and enter the body through the mouth and nose and there cause serious
diseases" (1386).
Marcus Terentius Varro (Roman) wrote Disciplinarum Libri IX [Nine
Books of Disciplines], a lost work, in which he outlined nine arts:
grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, musical theory,
medicine, and architecture. Later writers omitted the last two arts. The seven
liberal arts would later form the basis of modern educational systems in
Western culture (266; 864; 1145).
c.
20 B.C.E.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus (GR) recorded that during a great
epidemic those who touched the sick and suffering, while trying to help them,
became sick with the same illness (449).
c.
10 B.C.E.
Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella (Roman) wrote a very large twelve-volume
work, which included husbandry, grafting, the use of the hotbed, the treatment
of cultivated plants and trees and the use of rennet to make cheese (343). The plant
genus Collumella was dedicated to him
in 1794 (1178).
4
B.C.E.
Herod the Great, King of Judea, Idumaea, Samraritis, Peraea,
Heshbon, Gaulantis, Batanea, Trachonitis, Auranitis, Gaza, Hippos and Gadara
very likely died of hypertension, atherosclerosis, and heart failure (899).
c.
1
The Chinese began to treat malaria
(ague) with Qing hao (Artemesia annua,
called wormwood) and yingzhaosu (1113). The active
ingredient from Qing hao is called artemisinin,
which is a sesquiterpene peroxide.
c.
41
Claudius
Tiberius Germanicus Britannicus (Roman), Prince of Rome, exhibited the second known recorded
allergic reaction in history, and the first of the Christian era. Britannicus
could not ride a horse without presenting all the signs of an anaphylactic
reaction (1098; 1309). Note: Based on
various literature sources—mainly Suetonius, Plinius the Younger—typical
symptoms of atopic diseases are described in some members of the Julio-Claudian
family. Emperor Augustus could have suffered from bronchial asthma, seasonal
rhinitis and atopic eczema, while
Emperor Claudius showed signs of perennial
rhinoconjunctivitis and Britannicus of horse dander allergy (1098; 1309).
Note: Based on present-day standards, this can be regarded as a typical
positive family history of atopy.
c. 50
54
c.
64
Pedanois Dioskorides; Pedanius Dioscorides; Discorides
(Greek-Roman) of Anatolia attempted to accumulate all medical knowledge in his Materia Medica. This work includes the
preparation, storage, genuineness, use, doses and effects of simple drugs and
excellent descriptions of some 600 plants. He tells how to prepare mercury from
cinnebar, potash from tartar, lead soap (plaster) and zinc soap (plaster) by
boiling fat with lead oxide and zinc oxide and gives many tests for chemical
substances. The medicinal uses of willow (salicylates), acacia, aloes, vinegar,
alum, ammonia, starch, nutgalls, apocyanum, silver, cannabis, cantharides,
cardamon, cassia, cerussa (lead), hemlock, colchicum, colocynth, croton oil,
gentian, hellebore, hyoscyamus, mercury, opium, mandragora, peppermint, salt,
mustard, solanum, thyme, and tragacanth are discussed. The use of mandragora in
wine is one of the recommended anesthetics. He described general, rectal, and
local anesthesia and gives us the first record of how opium was derived from poppy heads of Papaver somniferum (450). Materia Medica is the first systematic
pharmacopeia.
“During more than sixteen centuries he was looked upon as the sole
authority, so that everything botanical began with him. Everyone who undertook
the study of botany, or the identification of medicines swore by his words.
Even as late as the beginning of the seventeenth century both the academic and
the private study of botany may almost be said to have begun and ended with the
text of Dioscorides” (1285). The plant
genus Dioscorea was dedicated to him
in 1703 (1100). The
family, Dioscoreaceae, also commemorates him.
65
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Roman) wrote, “Letters, however minute and
obscure, are seen larger and clearer through a glass bulb filled with water.”
He also noted the tendency for gout to run in families (1231).
c.
77-79
"Hail to
thee, Nature, thou parent of all things! and do thou deign to show thy favor
unto me, who, alone of all the citizens of Rome, have, in thy every department,
thus made known thy praise." Gaius Plinius Secundus; Pliny the Elder
(Roman) (1095).
Gaius Plinius
Secundus; Pliny the Elder (Roman) wrote his great natural history book in which
he discussed the following: 1) the world, the elements, and the heavenly
bodies, 2) geography, in which is contained an account of the situation of the
different countries, the inhabitants, the seas, towns, harbors, mountains,
rivers, and dimensions, and the various tribes, some of which still exist and
others have disappeared, 3) man, and the inventions of man, 4) various kinds of
land animals, 5) aquatic animals, 6) various kinds of birds, 7) insects, 8)
odoriferous plants, 9) exotic trees, 10) vines, fruit trees, 11) forest trees,
12) plants raised in nurseries or gardens, 13) nature of fruits and the
cerealia, and the pursuits of the husbandman, 14) flax, broom, and gardening,
15) cultivated plants that are proper for food and for medicine, 16) flowers
and plants that are used for making garlands, 17) garlands, and medicines made
from plants, 18) medicines made from wine and from cultivated trees, 19)
medicines made from forest trees, 20) medicines made from wild plants, 21) new
diseases, and medicines made, for certain diseases, from plants, 22) plants and
medicines, 23) medicines procured from man and from large animals, 24) medical
authors, and on medicines from other animals, 25) magic, and medicines for
certain parts of the body, 26) medicines from aquatic animals, and 27) other
properties of aquatic animals (1093-1096).
Gaius Plinius Secundus; Pliny the Elder (Roman) referred to album ovi as albumen; which may well be the first written reference to a
specific protein. He described how people on the island of Chios prepared
starch from cereal flour and used it as an adhesive. He noted that growing
beans fertilized the ground in which they were grown as well as did application
of animal manure. He described the use by Romans of both spherical and
lens-shaped glasses as burning glasses and wrote "Emeralds are usually
concave so that they may concentrate the visual rays. The Emperor Nero used to
watch in an Emerald the gladiatorial combats.” This quote appears to be the
first description of using a monocle for correcting shortsighted vision. Pliny
recognized the entity of goiters in the mountains, believed that goiter was due
to dirty water and also used burnt seaweed in treatment. The plant genus Plinia was dedicated to him in 1703 (1100).
Antoine Francois Fourcroy (FR) was the first to find albumen in
plants (409).
Michel-Eugène Chevreul (FR) determined that albumen is common to
both plants and animals (302).
Pliny also mentions that the Romans held a spring festival, the Robigalia, to ward off the rubigo or rust, “the greatest pest of
the crops.” He advocated the use of arsenic as an insecticide.
Pliny describes what were undoubtedly the first recorded
autopsies—"proofe whereof was found and seen in Egypt by occasion that the
KK there, caused dead bodies to be cut up, and anatomies to be made, for to
search out maladies whereof men died” (1093-1096).
c.
79
Gaius
Plinius Caecilius Secondus; Pliny the Younger (Roman), writing to Tacitus,
says, "Leaning on two servants, he brought himself upright and immediately
collapsed again, I suppose because his breathing was affected by the dense fog
that obstructed his airways that were of a weak nature, narrow and subject to
inflammation." (1097; 1098).
It is
therefore to Pliny the Younger that we owe the first description of a fatal
respiratory disorder induced by natural air pollution. The patient was Pliny
the Elder, head of the Roman fleet, who had moved to Pompeii in the Bay of
Naples (Italy), to observe the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and to help
inhabitants of Pompeii in the year 73 AD.
79
Plague followed
the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius and was common in Libya, Egypt, and Syria (793).
c.
100
Ruphos of Ephesus; Rufus of Ephesus (Greek-Roman) wrote, On the Names of the Various Parts of the
Body, the first comprehensive treatise of human anatomy; On the Interrogation of the Patient,
concerning the taking of patient history; Treatise
on the Pulse, in which, among other things, he stated that pulse resulted
from systole and not diastole and that the dura
mater “has a movement in time with the pulse”; Treatise on Diseases of the Kidneys and of the Bladder, in which he
described inflammation of the kidneys, suppuration of the kidneys, kidney
stones, hematuria, diabetes, cystitis, stones in the bladder, tumors of
the bladder, and chronic nephritis; and On
Satyriasis and Gonorrhoea, in which he notes that semen is formed in the
testicles and is carried to the penis by a vessel other than the spermatic
artery or vein.
In a fragment from Aetios
he recognized suppositories as a method for introducing drugs, such as
wormwood, hyssop (from Hyssopus
officinalis), pyrethrum, mercury, thyme, and cyclamen. In a fragment preserved by Oreibasios he
recommended inducing fever to treat convulsions, epilepsy, asthma (orthopnoea),
melancholia, certain skin diseases, tetanus, and the woman in labor with
convulsion (256; 1176).
Ruphos of Ephesus; Rufus of Ephesus (Greek-Roman) first
described the optic chiasm and oviduct of sheep (484).
Isaac Newton (GB) briefly described the pathway of
nerve fibers through the optic chiasm in animals that have both eyes look the
same way (men, dogs, sheep, oxen, etc.). He deduced that only the optic nerve
fibers from the nasal side of the retina crossed at the chiasma and noted that
in animals in which both eyes don’t look the same way (fishes, lizards, etc.)
there is no optic chiasm (996).
Johann Gottfried Zinn (DE) anatomically confirmed Newton’s
deduction about a partial crossing of nerve paths in the optic chiasm (1502).
William Hyde Wollaston (GB) rediscovered the route of the nerve
fibers through the optic chiasm (1478).
Hermann Munk (DE) presented a detailed anatomy of the optic chiasm
and its association with the occipital cortex in the dog (986).
Hindu doctors had perfected twenty kinds of knives for different
surgical procedures (1434).
The earliest unequivocal epidemic of bubonic plague in the Mediterranean occurred in Libya, Egypt and
Syria (793). Rufus of
Ephesus, who lived in the time of Emperor Trajan, preserved in the Collection of Oribasius, speaks of the
buboes called pestilential as being especially fatal, and as being chiefly in
Libya, Egypt, and Syria (262).
Plutarch (Roman, 46?–120) stated that animals' behavior is
motivated by reason and understanding. Life of the ant mirrors the virtues of
friendship, sociability, endurance, courage, moderation, prudence, and justice.
c.
120
Soranus of Ephesus (Greek-Roman) wrote, On Acute and Chronic Diseases, On
the Signs of Fractures, and Diseases
of Women. He was clearly the foremost obstetrician and gynecologist of
antiquity, his Diseases of Women (De
Morbis Mulierum) standing as a monumental work. In this work he described
the anatomy of the uterus, discussed menstruation, fertility, signs of
pregnancy, prenatal treatment, care of the newborn, dysmenorrhoea, uterine hemorrhage, the obstetrical chair, the
vaginal speculum, a syringe for injections into the womb, dystocia (labor difficulties), moving the child in the uterus to
present a favorable position for birth, methods for extracting the fetus which
threatens the mother’s life because it cannot pass through the birth canal,
pros and cons of virginity, prevention of conception, breast milk, wet nurses,
diet of the nurse, diseases of the infant, teething, amenorrhea, diseases of the uterus, diseases of the external
genitalia, and neck swelling following pregnancy, and vaginal hysterectomy (1282-1284). Note:
These great works by Soranus were the "gold standard" until the Renaissance.
c.
140
Claudius Ptolemaeus; Ptolemy (GR-Roman-EG) investigated the
problem of magnification by means of curved surfaces (1112).
c.
150
Antyllus (Greek-Roman), the greatest surgeon of antiquity, left
precise instructions for performing such operations as removal of cataracts,
aneurysms, tracheotomy, excision of scars, operations on fistula, breast,
abdomen, contractures, resection of bones and joints, phimosis (tightness of the foreskin) and hypospadia (congenital opening of the urethra on the underside of
the penis or into the vagina), venesection
(bloodletting), and arteriostomy. Antyllus
applied ligatures to the arteries that entered and left the aneurysm and then
cut into the aneurysm sac, evacuated the contents, and packed the cavity.
Antyllus did not resect the aneurysm sac. He stated, “Those who tie the artery,
as I advise, at each extremity, but amputate the intervening dilated part,
perform a dangerous operation. The violent tension of the arterial pneuma often
displaces the ligatures.” It would be 16 centuries before this operation would
be improved upon (70; 902; 1019; 1479).
c.
160
"Diabetes is a dreadful affection, not very frequent among
men, being a melting down of the flesh and limbs into urine…. The patients
never stop making water, but the flow is incessant, as if from the opening of
aqueducts. The nature of the disease, then, is chronic, and it takes a long
period to form; but the patient is short-lived, if the constitution of the
disease be completely established; for the melting is rapid, the death speedy."
Aretaeus the Cappadocian (88).
"Arthritis is a general pain of all the joints; that of the
feet we call Podagra; that of the hip
joint, Schiatica; that of the hand, Chiragra…. Arthritis fixes itself…sometimes
in the hip-joints; and for the most part in these cases the patient remains
lame in it." Aretaeus the Cappadocian (88).
Aretaios; Aretaeus the Cappadocian (Roman) wrote, On the Causes and Symptoms of Acute Diseases,
On the Causes and Symptoms of Chronic
Diseases, On the Therapeutics of
Acute Diseases, and On the
Therapeutics of Chronic Diseases. Few physicians match his descriptions and
diagnoses of diseases in antiquity. He described diphtheria (the Syrian ulcer), tetanus,
biliary tract disease, ascites, priapism, pneumonia, pleurisy, asthma
(orthopnoea), epilepsy, diabetes mellitus, and diabetes insipidus, sprue
(thrush), heart-afflictions, elephantiasis,
hypogonadism, and hydatid disease (20; 87; 88).
Special Chinese handbooks for travelers to the south prescribed
suitably exotic regimens and medicines for the malignant diseases encountered
south of the Yangtse River (946).
165-180
The Antonine Plague, or Plague of Galen, was probably smallpox (red plague) or measles, or both, and was brought back
to the Roman Empire by troops returning from the Middle East. The Roman
emperors Lucius Verus and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus both died from it, in 169
and 180 respectively. This pandemic ravaged the entire
extent of the Roman Empire, from its eastern frontiers in Iraq to its western
frontiers on the Rhine River and Gaul, modern France, and Western Germany. It
ravaged the Roman Empire at recurrent intervals for more than 100 years likely
playing a significant role in the decline and fall of this great superpower (793).
c.
175
“When the tumor extends its feet from all sides of its body into
the veins, the sickness produces the picture of a crab.” Claudii Galeni (805).
Galen; Galenos; Claudii Galeni; Aelius Galenus; Claudius Galenus;
Clarissimus Galen of Pergamon (modern Turkey) (GR-Roman) became court physician
to Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. He emphasized the use of the pulse as a
diagnostic aid and described how urine flows through the ureters to the bladder
and associated the kidneys with urine formation. He deduced that the arteries
and veins are connected. He advocated thinking of the human body as an
integrated whole rather than a collection of parts. Later scientists applied
this concept to all multicellular creatures. Galen believed that there was a correlation
of the parts of the body of different organisms and thus he led the way to
comparative anatomy/physiology. He described phthisis (pulmonary tuberculosis)
accurately and stressed the importance of climate and full diet in its
treatment. He distinguished pleurisy from pneumonia, described true (arterial
dilation) and false (arterial rupture) aneurysms, gallstones, and encephalitis lethargica. He controlled
hemorrhage with pressure torsion of the artery, cautery or ligation. He used
silk and catgut for sutures.
Galen states that the liver is the source of the veins and the principal instrument
of sanguification.
By experiments in which he cut the intercostal nerves, excised a
rib, or performed a transverse section of the spinal cord above the origin of
the phrenic nerve, he concluded that chiefly the diaphragm itself performed
ordinary respiration, and that the intercostal muscles were called into play
only on forced respiration. He demonstrated in the pig that cutting the
laryngeal nerve rendered the pig unable to squeal. Since this nerve came from
the brain it disproved Aristotle’s teaching that the brain was not associated
with sensation. He elucidated laryngeal and tracheal anatomy. He was the first
to localize voice production to the larynx and to define laryngeal
innervations. additionally, he described the supralaryngeal contribution to
respiration, i.e., warming, humidifying, and filtering. Galen studied the
relationship between paralysis and severance of the spinal cord. He
distinguished between motor and sensory nerves. He stated that, each muscle has
only one active movement (that of contraction, since muscles are only extended
in passive obedience to the active movement of the opposing muscle) not six, as
was commonly believed.
He coined the term gonorrhea (the clap), wrote a detailed record
of malaria (ague), and described what were very likely Ascaris, Enterobius, and Taenia.
Galen apparently had an excellent command of medicinal botany and
recommended that other physicians do likewise. Linnaeus dedicated the botanical
genus Galenia to him in 1737.
His proofs came by reason and experiment, yet Galen’s greatest
shortcoming was that what he didn’t know he tried to guess (551; 556-558; 560-562; 804; 867).
c.
185
Dion Cassius (Roman) related that during the reign of the Roman Emperor
Commodus, during a particular pestilence, many persons not only in the city but
in the whole Roman Empire were killed by wicked wretches, who for a stipulated
reward dipped small needles into the pestilent poison and thus communicated the
disease to others (71).
c.
200
Fevers, including regularly recurring fevers that must have been
malarial (ague), figure very prominently in ancient Chinese medical writings, a
fact that supports the notion that such afflictions influenced the early
centuries of Chinese expansion (297).
A well-preserved Cyprian corpse from this period, exhibiting
evidence of chronic schistosomiasis, was recently discovered (626).
Galen; Galenos; Claudii Galeni; Aelius Galenus; Claudius Galenus;
Clarissimus Galen of Pergamon (modern Turkey) (GR-Roman)
counseled patients suffering from "mania" to bathe in,
and even drink the water from, alkaline springs.
Interestingly, lithium is abundant in some alkaline mineral-spring waters (805).
Chang Chung-Ching (CN) wrote Essay
on Typhoid, an important medical classic (307; 308).
Various compilers in post-classical and medieval times added to
the Physiologus (or, more popularly, the Bestiary),
the major book on animals for hundreds of years. Animals were believed to exist
in order to serve man, if not as food or slaves then as moral examples.
251-270
The Plague of Cyprian takes its name from Saint Cyprian, bishop of
Carthage, who described symptoms that suggest measles or smallpox (red plague) rather than bubonic plague. This epidemic killed the Roman emperor Claudius II
Gothicus in the year 270 and is credited with encouraging mass conversions to
Christianity. It has also been suggested as the time when Christians first
began wearing black as the color of mourning (695; 793).
c.
340
Shapur II; Shapur the Great (Persian) established a university at
Jundi-Shapur in Persia (902).
Ko Hung (CN) recommended alcoholic extract of seaweed for
treatment of goiter among people living in the mountains.
357
Themistius (Byzantine) suggested to Emperor Constantius that a
scriptorium be created and funded to guarantee the survival of ancient
literature. The Emperor issued an order to create the scriptorium in 372 (1467).
c.
375
Oreibasios; Oribasius of Pergamum (modern Turkey) is best known
because his writings preserved the works of others who would otherwise have
been lost, writers like Galen, Antyllus, Archiagenes, and Dioskorides. He wrote
over 70 books (1019).
c.
400
The Talmud advocated longitudinal incision in tracheostomy (975).
The Imperial University at Constantinople was founded (1434).
To avoid persecution, many Nestorians (a Christian sect) fled the
Western Empire to settle in Gondeshapur is Southwest Persia near Baghdad. Here
there arose a large community of physicians interested in all types of medical
information. To gain this information they became a major center for the
translation of foreign medical texts into Syriac and Aramaic, then after 638
into Arabic. Gondeshapur was ecumenical and international, with many Jewish,
pagan, and Christian citizens (1434).
One should realize that Medieval midwives in Europe —5th through
15th centuries— alone proceeded in amputation of totally prolapsed
or everted uteri following delivery.
c.
500
Julio Caesar Tello (PE) was inspired by the discovery in 1910 of
the Paracas Textile (c. 100 B.C.E.)
at the site of Cabeza Larga on the Paracas Peninsula on the south coast of
Peru. In his 1925 excavations Tello found coca leaves (Erythroxylum coca) placed in an urn which accompanied the burial of
a Peruvian priest, noble, or king (Nazca period). This is the earliest record
of the use of coca leaves (1331).
Greek and Roman physicians wrote about genital warts. They were
the first to note the sexual transmission of genital warts (257).
542
Procopius (GR) described the great pandemic which occurred during
this year of the Emperor Justinian’s reign. It’s spread within the
Mediterranean by ship; the pattern of infection and details of its incidence as
described make it unmistakably the plaque (Yersinia
pestis) (1110).
Edward Gibbon (GB), in chapter forty-three, recounts that in the
year 543 ten thousand people died each day in Constantinople (580).
543
Aetios Amidenus; Aetius Amidenus; Aëtius of Amida (Byzantine) uses
the term eczema to denote ‘hot and
painful phlyctenae (nodular affections occurring as an allergic response of the
conjunctival and corneal epithelium) which do not ulcerate’ (1455).
Robert Willan (GB) was the next to use the term eczema. It was defined as "an
eruption of minute vesicles, non-contagious, crowed together; and which from
the absorption of the fluid they contain form into thin flakes or crusts.
Lesions had an affinity for the inner thighs, axillae, infromammary area, and
anus, lacked surrounding inflammation, and smarted rather than itched." (1459)
c.
550
Aetios Amidenus; Aetius Amidenus; Aëtius of Amida (Byzantine),
personal physician of the Emperor Justinian, wrote Medicinae Tetrabiblios in which he gave a good description of diphtheria, discussed many afflictions
of the eye, accounts for elephantiasis,
ileus, the varieties of headache, pneumonia, pleurisy, epilepsy. He
describes tonsillectomy, urethrotomy, treatment of hemorrhoids, and ligation of the brachial artery above the sac for aneurysm. He recognized three intestinal
worms—taenia, ascaris, and oxyuria. To treat tapeworms, he recommended
pomegranate and wormgrass, for round worms, artemisia (santonin) and coriander.
Oxyuria he treated with enemata (59).
Writing on pestilential
lesions of the tonsils, he stated, "They occur most frequently in
children, but also in adults. Usually in children the evils known as aphthae develop. These are white, like
blotches; some are ashen in color or like eschars
from the cautery. The patient suffers from a dryness of the gullet and frequent
attacks of choking …. a spreading sore supervenes in the region afflicted. In
some cases the uvula is eaten up and when the sores have prevailed a long time
and deepened, a cicatrix forms over them and the patient’s speech becomes
rather husky and, in drinking, liquid is diverted upward to the nostrils. I
have known a girl to die even after forty days when already on the way to
recovery" (24).
The Hindus described honey
urine (madhumeha) as one of the symptoms of a disease (diabetes).
They believed it resulted from over-indulgence in rice (Oryza sativa), flour, and sugar (890).
569
A smallpox (red plague)
epidemic struck Arabia and forced the Ethiopian army to retreat, thus ending
their rule there. This was known as the Elephant War epidemic, for the white
elephant on which the Christian prince Abraha rode into Mecca before his defeat
and is described in the Koran. It was one of the earliest recorded epidemics of
smallpox
(red plague)
(793).
570
Marius, Bishop of Avenches (CH), was the first to use the term variola, meaning stained skin (239).
580
An epidemic of quinsy (esquinancie) is mentioned in the Chronicle
of St. Denis. Esquinancie is an inflammation of the throat—probably diphtheria (1108).
581
Gregory of Tours describes a smallpox
(red plague) epidemic at Tours (611).
585-587
Japan suffered an epidemic of what was most likely smallpox
(red plague)
(793).
590
Bubonic
plague
killed Pope Pelagius II, who was succeeded by the reformer Gregory the Great (793).
An epidemic of St. Anthony’s
Fire (ergotism) occurred in
France. Synonyms for ergotism include: St.
Anthony's fire, holy fire, evil fire, devil's fire, and saints' fire.
c.
600
Vilhelm Moller-Christensen (DK) states that the disease that would
later be called Hansen’s disease (leprosy) appears to have established itself
in Europe and the Mediterranean coastlands (237).
600
Aaron of
Alexandria (Persian) describes smallpox
(red plague) in his Pandectae Medicinus (46; 933).
638-639
The plague
was endemic in Syria, Iraq, and Egypt (793).
c.
640
The Arabs conquered Alexandria, in Egypt, and ordered the contents
of its great library to be used as fuel to heat the public baths. The burning
scrolls heated the bath waters of Alexandria for six months (1398).
Paulus Aegineta of Alexandria (Byzantine), also called Paul of
Aegina, performed many modern operations, among others those within the
abdominal cavity. He gives symptoms of a disease that was very likely lead
poisoning (23).
He promoted and modified the Hippocratic method of traction for
spinal dislocations and was reported to use the "hot iron." More
importantly, he is the first to hypothesize the concept of decompressive
surgery/laminectomy for the treatment of this disorder. Additionally, he is
credited as the first advocate for surgical removal of fractured spinous
processes to relieve pain. His wound management was quite sophisticated for
prevention of infection. He used wine (helpful in antisepsis, although this
concept was then unknown) (596; 791; 922).
Chen Chhuan
(CN), in his book Ku
Chin Lu Yen Fano, was the
first Chinese physician to mention sweetness of the urine in sugar diabetes
(949).
650
Sun Ssu-Mo (CN) advanced the Chinese treatment of goiters by
adding dried powdered mollusk shells and chopped up thyroid gland to seaweed. ref
664
"Life is as if on a winter’s night you sit feasting with your
ealdormen and thegns, a single sparrow should fly swiftly into the hall, and
coming in at one door instantly fly out through another. In that time in which
it is indoors it is indeed not touched by the fury of the winter, but yet, this
smallest space of calmness being passed almost in a flash, from winter going
into winter again, it is lost to your eyes. Somewhat like this appears the life
of man; but of what follows or what went before, we are utterly ignorant."
The Venerable Bede (149).
The Venerable Bede (GB) described an epidemic in Ireland that was
most likely relapsing fever, caused
by the bacterium Borrelia recurrentis (894). verify,
does not fit with 672 as date of Bede's birth
680
Plague again
struck Rome and Italy and is credited with the origin of the cult of St.
Sebastian, a third century martyr who was regarded as a protector against
disease because the epidemic abated after his bones were moved from Rome to the
church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Pavia (793).
686
The Venerable Bede (GB) survived a plague epidemic which killed
most of the people in Monkwearmouth-Jarrow, England . ref
Li Hsuan (CN), in his book Hsiao Kho Lun, was perhaps the
first to discuss at length the reason for sweetness of the urine in disease. He
is quoted as saying that in Hsiao Kho illness (diabetes), three things
must be renounced: wine, sex, and eating salty cereal products. If this regime
is carried out, cure may be possible without drugs. One must also be on the
lookout for the development of boils and carbuncles, because if such develop
near joints, the prognosis is very bad (949).
700-900
Japan suffered repeated epidemics of smallpox (red plague). The one in 735-736 killed several members of
the ruling Fujiwara family, and led to a religious fervor that facilitated the
spread of Buddhism (793).
746
Constantinople (Turkey) was struck again by plague (793).
c.
750
Abu Musa Jabir Ibn Hayyan; Geber (Arabian), a famous alchemist,
produced sulfuric, nitric, and nitro-muriatic acids (734). Note: Aqua regia is a mixture of nitric
acid and hydrochloric acid, optimally in a molar ratio of 1:3. .... Antoine
Lavoisier called aqua regia nitro-muriatic acid in 1789.
The Arabs in Cordoba, Spain established a university. It was for
some time the most renowned in Europe (902).
751
Kufa; Ibn
al-A‘rābī (Arab) wrote a book on flies (insects), Kitāb
al-Dabāb. ref
c. 781
Al-Jahiz (Afro-Arab, 781–868/869), a scholar at Basra, wrote on
the influence of environment on animals. ref
c.
830
Walafrid
Strabo (DE) was Abbot of Reichenau and the oldest medical writer on German
soil. He describes in a poem (Hortulus)
the value of native medicinal plants, and also the method of teaching medicine
in monasteries (961).
833
A great center of learning and scholarship called Bayt al-Hikma (House of Wisdom) was established at Baghdad. Many important Greek
and Latin works were translated here, including seven books of anatomy by Galen
(now lost in Greek), and works by Hippocrates and Dioscorides (1434).
856
Cesare Baronio; Caesar Baronius (IT) reported that Rome
experienced an epidemic of suffocative
angina (diphtheria) (131).
c.
860
Hunayn Ibn-Ishaq Al-Ibadi; Johannitius (Arabian) wrote, Ten Treatises on the Eye, the first
systematic textbook of ophthalmology (32). Note:
Hunayn was one of the most important translators of the great Greek works into
Arabic.
Abu Zakariya
Yuhanna ibn Masawaih; Ibn Masawaih; Masawaiyh; Mesue; Masuya; Mesue Major;
Msuya; Mesue the Elder; Joannes Damascenus (Persian) gave us the first recorded
suggestion for filling of a tooth cavity with gold. He also advised against
treating constipated patients with a violent purge (1370).
869
Sabur ibn Sahel (Persian) published a pharmacopeia at Jundi-Shapur
in Persia; it was one of the first such works (757). See, Dioskorides, c. 64.
c.
900
The Chinese were using Ma
Huang (rich in ephedrine) with properties similar to epinephrine (adrenaline) (209). The drug
is derived from plants of the genus Ephedra
and is most commonly used to prevent mild or moderate attacks of bronchial
asthma. Unlike epinephrine, ephedrine is slow to take effect and of mild
potency and long duration. It is a bronchodilator and decongestant.
Nagajoshi Nagai (JP), in 1887, isolated ephedrine as the active ingredient of Ma Haung but found it to be to toxic
(990).
Ko Kuei Chen (CN) and Carl Frederic Schmidt (US) rediscovered
ephedrine and described it as an orally active, long-lasting sympathomimetic
amine of a structure similar to epinephrine (adrenaline). It induces hypertension (300; 301).
Julius Axelrod (US) discovered that ephedrine is metabolized to
yield metabolites that have pressor
(increase blood pressure) activity (107).
c. 900-c.1025
Japan was struck again by smallpox
(red plague) epidemics, and by measles (793).
Abú-bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya’ Al-razi; Rhazes; Rasis; Razi
(Persian) is reported to be the first physician to carefully describe and
differentiate between measles and smallpox
(red plague) (1146). He
discussed stones of the bladder and kidney; diseases in children; coryza (allergy); and was the first to
use plaster of paris to form casts in support of broken bones. He studied and
described metallic antimony (947; 948).
Rhazes (Persian) wrote Al-Hawi
(The Comprehensive Book), a
twenty-three-volume encyclopedia of Greek, pre-Islamic Arab, Indian, and
Chinese medical knowledge. It covered diseases of the skin and joints and
explored the effects of diet and the concept of hygiene (1434).
Ibn Firnas (Arabian) created glass lenses that he used for
magnification and to improve vision (1259).
Hospitals as we understand them today were developed under Islam.
The first, and most elaborate, was built in the eighth century under Caliph
al-Rashid (the caliph of the One Thousand and One Nights) (1365). The
medieval Muslim hospital, as it existed in Baghdad, Cairo or Damascus had
separate wards for men and women, special wards were devoted to internal
diseases, ophthalmic disorders, orthopedic ailments, the mentally ill, and
there were isolation wards for contagious cases. Colleges for medical training
were attached to these hospitals. The idea of the pharmacy, or apothecary, was
born. In Baghdad pharmacists had to pass an exam before they could produce and
prescribe drugs. The exam covered the correct composition of drugs, the proper
dosage, and the therapeutic effects. The notion of public health also began
with the Arabs— among other things, doctors would visit prisons, to see whether
there were any contagious diseases among the convicts that might spread (1434).
The most prominent center of medical studies in the Middle Ages,
calling itself Civitas Hippocratica,
was founded at Salernum, Italy on the Tyrrhenian Sea (it may have been older
because Salernitan physicians were being sought after by royalty as early as
924). By the year 1000 the school had become secular although maintaining its
ties with the abbey at Monte Cassino. It is the oldest school having a
curriculum prescribed by the state. In 1140 King Ruggiero (Roger II) ordered a
state examination to test the proficiency of prospective physicians, and
Frederick II in 1240 decreed that before studying medicine, the candidate
should have studied logic for at least three years, that he must study medicine
for five years, and that, after graduation, he must serve one year as an
assistant to an older physician. The decree also set medical fees, required
free treatment of the poor, regulated the purity and prices of drugs, and the
business relationship between the doctors and the pharmacists.
An anonymous didactic poem, Regimen
Sanitatis Salernitanum (The School of
Salerno), also called Flos Medicinae
Salerni, is the best-known literary work associated with this school. The
most popular English version being one translated by John Harington and
published in 1607 (419). The Antidotarium, a textbook containing
various prescriptions in common use, was one of the schools’ great
contributions to the medical sciences. Salernitanus Nicolaus (IT) is credited
as its author (1000). It was
here that a female professor composed Trotula,
the first book on obstetrics written in Western Europe by a Christian author on
diseases of women.
The employment of anesthesia by inhalation, and the use of local
anesthesia originated with this school. A mixture of opium, hyoscyamus (usually an alcoholic extract
of leaves, seeds, and flowers of Hyoscyamus
niger or henbane), mandragora, hemlock, blackberries, lettuce, and ivy on a
sponge was used for inhalation while a cataplasm (poultice or emollient) of
opium, hyoscyamus, and mandragora was used for local anesthesia. Constantine of
Carthage (Constantinus Africanus), who was associated with this school, is one
of the most important translators of medical works from the original Greek, and
from Arabic into Latin (424; 902; 1232). See, Code
of Hammurabi, 1800 B.C.E., surgeon’s fees.
Marvin J. Allison (US), Enrique Gerszten (US), A. Julio Martinez
(US), David M. Klurfeld (US), and Alejandro Pezzia (PE) discovered that a young
female pre-Columbian mummy of the Huari culture in Peru seems to represent one
of the earliest cases of collagen disease, with many aspects compatible
with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) (51).
Marvin J. Allison (US), Alejandro Pezzia (PE), Ichiro Hasegawa
(US), Enrique Gerszten (US), Ronald F. Giffler (US), Daniel Mendoza (US), Harry
P. Dalton (US) and Vincent A. Sawicki (US) presented evidence that an
individual from the Huari culture in pre-Columbian Peru exhibited an array of
ailments at the time of his death (890-950 ad). Radiological diagnosis revealed
aspiration pneumonia, which was possibly initiated during a systemic
salmonellosis such as typhoid fever. His health was further jeopardized by the
presence of two helminthic infestations, hookworm and trichinosis (52; 53; 1196).
968
The Arab ruler Abd-al-Rahman III founded the University of Cordova,
in Spain. It contained a library of some 400,000 books. ref
979
A bismaristan (hospital) was built in Bagdad on the banks of the
River Tigris. The most important Baghdad hospital was the ‘adudi', named for a
local ruler, it was established in 982. The 'adudi' was reported to have 25
doctors, including oculists, surgeons, and bonesetters (456).
c.
980
Ibn al-Haytham Alhazen; Abu Ali al-Hasan; Ibn Al-Hasan; Alhazen
(IQ-EG) in his Opticae Thesaurus
discussed not only optical principles, but described the anatomy of the
eye, and how the lens of the eye focuses an image on the retina. He was the
first to record that a piece of glass, flat on one side and curved on the
other, would magnify small objects (48);Alhazen, 1989 #3532}.
Ali ibn Abbas; Haly Abbas (Persian) wrote, System of Medicine subtitled Royal
Book. In this book, among other things, he describes surgery as a treatment
for goiters, laryngotomy, catheterization, eczema,
scabies, miliaria rubra, miliaria alba,
favus, pediculosis, seborrhoeic
dermatitis, alopecia areata, lupus vulgaris, leprosy, filariasis, smallpox (red plague), chickenpox, measles, and erysipelas. (902).
c.
1000
Abu al-Qasim Khalaf ibn 'Abbas al-Zahrawi; Abulcases; Albucasis;
Bulcasis; Bulcasim; Bulcari; Alzahawi; Ezzahrawi; Zahravius; Alcarani;
Alsarani; Aicaravi; Alcaravius; Alsahrawi (Andalusian) wrote Al-Tasrif (The Method), a medical encyclopedia spanning 30 chapters which
included sections on surgery, medicine, orthopedics, ophthalmology,
pharmacology, nutrition etc.
Perhaps the most importance treatise is the one on surgery. It
included many pictures of surgical instruments, most invented by Al-Zahrawi
himself, and explanations of their use. Al-Zahrawi was the first medical author
to provide illustrations of instruments used in surgery. There are
approximately 200 such drawings ranging from a tongue depressor and a tooth
extractor to a catheter and an elaborate obstetric device.
In the surgical treatise he discussed cauterization, bloodletting,
midwifery/obstetrics, and the treatment of wounds. He described the exposure
and division of the temporal artery to relieve certain types of headaches,
diversion of urine into the rectum, reduction mammoplasty for excessively large
breasts and the extraction of cataracts. He wrote extensively about injuries to
bones and joints, even mentioning fractures of the nasal bones and of the
vertebrae. In fact, 'Kocher's method' for reducing a dislocated shoulder was
described in At-Tasrif long before
Kocher was born! Al-Zahrawi outlined the use of caustics in surgery, fully
described tonsillectomy, tracheotomy and craniotomy- operations he had
performed on a dead fetus (Apparently the first mentioned case of advanced
extra uterine pregnancy was by Al-Zahrawi. He described a case of a pregnant
woman who did not expel the fetus after it had died. A long time afterwards a
swelling was formed in the umbilical region from which, when opened, a matter
flowed out. The wound did not close after long treatment but after applying
strong medication, pieces of bone came out which Al-Zahrawi recognized as fetal
bones although he did not know the real essence of the process). He explained
how to use a hook to extract a polyp from the nose, how to use a bulb syringe
he had invented for giving enemas to children and how to use a metallic bladder
syringe and speculum to extract bladder stones.
Al-Zahrawi was the first to describe the so-called "Walcher
position" in obstetrics; the first to depict dental arches, tongue
depressors and lead catheters and the first to describe clearly the hereditary
circumstances surrounding hemophilia. He also described ligaturing of blood
vessels long before Ambroise Pare (11; 12; 89). See, John Hay, 1813.
1004
Cesare Baronio; Caesar Baronius (IT) reported that Rome
experienced an epidemic of pestilential faucium or suffocative angina (diphtheria). He also mentions a similar
epidemic for the year 1039 at Rome (131).
Cedrenus (Byzantine) reports that fatal angina (cynanche) is in the Eastern Empire. An
inflammation of the throat accompanied by fever (diphtheria). ref
c.
1010
Ali Ibn Isa Al-Kahhal; Ali Ibn Ali; Jesu Haly (Arabian) in his
book on the diseases of the eye speaks of the use of general anesthesia and
acknowledges mandragora (a genus of solanaceous plants, Mandragora officinalis, the true or oriental mandrake) and opium as
drugs which produce sleep (33). Atropine
is the active ingredient of mandragora.
c.
1020
Abu Ali el-Hosein ben Abdallah Ibn Sina; Avicenna (Persian)
combined the biology of Aristotle, Greek medical lore, and what Islamic
physicians had discovered in his Al-Qanun
(The Canon) which remained the
authority in the west until the sixteenth century. He discussed mineral,
animal, and vegetable poisons, rabies (from Sanskrit rabhas, to do violence), venesection (opening a vein for
bloodletting), cancer of the breast, hydrocele (collection of water in the tunica vaginalis of the testicle),
tumors, skin diseases, labor (mentions the use of forceps), meningitis, chronic
nephritis, facial paralysis, pyloric
stenosis (obstruction of the pyloric orifice of the stomach), ulcer of the
stomach, tic douloureux (a spasmodic
facial neuralgia), icterus (jaundice
with discoloration of the urine), dilatation and contraction of the iris, the
six motor muscles of the eye, the functions of the lachrymal ducts, a treatment
for diabetes with actual (although very mild) hypoglycemic properties,
infection with the European hookworm (Ancylostoma
duodenale), and infection with Guinea worm (Dracunculus medinensis) which he called Medina worm. His
recommended treatment included lupin, fenugreek and zedoary seeds. He employed
silver medicinally, including the use of silvered pills and silver filings as a
blood purifier. He was he first to describe the bluish discoloration of the
skin characteristic of excessive use of silver. He also pioneered the study of
psychology.
Five hundred years after it was written, The Canon was a required textbook at the University of Vienna (102-104).
Avicenna (Persian) described oriental
sore, called Balkh, in the 10th
century (910). This was Old World leishmaniasis.
The eminent medical historian, William Osler (CA) called
Avicenna’s Canon, “the most famous
medical book ever written” and “a medical bible for a longer period than any
other work.” Osler also referred to Avicenna as, “one of the greatest names in
the history of medicine” (1030).
1048-1049
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports a high mortality among men and
cattle in England due to pestilence. ref
c.
1050
"The Ancients said that when a cancer is in a site where
total eradication is possible, such as a cancer of the breasts or of the thigh,
and in similar parts where complete removal is possible, and especially when in
the early stage and small, then surgery was to be tried. But when it is of long
standing and large you should leave it alone. For I myself have never been able
to cure any such, nor have I seen anyone else succeed before me."
Albucasis (11; 407).
Alsaharanious of Arabia, in the 11th century, taught his students
the surgical removal of the prolapsed uterus, when it couldn’t be repositioned
in place (163). Note: Vaginal hysterectomies were performed in ancient times. See, Soranus of Ephesus 120 AD
Jacopo Berengario da Capri; Jacobus Berengarius Carpensis; Giacomo Berengario da Capri; Jacopo
Barigazzi (IT), in 1521 at Bologna, provided the earliest account of a vaginal
hysterectomy performed in 1507 on a prolapsed gangrenous uterus. Later,
Berengario would perform a vaginal hysterectomy by circumferentially ligating
the prolapsed uterus with some very strong twine and tightening the ligature
until the organ was severed (167).
He also studied the change of sex life of women
after hysterectomy and described the heart valves. Ref
Andreas A. Cruce (ES), in 1560, performed the first
total extirpation of the uterus for cancer, i.e. vaginal hysterectomy. The manuscript
describing his method is to be found in the Berlin and Göttingen libraries. ref
Joannes Schenck (UK), at Gräfenberg in the Ukraine,
during the 17th century, recorded 26 cases of vaginal hysterectomy;
nearly all died soon after surgery. (1203).
Friedrich Benjamin Osiander (DE), in 1801, was the first
to perform a supravaginal amputation of a carcinomatous cervix uteri. The
carcinomatous cervix, as large as a child's head, and filling the vagina, was
drawn through the vaginal outlet with a pair of Smellie's obstetric forceps. The
survival rate from this operation by Osiander and others was extremely low. He popularized
the use of the vaginal speculum as a diagnostic resource and as an aid in
operations upon the lower segment of the uterus. As early as 1808 he resorted
to the speculum and curved scissors in the removal of uterine polypoid growths (1028; 1206).
C.L.E. Schroeder (DE), in 1880, presented his
method for hysterectomy: he transected the pouch of Douglas and pulled the
uterus fundus back, he then transected the vesicouterine fold. The adnexa was
ligatured with single suture or in more stages was through the vaginal way (1219).
Conrad Johann Martin Langenbeck; Conrad von Langenbeck (DE), in
1813, is credited with performing, without assistance, the first carefully
planned successful vaginal hysterectomy in modern times; it was to remove a
cancer. The patient lived an additional twenty-six years, at which time a
post-mortem verified this heroic operation just as Langenbeck claimed (821; 1234). Note: The second
complete extirpation of the uterus per vaginam was performed by Johann Nepomuk Sauter
(DE), Jan. 28, 1822 (1193; 1194). The third complete vaginal
extirpation of the uterus was made by Elias von Siebold, April 19, 1823 (1408; 1409).
Walter Burnham (US), on 26 June 1853, performed
the first operation for removal of the uterus by abdominal section
(hysterectomy) that resulted in recovery (261). Note: The diagnosis was incorrect.
Edward H. Richardson (US) performed the first successful total
abdominal hysterectomy (1147).
Harry Reich (US), John DeCaprio (US), and Fran McGlynn (US),
performed the first successful laproscopic hysterectomy (1135).
1081-1083
The army of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV was defeated by
disease during his attempt to conquer Rome, probably typhoid fever and dysentery (bloody flux), and perhaps also malaria (ague) (793).
1088
Shen Kuo; Shen Gua (CN) devised a geological hypothesis for land
formation (geomorphology), based upon findings of inland marine fossils,
knowledge of soil erosion, and the deposition of silt. He also proposed a
hypothesis of gradual climate change, after observing ancient petrified bamboos
that were preserved underground in a dry northern habitat that would not
support bamboo growth in his time (809).
1098
The First Crusade was delayed and made more difficult by disease,
in particular by an epidemic, probably of typhoid fever, that struck in Syria
in 1098 after the siege of Antioch (793).
1103-1105
There was a pestilence and murrain
(cattle plague) in England. ref
c. 1112
1112
According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle a destructive pestilence
occurs in England. ref
c.
1128
Hugh of Saint-Victor (FR), according to Peter Watson, “proposed
that secular learning—focused on the sheer reality of the natural world— was a
necessary grounding for religious contemplation. ‘Learn everything,’ was his
motto, ‘later you will see that nothing is superfluous.’ From this attitude
grew the medieval practice of writing summae,
encyclopedic treatises aimed at synthesizing all knowledge” (713; 1434). This way
of thinking was a great stimulus to the development of the sciences.
Robert
Grosseteste (GB), in 1220-1235, was the first to fully understand Aristotle's
vision of the dual path of scientific reasoning: Generalizing from particular
observations into a universal law (induction), and then back again from
universal laws to prediction of particulars (deduction). Grosseteste called
this "resolution and composition". So for example looking at the
particulars of the moon, it is possible to arrive at universal laws about
nature. And conversely once these universal laws are understood, it is possible
to make predictions and observations about other objects besides the moon.
Further, Grosseteste said that both paths should be verified through
experimentation to verify the principles (364).
Saint Thomas Aquinas (IT), in 1265-1274, insisted that there is a
natural, underlying order of things, which appears to deny God’s power of
miraculous intervention. There is, he said, a ‘natural law,’ which reason can
grasp; Aquinas simultaneously Christianized Aristotle, and Aristotleized
Christianity. A secular way of thinking was introduced into the world, which
would eventually change man’s understanding for all time. Philosophy was no
longer a mere handmaiden of theology. Human intelligence and freedom received
their reality from God himself. Man could only realize himself by being free to
pursue knowledge wherever it led. He should not fear or condemn the search. God
had designed everything, and secular knowledge could only reveal this design
more closely — and therefore help man to know God more intimately (977; 1343; 1434).
1148
An severe epidemic broke out in the army of the Emperor Louis VII at
Attalia on the coast of Anatolia (Turkey). It wiped out soldiers and pilgrims
of the Second Crusade and facilitated their defeat by the Turks (793; 1107).
c.
1150
Abd al-Malik ibn Abi al-Ala Ibn Zuhr; Avenzoar (Arabian) wrote Altersir or Theisir, a treatise on clinical medicine. He proved that the skin
disease scabies was caused by a parasite; discussed extraction of
cataract; miosis (excessive
contraction of the pupil); mydriasis
(extreme dilation of the pupil); feeding through a cannula in the throat;
tracheotomy; removal of renal calculi
(kidney stones); mediastinal (space
between the two pleural sacs) abscess;
and serous pericarditis (serum-like
fluid around the heart). Avenzoar is the first physician known to have made
postmortem dissections (725).
Constantinus Africanus (Carthaginian-Norman) in the employ of
Robert Guiscard, commander of the Norman armies at the time, was the first
important translator of great works from Arabic into Latin (902). See, c. 900.
Hildegard von Bingen (DE) wrote Physica (Natural History) and Causae
et Cures (Causes and Cures). She
was an outstanding herbalist and observer of folk medicine. These are among the
first books on a biological or medical topic written by a woman (1401). See, c. 900.
In Causae et Cures she
describes the human embryo as follows: “After the man's semen has fallen into
its place so that it must be molded into a human form, from the woman's
menstrual blood a fine skin, like a small vessel, will grow around that form
and hold and surround it so that it may not be moved or fall, because the
coagulated blood collects there so that this form lies in its middle, like a
person in the shelter of his house.” She also gives one of the first
descriptions of menopause (1402).
Hildegard von Bingen (DE) made some very intelligent recommendations,”
such as eating cooked rather than raw foods. Ref
1158
In the city of Bologna, Italy a charter was issued for a school of
law and medicine (law had been taught there for over a century prior to 1158).
Some consider this to be the first University in the modern sense of the word.
The students elected their masters and the rector (902).
1167
The army of Frederick Barbarossa (DE) was nearly destroyed by an
epidemic disease after his conquest of Rome in 1167. Whether this was typhus (camp fever), malaria
(ague), or something else has not been decided (793).
c.
1170
Roger son of Frugardi; Roger son of Ruggiero; Rogerius Frugardi;
Roger of Palermo; Rogerius Salernitanus (IT) wrote Cyrurgia Rogerii (Roger’s
Surgery), the first medieval textbook on surgery, which in various forms
dominated the teaching and practice of surgery in Europe for many years. It was
re-edited as Roger’s Practica about
1250. The Practica described how to
treat fractures of the skull, nasal polyps, hemorrhoids, fractures of the jaw,
goiters, and stone in the bladder. It introduced the use of the seton (a strip
or skein of silk or linen drawn through a wound in the skin to make an issue)
and intestinal anastomoses (performed using a hollow cylinder of elderwood).
Goiters, instead of being removed surgically were often treated with an
electuary (powdered drug made into a paste) containing among other things ashes
of seaweed and sea sponge. One of the most famous variations of the Practica was Roland’s Libellus de Cyrurgia, produced by
Roger’s pupil Roland of Parma (401; 902).
1170
Gerard of Cremona (IT) was sent by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick
Barbarossa (DE) to Toledo, Spain to translate Avicenna’s Canon from Arabic into Latin. He not only translated the Canon but some 70-additional works
including Rhazes’s Al Kitabul-l-Mansuri,
the surgery of Albucasis, and Arabic versions of Aristotle, Hippocrates, and
Galen (902).
1173
Influenza (grippe) occurs
as an epidemic in England, Germany, and Italy (367).
1189
Many Crusaders fall victims to typhoid and scurvy at Acre, Israel
during the Second Crusade (793).
c.
1190
Andreas Capellanus; André le Chapelain (FR) wrote that for
contraception women drank decoctions of fennel and acorn. Each alone prevented
menstrual flow; together they were considered effective against ovulation and
conception (270).
1196
A flesh fly, maybe Blaesoxipha
lineata (Fallén) was noted as the main parasite of Locusta migratoria L. in China’s Jiangsu Province. ref
1199
Moses Maimonides; Moshe ben Maimon; Moses ben Maimon; Moïse
Maïmonide; Musa ibn Maimun (ES-EG), the Jewish theorist and physician who
practiced medicine in Egypt, states that illness curable by diet alone should
not otherwise be treated. He makes many dietary recommendations related to
various illnesses. Notably Maimonides recommends one ideal light meal for
making an asthmatic chest feel better. Chicken soup—chicken or turtle dove with
vinegar and lemon juice cooked with mint—ought to be followed by pomegranate
juice. Amazingly, he recommends avoiding fatty, rich, coarse foods whose pathogenic fluids after digestion could
concentrate in blood vessels, and, not being evacuated, cause their narrowing (900).
Maimonides gives us a rare glimpse into the daily affairs of a
physician in the 12th century. In a letter to his friend Shmuel Ibn Tibbon he
writes, "I dwell at Fostat, and the sultan resides at Cairo [about a mileandahalf
away]....My duties as physician to the sultan are very heavy. I am obliged to
visit him every day, early in the morning. When he or any of his children or
any women of his harem are indisposed, I dare not leave Cairo but must spend
the greater part of the day in the palace. Often some of the royal officers
fall sick and I must treat them. Hence, I go to Cairo early in the day and even
if nothing unusual happens, I do not return home until late afternoon. Then I
am fatigued and hungry. I find the antechambers filled with people, Jews and
gentiles, nobles and commoners, judges and bailiffs, friends and foes that await
the time of my return. I dismount from my animal, wash my hands and entreat my
patients to bear with me while I partake of some food, my only meal in 24
hours. Then I go forth to attend my patients, write prescriptions and
directions for their ailments. Patients go in and out until nightfall, and
sometimes, even, until two hours and more in the night. I converse with them
and prescribe for them while lying down from sheer fatigue. And when night
falls, I am so exhausted I can scarcely speak" (543).
c.
1200
Aegidius Corboliensis; Gilles de Corbeil (FR) wrote the poem Carmina de Urinarum, which remained the
standard text on urine for 500 years (408).
The first description of fascioliasis (liver-fluke infestation) in
literature is in the circa 1200 Black
Book of Chirk or The Chirk Codex (546).
Jean de Brie (FR), in 1379, made mention of 'liver rot' disease in
sheep while preparing a treatise on wool production (397; 398).
John Fitzherbert (GB), Anthony Fitzherbert (GB), and Thomas
Berthelet (GB) described what was very likely a liver fluke (524).
Fanensi Gabucinus; Hieronymus Gabucinus (IT) described worms
resembling pumpkin seeds in the blood vessels of sheep and goats (553).
Godefridus Govart Bidloo (NL) observed worms in the bile ducts of
sheep, stags, and calves; noting that he remembered seeing similar worms in the
livers of humans (180; 181).
Karl Georg Friedrich Rudolf Leuckart (DE) and Algernon Phillips
Withiel Thomas (GB) described the complete life cycle of the sheep liver fluke,
Fasciola hepatica, including the role
of snails in their development (854; 1344-1348).
Dimitry F. Ssinitzin; Dimitry F. Sisnitzin (PL-RU) showed that
cercariae of F. hepatica pass through
the gut wall of the rabbit and traverse the peritoneal cavity to arrive in the
liver (1288).
James Frederick Parry McConnell (GB-IN) was the first to describe
the Chinese liver fluke, (Clonorchis
sinensis ) of man (941).
Isao Ijima (JP) described the larval stage (the miracidium)
present in Clonorchis sinensis. ref
Harujiro Kobayashi (JP) discovered that an important food fish is
the second intermediate host of Clonorchis
sinensis. This is the source by which human infections are acquired. There
are 12 species of fish that are mainly responsible for passing the infection to
humans. Some of these fishes include Pseudorasbora
parva (in the Japan region) and Ctenopharyngodon
idella (in the Canton region) (792).
Masatomo Muto; also known as Shochi Muto (JP) recognized the snail
host of Clonorchis sinensis, mainly Parafossarulus
manchouricus and species from the genus Bulinus (989).
1201
England experiences a serious human plague and murrain
(cattle plague). ref
1215
During the Fourth Lateran Council, a papal edict was issued which
forbade physicians (most of whom where clergy) from performing surgical
procedures, as contact with blood or body fluids was viewed as contaminating to
men of the church. ref
1220
Theodoric
Borgognoni; Ugone da Lucca; Hugo de Lucca (IT) introduced the use of spongia somnifera [sleep sponges] for anesthetization of patients
for minor surgery. A sponge soaked in a dissolved solution of opium, mandrake,
hemlock, mulberry juice, ivy and other substances was held beneath the patients
nose to induce unconsciousness. He
insisted that the practice of encouraging the development of pus in wounds,
handed down from Galen and from Arabic medicine be replaced by a more
antiseptic approach, with the wound being cleaned and then sutured to promote
healing. Bandages were to be pre-soaked in wine as a form of disinfectant (1334). Note: Borgognoni was significant in
stressing the importance of personal experience and observation as opposed to a
blind reliance upon the ancient sources.
Francis
Bacon (GB) reported that simple opiates, which are likewise called narcotics
and stupefactives, are opium itself, which is the juice of the poppy, the plant
and seed of the poppy, henbane, mandragora, hemlock, tobacco, and nightshade (108).
1202
Leonardo
of Pisa; Fibonacci (IT) considered the growth of an idealized (biologically
unrealistic) rabbit population, assuming that, 1) a
single newly born pair of rabbits (one male, one female) are put in a field,
2)
rabbits are able to mate at the age of one month so that at the end of its
second month a female can produce another pair of rabbits; 3) rabbits never die
and a mating pair always produces one new pair (one male, one female) every
month from the second month on. The puzzle that Fibonacci posed was: how many
pairs will there be in one year? (1009)
Note: Fibonacci numbers appear in various "family trees" and
patterns of spirals of leaves, seeds, and sea shells.
1218-1219
Scurvy kills
many Crusaders at Damietta, Egypt (793).
1224
Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (Sicilian-DE) was the first to
deliberately establish a university by royal edict. It was located at Naples.
Pope Gregory IX authorized the first papal university in 1229 at Toulouse. ref
1231
Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, Holy Roman Emperor (Sicilian-DE)
decreed ‘that no surgeon be admitted to practice unless he be learned in the
anatomy of the human body.’ A law was put in place that provided for the public
dissection of the human body ‘at least once in five years,’ at Salerno (1434).
c.
1240
Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, Holy Roman Emperor (Sicilian-DE)
wrote De Arte Venandi cum Avibus [The Art of Hunting with Birds], a
treatise on hunting, which is also a serious, scientific account of the habits
and structure of birds. He found the air cavities in bones, described the lung,
and made observations on flight and migration (541; 542). This work
was first printed in 1596.
Gilbertus Anglicus; Gilbertinus (GB) wrote Compendium Medicinae, a seven volume work in which he attempted to
consolidate medical knowledge up to that time. He mentions squinantia, which sometimes caused death by suffocation; likely diphtheria.
John of Arderne (GB) had similar cases which he called squynancy (67; 1160).
1241
Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, Holy Roman Emperor (Sicilian-DE)
issued the Edict of Salerno
(sometimes called Constitution of Salerno) which mandated the first
legally fixed separation of the occupations of physician and apothecary.
Physicians were forbidden to double as pharmacists and the prices of various
medicinal remedies were fixed. This became a model for regulation of the
practice of pharmacy throughout Europe. ref
c.
1246
Ibn Nafis; Ibn al-Nafis; Ibn an-Nafis; Ala’ al-Din Ibn Abi al-Hazm
al-Quarashie (Arabian) suggested that the right and left ventricles of the
heart are separated by a nonporous ventricular septum and described the lesser
circulation (pulmonary circulation) of blood more than two centuries before
Miguel Servet y Reves (Michael Servetus) or Matteo Realdo Colombo (34; 183). See, 1553
c.
1249
Roger Bacon (GB) described how curved glass could be used as
spectacles to treat farsightedness (113). In his
book Perspectiva of 1267 he says,
"Great things can be performed by refracted vision. If the letters of a
book, or any minute object, be viewed through a lesser segment of a sphere of
glass or crystal, whose plane is laid upon them, they will appear far better
and larger” (865).
Albertus Magnus; Alberti Magni; Albert of Cologne; Albert the
Great (DE) in De Animalibus
distinguished four types of animal reproduction; opened fowl eggs at various
intervals of time to trace the development of the embryo from the pulsating red
speck of the heart to hatching; described insect mating; identified insect
eggs; showed that ants needed their antennae for orientation; and observed the
ovarian follicles and trachea of crickets (37).
In De Vegetabilibus Plantis
he presented an accurate, detailed and systematic classification of plants from
the fungi to the flowering forms. He grouped flowers into three types:
bird-form, bell-form, and star-form. He was the first to mention spinach in
Western literature, the first to note the influence of light and heat on the
growth of trees, and the first to establish that sap (which he knew was carried
in vessels) is tasteless in the root and becomes flavored as it ascends.
Albertus proposed that existing plant forms are sometimes mutable (38).
1250
Welch physicians were using menygellydon, or “elves’ gloves” or
“little folks’ gloves” as an herbal remedy. This is foxglove, which contains
digitalis (683; 844).
Many Crusaders led by Louis IX of France die from scurvy and
typhoid at Al Mansurah, Egypt during the 2nd Crusade (793).
1251
Jordanus
Ruffus (DE) was first to recognize and describe equine strangles (coryza
contagiosa equorum ) (1164; 1175). It is also
called druse or gourme.
Jacques de
Solleysel (FR) described strangles
and noted that it is a disease of horses that has been known for many years (426).
Philippe-Étinne
La Fosse (FR) determined experimentally that strangles (distemper) is infectious (812).
Sebastiano
Rivolta (IT) found that micrococci are common in the pus of strangles cases (1151).
Leopoldo
Baruchello (IT), in 1886, described the cause of equine strangles (a highly contagious respiratory
tract disease of horses and donkeys) to be a
micrococus, which he named Bacillus adenitis equi. Using experimental
infection of colts he concluded that the disease was the result of a mixed
infection of streptococci and staphylococci (136-139). Note: A vaccine is discussed in the 1908
article.
Johann Wilhelm Schütz (DE), Gerhard Sand (DK) and Carl Oluf Jensen
(DK) were able to reproduce the disease in healthy horses using pure
cultures of Streptococcus equi (1220).
1266
The English Parliament passed regulatory enactments, called assizes, prohibiting the adulteration of
any staple food that was also subject to price controls. The 1266 statutes
prohibited the sale of any corrupted wine
or of any meat, fish, bread, or water that was not wholesome for man’s body or that was kept so long that it loseth natural wholesomeness (1077).
c.
1266
Theodoric Borgognoni; Teodorico de'Borgognoni; Theodoric of Lucca;
Theodoric Borgognoni of Cervia (IT) in his book, Cyrurgia [Surgery], pioneered
in the use of the aseptic technique—not the “clean” aseptic technique of today,
but rather a method based on avoidance of “laudable pus”. He attempted to
discover the ideal conditions for good wound healing, and concluded that they
comprised control of bleeding, removal of contaminated or necrotic material,
avoidance of dead space, and careful application of a wound dressing bathed in
wine. Control of bleeding, removal of contaminated or necrotic material, and
avoidance of dead space are principles that can also apply in today’s
operations. He also argued for primary closure of all wounds when possible and
avoiding “laudable pus.” He advocated the use of narcotic-soaked sponges to put
surgical subjects to sleep (200). See,
Celsus c. 30 B.C.E. and Galen, c. 175.
c.
1267
"Experimental science has three great prerogatives over other
sciences; it verifies conclusions by direct experiment; it discovers truth
which they never otherwise would reach; it investigates the course of nature
and opens to us a knowledge of the past and of the future." Roger Bacon (112).
c.
1270
Arnaldus de Villanova; Arnald of Villanova (ES) an alchemist who
taught at the medical school in Montpellier, France reported that when wood is
burned under conditions of poor ventilation the fumes released are poisonous.
This amounts to a discovery of carbon monoxide. He practiced alcohol
distillation and systematically used alcohol to prepare tinctures for the treatment of certain diseases. He refers to the
use of burnt sea sponge as a treatment of simple goiter (its iodine content may
have been the reason for its success) (430). Note:
As long ago as 1600 B.C.E., the Chinese made use of burnt sponge and seaweed as
a therapy for goiters.
Giuseppe Flajani (IT), Antonio Giuseppe Testa (IT), Caleb Hillier
Parry (GB), Robert James Graves (GB), and Karl Adolph von Basedow (DE)
described a disorder characterized by a triad of hyperthyroidism, goiter, and
exophthalmos (bulging eyeballs). The symptoms include cardiac arrhythmias,
increased pulse rate, weight loss in the presence of increased appetite,
intolerance to heat, elevated basal metabolism rate, profuse sweating,
apprehension, weakness, elevated protein-bound iodine level, tremor, diarrhea (flux),
vomiting, eyelid retraction, and stare. Goiters are more prevalent in fresh
water and lake countries and less so on the seacoast, due to the lack of iodine
in fresh water. It is variously called Flajani’s
disease, Parry’s disease, Graves’ disease, Basedow’s disease, or Graves-Basedow disease (527; 607; 1059; 1060; 1333; 1400). Note: now called exophthalmic goiter. Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Albrecht von Graefe
(DE), in 1867, described lid lag in thyrotoxicosis (Basedow’s disease)
(1403).
Jean-Francois Coindet (CH), who previously used burnt sponge and
seaweed to successfully treat goiter (goitre), prescribed iodine as a cure for
goiter (332). Note:
Proper dosage was difficult, and some patients were injured.
Jean Baptiste Joseph Dieudonné Boussingault (FR) advised the
government of Columbia, South America that for the treatment of goiter they make available to the world
naturally iodized salt, which they possessed. He knew the value of this salt
because a young physician —Francois Désiré Roulin (FR) — collected a sample of
the Columbian salt and sent it to him for analysis (100; 206; 207; 1058; 1302).
Karl Adolph von Basedow (DE) gave this description of exophthalmic
goiter (hyperthyroidism). “Mrs. G.
[the first of three cases described] lost weight, suffered from edema of the
legs, general emaciation, amenorrhoea, palpitation of the heart…shortness of
breath, and a sense of depression about the chest. There was a noticeable
protrusion of the eyeballs, which were otherwise healthy and functioned
completely, although she slept with open eyes. She had a frightened look and
was known in our whole town as a crazy woman” (1400). Basedow’s disease = hyperthyroidism.
Paul Julius Mobius (DE), in 1887, suggested a hyperfunction of the
thyroid gland in exophthalmic goiter (966).
Julius Wagner-Jauregg (AT) had become convinced that the regular
intake of small amounts of iodine was prophylactic against cretinism, and
proposed that iodized salt be added obligatory to salt sold in areas in which
goiter was endemic (741).
Eugen Baumann (DE) discovered that the thyroid gland is rich in an
organic form of iodine (he called it iodothyrin). Before this, iodine was not
known to occur naturally in animal tissue. The thyroid is unique for being so
much richer in iodine than other tissues. Baumann also reported that persons
inhabiting coastal areas contain more thyroid iodine than persons living
further inland (145; 146). See, Edward Calvin Kendall, 1914.
Robert Grieve Hutchison (GB) isolated the globulin that was later
named thyroglobulin (720).
adolf Oswald (DE) clearly demonstrated that the iodine of the
thyroid is firmly bound to a globulin-like protein and introduced the term thyroglobulin (1032-1034).
David Marine (US), William Whitridge Williams (US), and Carl H.
Lenhart (US) studied the histology of the thyroid gland in relation to its
iodine content. They found that a fall in iodine content preceded any cellular
changes with a falling iodine content eventually leading to hyperplasia and
hyperactivity but not hyperfunction (919; 920).
Heinrich Hunziker-Schild (CH) was one of the first to realize the
connection between iodine-poor diets and goiter (716).
Edward Calvin Kendall (US) isolated, crystallized, and named the
hormone thyroxine from thyroid gland tissue (772-775). Thyroxine
was first called thyroxin (at the suggestion of Kendall’s assistant, Arnold E.
Osterberg). The ‘e’ was added when it was realized that it is an amino acid
with an amine group.
David Marine (US) and Oliver P. Kimball (US) demonstrated that the
addition of iodide to a water supply in areas where simple goiter was common
would prevent and cure the disease. Their work led to the common use of iodized
salt (918).
David C. Rayner (GB) and Brian R. Champion (GB) reported that exophthalmic
goiter, or Graves’ disease, is not
the result of dietary iodine levels. It is primarily an autoimmune disorder,
resulting in abnormal metabolism (1127).
Ismail Ibn Hasan Jurjani (Persian) described this condition over
800 years earlier (756).
1271
Marco Polo (Venician) both father and son wrote of the people of
the Karkan in Turkestan that had tumors of the throat caused by the poor
quality of the water that they drank. ref Note: Very probably
goiter.
1275
William of Saliceto; Guglielmo da Saliceto; Guilelmus de Saliceto
(IT) wrote Cyrurgia, a highly
respected book on surgery (373). He
recorded his thoughts on urine formation and described renal dropsy (edema) in
his book, In Scientia Medicinali (901). His
descriptions of the human anatomy strongly suggest that he practiced dissection
even though many in the church were opposed.
William of Saliceto; Guglielmo da Saliceto; Guilelmus de Saliceto
(IT) was perhaps the first to suggest that voluntary movements originate in the
“brain”, whereas “natural and necessary” movements originate in the cerebellum (579). See, Herophilus of Alexandria;
Herophilos of Chalcedon; Herofilos of Chalkedon, 300 B.C.E.
Raymundus Lullius; Raimondus Lullius (ES) allegedly discovered
diethyl ether which was named oleum
dulcivitrioli (sweet vitriol oil). I: Its description is not found in any
of his extant works.
Valerius Cordus (DE), in 1540, was one of the first to prepare
diethyl ether (sweet vitriol oil). He
did this by heating alcohol with sulfuric acid (829).
Theophrastus Phillippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim;
Paracelsus (CH), c. 1540, sweetened the feed of fowl with oleum dulcivitrioli (sweet oil of vitriol) (ether) and discovered
that the inhalation of the vapor could induce sleep in chickens without causing
any harm. However, its potential as an anesthetic in humans was not realized
for another 200 years (1120).
Andreas Libavius; Andreas Libau (DE), in
his Alchemia, describes Paracelsus’
method of preparing analeptic spirit of
vitriol (ether) by adding alcohol to the distillate of vitriol (858).
Note: This book is the first systematic chemistry textbook.
Johann Sigismund August Frobenius (DE) and Cromwell Mortimer (NL)
changed the name oleum dulcivitrioli
(sweet oil of vitriol) to spiritus vini
aethereus (spirit of heaven) (545).
Marco Polo (IT) reported that some people wear lenses before their
eyes in China and provided information on Asiatic fauna, revealing new animals
to Europeans (1103).
c.
1280
Pietro d'Abano; Petrus De Apono; Petrus
Aponensis; Peter of Abano (IT) proposed that the brain was the source of the
nerves, and the heart was the source of the blood vessels (386).
1295
Lanfranc de Milan (IT) wrote on a system of
surgery in which he was the first to describe concussion of the brain. He advocated
shaving the head prior to skull surgery (420).
1296
England experienced an epidemic of flux (probably dysentery).
ref
c.
1300
The first synthetic dye, orcein,
called French purple, was produced by exposing orchella extract to air
oxidation in the presence of ammonia formed during the fermentation of urine by
a lichen. The lichen was identified as Rocella (315).
The first important responses to the plague (Yersinia pestis)
took extreme and ugly forms. In Germany and some adjacent parts of Europe
companies of flagellants aimed at carrying out God’s wrath beat each other bloody
and attacked Jews, who were commonly accused of spreading the pestilence. The
flagellants disdained all established authorities of church and state and, if
accounts are to be believed, their rituals were well nigh suicidal for the
participants (1500).
Guy de
Chauliac; Guidon de Chauliae (FR) revived the use of compression of the nerve
trunk as an anesthetic in the 1300s, and Ambroise Paré (FR) did the same in
1542.
This technique had been known in antiquity (1360).
Valverdi (IT), in 1600, produced regional anesthesia by compression of nerves and blood
vessels supplying the operative area (358). full name
The halving of China’s population between 1200 and 1393 is better
explained by plague (Yersinia pestis) than by Mongol
barbarity (399).
1302
The first known court ordered post-mortem was performed on
Azzolino, a nobleman of Bologna, Italy, suspected of having been poisoned (902).
1305
Bernard de Gordon (FR) wrote Lilium
Medicinae (Lily of Medicine) in
which he described the treatment of hernia with a truss and made the first
mention in medical literature of spectacles for the eyes. Simple lenses had
been in use for many years (410).
1310
Jehan
Yperman (Flemish) gave the first exact description of unilateral and bilateral
cleft lip surgery (1413; 1493).
1315-1316
John de Trokelowe (GB) reported an epidemic throat infection
called pestis gutturosa in England (1361).
1316
Mondino; Remondino de Luzzi (IT), who taught at the medical school
in Bologna, wrote Anothomia, the
first modern textbook devoted entirely to human anatomy. He is credited with
coining the word mesentery and making
the first public anatomical demonstration upon the human body, yet this
distinction may belong to Herophilus of Alexandria (GR), 300 B.C.E. (435).
1323
Influenza is epidemic
in Italy and France (367). The French
referred to influenza as "the
grippe."
c. 1325
Hu-Ssu-Hui (Hoshoi), a Mongolian physician, observed that there
were some diseases, such as, for example, the last stages of avitaminosis-B,
which could be cured by diet alone, without the intervention of any drugs at
all (718).
c.
1330
William of Ockham; William of Occam (GB) laid down the rule that:
"Non sunt multiplicanda entia
praeter necessitatem [Entities must not needlessly be multiplied.]"
This has been interpreted in modern times to mean that of two theories equally
fitting all observed facts, that theory requiring the fewer assumptions is to
be accepted as more nearly valid. The rule, now called Ockham’s razor, is of vital importance in the philosophy of science (1008). Ockham and Duns Scotus (GB)
were very important to the rebirth of scientific inquiry because they were "insistent
upon the separation of theology from practical truth—a separation which
manifestly released scientific inquiry from dogmatic control" (1443).
1337
A severe epidemic of sorethroat occurred in Holland. Likely diphtheria. ref
c.
1340
Petrus de Crescentii; Pietro de Crescenzi (IT) wrote Ruralum Commodorum, a practical manual for agriculture with many accurate
observations on insects and other animals. Apiculture was discussed at length.
Before the plague (Yersinia pestis) called the Black Death
reached the Crimea in 1346 and began its devastating career in Mediterranean
lands, Uzbek villages of the western steppe had been completely emptied by the
disease (455). It is
believed to have originated in Eastern Asia, passed through India to Asia
Minor, Arabia, Egypt, Northern Africa, and directly to Europe by the Black Sea.
In Europe the epidemic began in 1346, and spread first of all in the maritime
cities of Italy and Sicily, in 1347 it appeared in Constantinople, Cyprus,
Greece, Malta, Sardinia and Corsica, and towards the end of the year, at
Marseilles; in 1348 in Spain, Southern France, Paris, the Netherlands, Italy,
Southern England and London, Schleswig-Holstein and Norway, and in December, in
Dalmatia and Jutland; in 1349 in the Austrian Alpine countries, Vienna, and
Poland; in 1350 in Russia, where in 1353 the last traces disappeared on the
shores of the Black Sea. The social upheaval that ensued is generally regarded
as the end of the Middle Ages (1232).
c.
1350
John of Arderne (GB) wrote, the Practica (De Arte Phisicali
et de Cirurgia), in which he formed the basis of practical surgical
teaching in the medical schools of medieval
Europe (751).
John of Arderne (GB) was an accomplished surgeon who was so
expensive that he served mostly the nobility, wealthy landowners, and the
higher clergy. He taught that wounds should heal without suppuration; that
irritating solutions should not be used on wounds; and that dressings should be
changed as infrequently as possible. His operation for fistula in ano, dividing the fistula from end to end was visionary (85).
1358
Giovanni Boccaccio (IT), in the Preface to Ladies in his Decameron discusses the plague (Yersinia pestis) of 1348. He says, "At the onset of the
disease both men and women were afflicted by a sort of swelling in the groin or
under the armpits which sometimes attained the size of a common apple or egg.
Some of these swellings were larger and some smaller, and all were commonly
called boils…. Afterwards, the manifestation of the disease changed into black
or livid spots on the arms, thighs and the whole person…. Like the boils, which
had been and continued to be a certain indication of coming death, these blotches
had the same meaning for everyone on whom they appeared." The following is
an excerpt from The First Day of the Decameron, "And this pestilence was
a farre greater power or violence; for not only healthful persons speaking to
the sick, coming to see them, or ayring clothes in kindness to comfort them was
an occasion of ensuing death; but touching their garments, or any foode whereon
the sick person feed, or anything else used in the service, seemed to transfer
the disease from the sicke to the sound, in very rare and miraculous manner" (193; 194).
1361
Plague is epidemic
in England. ref
1363
Guy de Chauliac; Guidon de Chauliae (FR), greatest surgeon of the
Middle Ages and physician to the popes at Avignon, wrote the Chyrurgia Magna in which he expressed
his belief in laudable pus and the
conventional theory of coction and expulsion of irritant humors through
suppuration in the healing of wounds. He described the abscesses associated
with phlegmon, pustules, gangrene and anthrax as hot. These represent some of today’s acute inflammatory abscesses.
Guy lived through two visitations of the plague (Yersinia pestis)
while he was physician to the popes in Avignon, caught the disease himself and
left a good description of it. He also wrote an excellent account of leprosy, at the time endemic through all
of Europe (873). Note: Laudable means good or healthy.
Coction refers to the notion that heat caused bad humors to cook up and be
expelled by suppuration, i.e., the formation of pus. Phlegmon is inflammation
of the connective tissues. Guy introduced the treatment of broken limbs by
suspension in a cradle—the method of making traction
to prevent deformity by shortening of the member—a method still in use. He was
one of the first physicians to advocate the use of glasses in certain eye
disorders and the first to mention compression therapy for varicose veins. His Cyrurgia Magna, completed in 1363, was
the surgical authority until the eighteenth century (400-406; 1426).
1371-1901
Ida MacAlpine
(DE-GB), Richard Alfred Hunter (DE-GB), John C.G. Röhl (GB), Martin Warren
(GB), and David Hunt (GB) presented strong circumstantial evidence that
porphyria, possibly variegate porphyria, was present in the Royal Houses
of Stuart and Hanover in the United Kingdom (893; 1156).
1374
Venice excludes plague-ridden
ships from its harbor. ref
The "Dancing mania" occured when victims of dancing
epidemics were experiencing altered states of consciousness in areas within
Germany, France, and the Netherlands. Those who
danced did so involuntarily as indicated by their extraordinary levels of
endurance. In a trance state, they would have been far less conscious of their
physical exhaustion and the pain of sore, swollen, and lacerated feet. The
course of the epidemics also suggests that they were driven by pious fear. From
the outbreaks of 1374, 1463, and 1518 we know that dancing was thought to be
both the affliction and its cure. The central role of belief is apparent in the
speed with which epidemics abated once victims had prayed at appropriate
shrines or undergone elaborate exorcism rituals. The phenomenon of the "dancing
mania", in all its rich perversity, reveals the extremes to which fear and
supernaturalism can lead us (793; 1425).
1382
A plague fatal to many children prevailed in a number of European
countries, among them England, Germany, and France; most likely diphtheria. ref
1387
Florence, Italy experiences an epidemic of influenza (grippe) (367).
c.
1390
Godfrey Chaucer (GB) describes an English physician of the late
14th century in the General Prologue to his Canterbury
Tales. The original text is in italics.
“With us
there was a doctor of physic;
With us ther was a Doctour of Phisik;
In all this
world was none like him to pick
In al this world ne was ther noon hym lik,
For talk of
medicine and surgery;
To speke of phisik and of surgerye;
For he was
grounded in astronomy.
For he was grounded in astronomye.
He often
kept a patient from the pall
He kepte his pacient a ful greet dee
By
horoscopes and magic natural
In houres, by his magyk natureel.
Well could
he tell the fortune ascendent
Wel koude he fortunen the ascendent.
Within the
houses for his sick patient.
Of hisc ymages for his pacient.
He knew the
cause of every malady,
He knew the cause of everich maladye,
Were it of
hot or cold, of moist or dry,
Were it of hoot or coold, or moyste, or drye,
And where
engendered, and of what humour;
And where they engendred, and of what humour.
He was a
very good practitioner.
He was a verray parfit praktisour;
The cause
being known, down to the deepest root,
The cause yknowe, and of his harm the roote,
Anon he gave
to the sick man his boot.
Anon he yaf the sike man his boote.
Ready he
was, with his apothecaries,
Ful redy hadde he hise apothecaries,
To send him
drugs and all electuaries;
To sende him drogges and his letuaries
By mutual
aid much gold they'd always won-
For ech of hem made oother for to wynne
Their
friendship was a thing not new begun.
Hir frendshipe nas nat newe to bigynne
Well read
was he in Esculapius,
Wel knew he the olde Esculapius,
And
Deiscorides, and in Rufus,
And Deyscorides and eek Rufus,
Hippocrates,
and Hali, and Galen
Olde Ypocras, Haly, and Galyen
Serapion,
Rhazes, and Avicen,
Serapioun, Razis, and Avycen
Averrhoes,
Gilbert, and Constantine,
Averrois, Damascien, and Constantyn,
Bernard and
Gatisden, and John Damascene.
Bernard, and Gatesden, and Gilbertyn.
In diet he
was measured as could be,
Of his diete mesurable was he,
Including
naught of superfluity,
For it was of no superfluitee,
But
nourishing and easy. It's no libel
But of greet norissyng, and digestible.
To say he read
but little in the Bible.
His studie was but litel on the Bible.
In blue and
scarlet he went clad, withal,
In sangwyn and in pers he clad was al,
Lined with a
taffeta and with sendal;
Lyned with taffata and with sendal-
And yet he
was right chary of expense;
And yet he was but esy of dispence;
He kept the
gold he gained from pestilence.
He kepte that he wan in pestilence.
For gold in
physic is a fine cordial,
For gold in phisik is a cordial,
And
therefore loved he gold exceeding all.
Therfore he lovede gold in special” (299).
1402-1404
There
occured an epidemic of the pague in Iceland (793).
1403
Charles Frederick Boulduan (US) and Nils William Boulduan (US)
report that Venice, Italy implemented a quarantine (quadraginta = forty days)
against the Black Death. The first
quarantine station was founded on the small island of Santa Maria di Nazareth adjoining
the city (204).
1411
Influenza (grippe) was
epidemic in Paris, France (367).
1414
Influenza (grippe) was
epidemic in Paris, France and Italy (367).
1417-1430
Florence, Italy periodically experienced an epidemic of the
plague. In 1425 dysentery (bloody flux) was at an epidemic level (793).
1427
Influenza (grippe) was
epidemic in Paris, France (367).
1431
Jeanne la Pucelle; Joan the Maid; Joan of Arc (FR) was burned at
the stake. If her "story were not so extraordinarily beautiful and
terrible, questions concerning her mental health would have attracted little
attention.
Had she lived today rather than over six hundred years ago, it is
not likely that any physician would seriously consider that her voices and
visions were those of angels or saints. Instead, she would be given a diagnosis
of delusional disorder, even though the voices and visions, and the deeds they
inspired, are why, for many, the maid is not dead, but sleepeth" (899).
1444
Nikolaus Krebs of Cues; Nicholas of Cusa; Nicholas Cusa; Nikolas
von Cusa; Nicolaus Cusanus (DE) claimed that the Earth moved round the Sun. He
also claimed that the stars were other suns and that space was infinite. He
believed that the stars had other inhabited worlds orbiting them. He was one of
the first scholars who advocated the use of measurements for the determination
of pulse, respiration and urinary excretion. He used concave lens spectacles to
treat nearsightedness and suggested that plants grow by assimilation of water (1006; 1007).
1450-1520
France experienced epidemics of plague, measles, smallpox
(red plague),
and syphilis (793).
1462-1465
The plague was epidemic in Germany (793).
1463
Giannozzo Manetti (IT) recounts that at the court of Pope Nicholas
V in Dijon, syphilis (le gros mal) was mentioned in open court (567; 907).
1466
Paris, France experienced an epidemic of the plague (793).
1472
Paolo
Bagellardo (IT), in 1472, wrote the first printed work on diseases of children.
It includes chapters on
many common infections, including tinea
capitis, otorrhea,
ear abscess, cough, rheumatism and diarrhea (flux) (114).
1475
Konrad von Megenberg (DE) wrote Buch der Natur (The Book of
Nature), the earliest printed work in which woodcuts representing plants
and animals were used to illustrate the text. This work gives a survey of all
that was known of natural history at that time and is, besides, the first
natural history in the German language (1407). Note:
This work was first printed in 1475.
1476
Gulielmus de Saliceto; Gulielmus de Salicetti; Guglielmo
Salicetti of Piacenza; William of Salicet (IT) described kidney disease as follows: “The
signs of hardness in the kidneys are that the quantity of the urine is
diminished, that there is heaviness of the kidneys, and of the spine with some
pain: and the belly begins to swell up after a time and dropsy is produced the
second day” (425).
1477-1479
Italy suffered an epidemic of the plague (793).
1478-1479
Plague is epidemic
in London (793).
1483
Richard III, King of England, is known to have presented an
allergic reaction, exhibiting an immediate cutaneous reaction following the
ingestion of strawberries. According to Thomas More, King Richard III used his
allergy to strawberries to good effect in arranging the judicial murder of Lord
William Hastings. The King surreptitiously ate some strawberries just prior to
giving an audience to Hastings and promptly developed acute urticaria. He then
accused Hastings of putting a curse on him, an action that demanded the head of
Hastings on a plate (974).
1484
Pope Innocent VIII authorizes burning of witches in the bull
entitled Summis desiderantes. ref
1485-1551
The English Sweating Sickness, also
referred to as Sudor Anglicus, English Sweat, the Sweat, the Swat, the New
Acquaintance or “Stoupe! Knave and know thy master”, or “Stup-gallant” (both
sarcastic names given by the poor, indicating that this new disease
predominantly struck the rich), was and still is a historical and
epidemiological mystery (668).
1486
Heinrich Institoris (DE) and Jakob Sprenger (DE), in their 1486 Treatise About Workers of Harmful Magic,
may have been the first to give a written description of an individual with Tourette’s syndrome when they described
a priest with both motor and phonetic tics (729).
Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard (FR) described the clinical condition that
would later be called Gilles de la
Tourette syndrome (733).
Georges Albert Édouard Brutus Gilles de la Tourette (FR) described
a syndrome which usually begins at the age of 7 to 10 years, is characterized
by echolalia (the automatic
repetition by lunatics of what is said to them; a sign of schizophrenia), pallilalia (repeating the sentences of
others) and coprolalia (the
compulsory saying of dirty words), a want for touch, stuttering, a lack of
muscular coordination with involuntary and purposeless movements, which may
consist of mild facial spasms and blinking with the eyes, and/or violent tics
in eyes, head, arms, and legs, or other parts of the body. Often there is also echopraxia (involuntary mimicking of the
movements of others), incoherent grunts and barks, which may represent
suppressed obscenities (584; 585). This is Gilles de la Tourette syndrome.
1489
Typhus (camp fever) was epidemic in Spain; most severe in Granada (793).
c.
1490
Leonardo da Vinci (IT) dissected at least 30 male and female
bodies of various ages to aid in his production of more than 750 anatomical
sketches of the human body, including skeleton, muscles, heart, lungs, nerves,
blood vessels, viscera, and brain. The accuracy of these drawing was not to be
equaled until the time of Sömmerring and Scarpa (295).
He injected ventricles with molten wax to determine their shape,
sectioned the eyeball after boiling it in egg white, employed cross sections to
study the anatomy of the legs, and produced a remarkably accurate illustration
of the fetus in utero. He observed
the correct inclination of the pelvis, discovered the frontal and maxillary
sinuses and the moderator band of the heart, described in detail the structure
and function of the heart valves, and drew precise pictures of the coronary
arteries and their course (902).
He wrote that fossils were once-living organisms that had been
buried at a time before the mountains were raised: "it must be presumed
that in those places there were sea coasts, where all the shells were thrown
up, broken, and divided. The stratified stones of the mountains are all layers
of clay, deposited one above the other by the various floods of the rivers . .
. In every concavity at the summit of the mountains we shall always find the
divisions of strata in the rocks." Leonardo appears to have grasped the law of superposition, which would be
articulated fully by the Danish scientist Nicolaus Steno in 1669: in any
sequence of sedimentary rocks, the oldest rocks are those at the base. He also
appears to have noticed that distinct layers of rocks and fossils could be
traced over long distances, and that these layers were formed at different
times: " . . . the shells in Lombardy are at four levels, and thus it is
everywhere, having been made at various times" (376).
1490
Typus manifested
itself as a notable destroyer of European armies. Soldiers who had been
fighting in Cyprus brought it to Spain (946).
Plague is common
in Central Europe (793).
1492
Once contact with Europeans had been established, Amerindian
populations of Mexico and Peru became the victims, on a massive scale, of the
common childhood diseases of Europe and Africa (1498).
Prior to this date natives of Brazil had been using the ipecac
root to treat dysentery (bloody flux) (1071).
Ruy Diaz de Isla (ES), Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo (ES) and
Bartolomé de Las Casas (ES) wrote books which suggested that syphilis appeared in Western Europe in
the late 15th century, having been brought from America by the crew of Columbus (411; 414; 423). Convincing
proof of the origin of syphilis is
lacking. In addition to syphilis the
disease has been called; the disease of the Island of Hispaniola, the disease
of Naples, the Italians called it the Spanish or French Disease (Morbus gallicus), the French called it
the Italian disease, the Russians called it the Polish disease, and the Arabs
called it the disease of the Christians.
Smallpox (red
plague), which had existed previously in Europe, also got its modern name at
this time, to distinguish it from syphilis,
which was known as the great pox (793).
Pope Innocent VIII, in Rome, had an apoplectic stroke; became weak
and sank into a coma. The harrowing story was told that, at the suggestion of a
Jewish physician, the blood of three boys was infused into the dying pontiff's
veins. They were ten years old and had been promised a ducat each. All three
died. The Pope did not benefit and died by the end of that year (726). This is
the first recorded attempt at a human-to-human blood transfusion.
Andreas Libavius (DE) was among the first to advocate blood
transfusion, though he is not known to have attempted to perform a transfusion.
“Let there be a young man, robust, full of spirituous blood, and also an old man,
thin, emaciated, his strength exhausted, hardly able to retain his soul. Let
the performer of the operation have two silver tubes fitting into each other.
Let him open the artery of the young man, and put it into one of the tubes,
fastening it in. Let him immediately after open the artery of the old man, and
put the female tube into it, and then the two tubes being joined together, the
hot and spirituous blood of the young man will pour into the old one as it were
from a fountain of life, and all of his weakness will be dispelled” (859; 904).
Francis Potter (GB), in 1650, transfused blood from sheep to
sheep. This possibly represents the first blood transfusion in history (1099).
Robert Boyle (GB) also carried out non-human blood transfusions in
animals (218).
Richard Lower (GB) and Edmund King (GB), at the suggestion of
Christopher Wren (GB), performed some of the first blood transfusions from one
animal to another— keeping dogs alive by transfusion of arterial blood from one
dog to venous blood of another. Lower later repeated this feat with sheep. In
1667, Lower reported successful blood transfusion from lamb to a man who Arthur
Coga, described as an ‘eccentric scholar’ (879-882).
Edmund King (GB) determined that a vein-to-vein transfusion was
the safest (787).
Samuel Pepys (GB) in his diary entry of 14 November 1666 states, "Dr.
Croone told me that at the meeting of Gresham College tonight, which it seems
they now have every Wednesday, there was a pretty experiment of the blood of
one dog let out till he died, into the body of another on one side, while all
his own ran out on the other side. The first died upon the place, and the other
very well and likely to do well"(1072).
Jean-Baptiste Denis (Denys) (FR), assisted by Paul Emmerez (FR),
is credited with the first transfusion of animal blood into a human subject.
They gave approximately 12 ounces of lamb’s blood to a young man “possessed of
an incredible stupidity” on 15 June 1667. This patient and a 45-year-old man
who received the second transfusion of sheep’s blood are both described in the
1668 paper; both survived without ill effects (439; 440; 1199).
Jean-Baptiste Denis (Denys) (FR) may have been the first to
describe, what we now know as a transfusion reaction. He observed this in one
of his patients, who manifested classical signs of a hemolytic (destruction of
red cells) reaction (439).
James Blundell (GB), in 1819, performed the first successful
transfusion of blood from one human to another. It was in a patient treated for
post-partum hemorrhage. Using the patient's husband as a donor, he extracted
approximately four ounces of blood from the husband's arm and, using a syringe,
successfully transfused the wife. Between 1825 and 1830, he performed 10
transfusions, five of which proved beneficial to his patients, and published
these results. He also devised various instruments for performing transfusions
and proposed rational indications (190; 191).
Samuel Armstrong Lane (GB), aided by consultant James Blundell
(GB), performed the first successful whole blood transfusion to treat
hemophilia (781).
Thomas Chalmer Addis (GB) transfused "about 300cc of freshly
drawn human phosphated blood" to a patient with hemophilia whose plasma
clotting time was thereby shortened from 245 to 24 minutes (normal is 13 minutes).
It was 30 minutes two days later, 32 at four days, 55 at eight days, and 200 at
25 days. Addis concluded controversially but correctly that the hemophilic
defect lay in the plasma, but wrongly that hemophilic prothrombin abnormally
resisted conversion to thrombin; however, prothrombin
was still a hypothetical concept in 1910. This experiment took place in 1910
but was not reported until 1916 (22).
Nicolò Leoniceno (IT), philosopher, mathematician, linguist,
writer, and professor of medicine authored Indications
of Errors in Pliny and in Several other Authors Who Have Written on Medicinal
Simples. He was a powerful champion of plain truth and common sense against
the supposedly infallible authority of books. He devoted himself to the
betterment of botany, the materia medica,
and knowledge of every kind (853). The plant
genus Leonicena was dedicated to him
in 1777 (1223).
1493
Alessandro Benedetti (IT), professor of anatomy at Padua,
accurately described the plague and syphilis (159).
Hartmann Schedel (DE) reported an outbreak of diphtheria in Nuremberg Germany (1198).
Smallpox (red
plague) is reported in Germany . ref
1494-1495
The French army at Naples was exposed to an epidemic of syphilis
while Iceland had a plague epidemic (793).
1495
Conradus Schellig (DE) wrote an early treatise on syphilis (1202).
1496-1500
Syphilis spreads in
Europe. ref
1496
Joseph Grünpeck (DE) clearly described mixed infections of syphilis and gonorrhea (the clap) (617).
1497
Nicolò Leoniceno (IT) authored one of the earliest tracts on syphilis (852).
c. 1497
Leonardo da Vinci (IT) in his Trattato della Pittura [Treatise
on Painting] wrote, "Li circuli delli rami degli alberi segati mostrano
il numero delli suoi anni, e quali furono più umidi o più secchi la maggiore o
minore loro grossezza." [The rings around the branches of trees that
have been sawn show the number of its years and which [years] were the wetter
or drier [according to] the more or less their thickness.] (375) Note: First published in
1637
1499-1500
Plague (Yersinia pestis) struck London, causing
thousands of deaths, the first of a number of outbreaks in that city (793).
1499
Rolandus Parmensis (IT) resected a piece of lung that was infected
with worms between two ribs (1037).
1500
Leonardo da Vinci (IT) stated, “No animal can live in an
atmosphere where a flame does not burn” (376).
Robert Boyle (GB) was to later confirm this experimentally. Boyle
made the analogy between fire and life, both being dependent on an essential
anonymous element in the atmosphere (216; 217; 219).
Antonio
Benivieni (IT) practiced medicine in Florence from c. 1460-1502. His brother
posthumously published his collection of medical cases as De Abditis Nonnullis ac Mirandis Morborum et Sanationum Causis [The
Hidden Causes of Disease], the first book on pathological anatomy.
It is the first published account of medical case histories, some 160, and
includes many autopsies. Benivieni was the first physician on record to ask permission
of relatives for post-mortem examination for the purpose of discovering the exact cause of death.
He describes
ulceration of the vagina; a fetus which is syphilitic; gall stones; carcinoma
of the stomach; fibrinous pericarditis; syphilitic periostitis; and vesical
calculus (stone in the bladder) (160; 161).
Perhaps the first written record we have of a mother and baby
surviving a Caesarean section comes
from Switzerland in 1500 when Jacob Nufer, a sow gelder, performed the
operation on his wife. After several days in labor and help from thirteen
midwives, the woman was unable to deliver her baby. Her desperate husband
eventually gained permission from the local authorities to attempt a Caesarean. The mother lived and
subsequently gave birth normally to five children, including twins. The Caesarean baby lived to be 77 years old.
Since this story was not recorded until 82 years later historians question its
accuracy.
"Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb untimely
ripp'd." William Shakespeare (1251).
A woman conducted the first recorded successful Caesarean in the
British Empire. Sometime between 1815 and 1821, James Miranda Stuart Barry
performed the operation while masquerading as a man and serving as a physician
to the British army in South Africa.
While Barry applied Western surgical techniques,
nineteenth-century travelers in Africa reported instances of indigenous people
successfully carrying out the procedure with their own medical practices. In
1879, for example, one British traveler, R.W. Felkin, witnessed Caesarean section performed by Ugandans.
The healer used banana wine to semi-intoxicate the woman and to cleanse his
hands and her abdomen prior to surgery. He used a midline incision and applied
cautery to minimize hemorrhaging. He massaged the uterus to make it contract
but did not suture it; the abdominal wound was pinned with iron needles and
dressed with a paste prepared from roots. The patient recovered well, and
Felkin concluded that this technique was well developed and had clearly been
employed for a long time. Similar reports come from Rwanda, where botanical
preparations were also used to anesthetize the patient and promote wound
healing.
Numerous references to Caesarean
section appear in ancient Hindu, Egyptian, Grecian, Roman, and other
European folklore. Ancient Chinese etchings depict the procedure on apparently
living women. The Mischnagoth and Talmud prohibited primogeniture when
twins were born by Caesarean section
and waived the purification rituals for women delivered by surgery. Yet, the
early history of Caesarean section
remains shrouded in myth and is of dubious accuracy. Even the origin of Caesarean has apparently been distorted
over time. The surgical birth of Julius Caesar may be the origin of this myth;
however, this seems unlikely since his mother Aurelia is reputed to have lived
to hear of her son's invasion of Britain. At that time the procedure was
performed only when the mother was dead or dying, as an attempt to save the
child for a state wishing to increase its population. Caesarean section
most likely derives from the Roman legal code. This law had its origins as the lex Regia but was corrupted into the lex Caesare. Roman law
under Julius Caesar decreed that all women who were fated to die at childbirth
must be cut open; hence, cesarean. Other possible Latin origins include the
verb caedare, meaning to cut, and the
term caesones that was applied to
infants born by post-mortem operations. Ultimately, though, we cannot be sure
of where or when the term Caesarean was
derived. Until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the procedure was known
as Caesarean operation. This began to
change following the publication in 1598 of Jacques Guillimeau's book on
midwifery in which he introduced the term section.
Increasingly thereafter section
replaced operation (1246).
Max Sänger (DE) introduced a major turning point in the
development of the caesarean section in 1882, when he introduced the practice
of sutural closure of the uterus following Caesarean section operations (1184).
Alfred Jacobus Dührssen (DE) introduced a new variation of the
caesarean section in which the surgery was performed via the vaginal canal (469).
Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland were exposed to
a plague epidemic .(793)
1500-1600
Southern Italy expressed a psychological
illness (trantism) characterized by an extreme impulse to dance. It lasted from
the 15th to the 17th century, and was widely believed at the time to have been
caused by the bite of a tarantula. Victims seemingly were cured by frenzied
dancing (793).
1501
Europe experienced an epidemic of Morbus Hungaricus, which was most likely epidemic typhus (camp
fever). ref
1503
The first hospital in the Americas was established at Santo
Domingo in what is now the Dominican Republic (902).
Leonardo da Vinci (IT) started his painting of Madonna Lisa Maria
de Gherardini (Mona Lisa). A careful clinical examination of the famous
painting reveals a yellow irregular leather-like spot at the inner end of the
left upper eyelid and a soft bumpy well-defined swelling of the dorsum of the
right hand beneath the index finger about 3 cm long. This is probably the first
recorded case of familial
hypercholesterolemia (FH) (1027). She died
at the age of 37 from unknown causes.
Portrait of an Elderly Lady painted in
1633 by Frans Hals shows the classic lesions of xanthomas on the dorsum of the
hand of a 60-year old lady.
c.
1505
"There
is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain
in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of
things." Niccoló Machiavelli (1469–1527) (896).
1506
Christopher Columbus; Cristóbal Colon (nationality unknown) died
having suffered from progressive reactive
arthritis (899).
1507
Leonardo da Vinci (IT), from autopsy, describes what we today call
atherosclerosis as follows: "Veins
which by the thickening of their tunics in the old restrict the passage of the
blood, and by this lack of nourishment destroy their life without any fever,
the old coming to fail little by little in slow death" (376; 377).
1507
and 1518
Two epidemics of smallpox
(red plague) killed from a third to more than half of the native populations of
Cuba, Haiti, and Puerto Rico (793).
It is very likely
that either Calusa (native Americans) merchants based in Southern Florida or
Maya merchants spread the smallpox
(red plague)
microbes as they made stops along the Gulf Coast of North America. When the
first Spanish explorers arrived on the mainland of the Southeastern United
States in 1513, a major plague had already depopulated many of the native
provinces along the Gulf Coast; Mobile Bay and Pensacola Bay were devastated.
Throughout the Southern Highlands, final town occupation dates
typically over a span from 1500 A.D. – 1585 A.D. There is a reason. The primary
cause of the continuing debate over the history of the Americas prior to
European colonization is a disease holocaust that wiped out at least 90% or
more of its indigenous peoples during the immediate years when the Western
Hemisphere was first being colonized.
1508
Plague reported in England. ref
Sweating-sickness epidemic in England (793).
1510
Beginning in Sicily an
influenza (grippe) pandemic swept Europe (367; 1316).
1512
Syphilis struck
Japan for the first time and was attributed to Chinese traders coming to
Nagasaki (793).
1513-1515
Plague is in
England. ref
1513
Giovanni da Vigo (IT) related in his book La Practica et Cirurgia that he treated syphilis with mercurial inunctions. He also recommended that
carious portions of teeth be “completely removed with borer, file and scraper”
and "then for preservation of the tooth fill the cavity with gold leaf" (374). See, Abu Zakerijja Jahja ben Maseweih
(Arabian), c. 860.
Eucharius Rösslin; Eucharius Roessslin; Eucharius Rhodion (DE)
wrote, Der Swangern Frawen und Heb Amme
Roszgarte [The Rose Garden of
Pregnant Women and Midwives]. It represents the first printed monograph on
obstetrics and was so popular it went through 100 editions (1162; 1163). Thomas
Raynalde (GB) improved Rösslin’s book considerably and published his English
version entitled The Byrth of Mankind (1126).
1514
Peter Martyr (GB) in a letter to Ludovico Mendoza says that the
King's (Henry VIII) physicians fear that he may have the smallpox (red plague) present in England at the time (361; 932).
Girolamo Fracastoro (IT) described a disease of cattle in Italy
which was very likely foot-and mouth disease (538).
1516
Pietro Martire d’Anghiera (IT) described the arrow poison (curare)
used by South American Indians (370). Two plants
from the Amazon basin produce curare, Strychnos
guianensis called pot curare and Chrondodendron
tomentosum called tube curare. The latter is used to produce tubocurarine
used in modern medicine. Walter Raleigh (GB), in 1596, gave an early report on
the arrow poison (curare) (1116).
1516-1517
The sweating-sickness is epidemic in England (793).
Diphtheria (malignant
sore throat) is in Amsterdam and the Rhineland. ref
1518
Thomas Linacre (GB), along with Cardinal Wolsey, persuaded Henry
VIII, King of England, to establish the Royal College of Physicians of London,
with Linacre serving as its first president. This college had the power to
examine candidates and license them if they passed an examination, graduates of
Oxford and Cambridge being exempted. Linacre is also important because he was a
first rate Latin and Greek scholar who translated Galen (Galeni) from the Greek
into Latin (902).
"Dancing mania" is epidemic in Strasbourg, France (793).
Smallpox (red plague) is epidemic in Hispaniola
(793).
1519-1525
Ireland is ravaged by epidemics of plague, typhus (camp fever), smallpox
(red plague),
and influenza (grippe) (793).
1520-1521
Smallpox (red
plague) followed by starvation killed millions of the native inhabitants of
Mexico. Introduced at Veracruz with the arrival of Panfilo de Narvaez on April
23, 1520, it rapidly spread inland, and was credited with the victory of Cortes
over the Aztec empire at Tenochtitlan (present-day Mexico City) in 1521. From
Mexico it spread south into Central and South America, exterminating huge
numbers of natives in those areas as well (793).
The most likely scenario is that either Calusa merchants based in
southern Florida or Maya merchants spread the small pox microbes as they made
stops along the North American Gulf Coast.
Long before 1775, repeated bouts of Old World pestilence occurred
in the years that followed Cortes's conquest. Smallpox (red plague), measles, influenza (grippe), mumps, typhus (camp fever), cholera,
plague, malaria (ague), yellow fever, scarlet fever, whooping
cough, and diphtheria wreaked
havoc (510).
1520-1600
France is visited by epidemics of the plague (793).
1521
Jacopo Berengario da Carpi; Giacomo Berengario da Carpi (more
correctly Barigazzi) (IT) wrote Carpi
Commentaria cum Amplissimis additionibus Super Anatomia Mundini, in 1521,
then Isagogae Breves, in 1522. He
distinguished the chyliferous ducts from the veins, described the vermiform
appendix, mentions that the common biliary duct opens into the duodenum where
bile often stains it yellow, gave a clear account of the thymus gland,
discussed the action of the cardiac valves, and described a horse shoe kidney. Vas deferens is a term he originated (167-169). He was the
first anatomist to recognize the importance of anatomical illustrations
properly related to the text.
1522
Alessandro Achillini (IT) wrote a commentary on Mondino in which
he gave the first descriptions of the malleus and incus, ossicles of the ear,
the submaxillary duct, the ileocecal valve, rediscovered the fornix and
infundibulum and the cerebral cavities (17). See, Thomas Wharton (GB), 1656,
rediscovery of the submaxillary duct.
Cambridge, UK experiences an epidemic of typhus (camp fever) (793).
1523
Jacopo
Berengario da Capri; Giacomo Berengario da Carpi (IT),
Bernardino Partenio (IT), and Benedetto Faelli (IT) were the first
to pictorially present the location of the vermiform appendix in man. They described
appendicitis in a post-mortem examination (168; 169). See, Fernel, 1526.
Guillaume de Baillou; William of Ballion; Wilhelm Ballonius (FR)
described acute (gangrenous) appendicitis in 1734 (120; 965). Note: Baillou is considered the founder
of modern epidemiology (393).
Claudius Aymand (FR) performed the first successful appendectomy.
He removed an appendix containing a calcified mass
surrounding a pin (60).
Lorenz Heister (DE) was the first to study the pathology of
appendicitis. He described appendicitis as follows: "I found the small
guts very red and inflamed in several places…. But, when I was about to
demonstrate the situation of the great guts, I found the vermiform process of
the caecum preternaturally black, adhering closer to the peritonaeum than
usual. As I now was about to separate it…the membranes of this process
broke…and discharged two or three spoonfuls of matter. This instance may stand
as a proof of the possibility of inflammations arising, and abscesses forming,
in the appendicula" (656; 657).
John W.K.
Parkinson (GB) performed a post-mortem on a boy finding impacted material in
the appendix, which had become inflamed, with obstruction, perforation, and
peritonitis. From these clinical observations, Parkinson was able to give a
good description, in 1812, of fatal appendicitis
(1056).
His brother James Parkinson (GB) communicated his work.
Francois Mélier (FR) described 6 cases of appendicitis
at autopsy
and ascribed the origin of purulent iliac tumor (appendicitis) to inflammation
of the appendix and suggested the possibility of
appendectomy as an operation (951).
Robert Lawson Tait (GB) performed a successful appendectomy and
drained a large abscess in 1880 (1324).
Reginald Heber Fitz (US) demonstrated the pathology of the
vermiform appendix and advocated immediate radical surgical treatment of acute
appendicitis by removal of the offending organ, i.e., appendectomy. In this
paper he coined the term appendicitis (523). Delaying
medical treatment was the norm at this time.
Abraham Groves (CA) on 10 May 1883 performed an appendectomy on a
young boy. He removed the inflamed appendix after ligating its base and the
mesentery. The appendiceal stump was sterilized by means of a probe heated in
the flame of a lamp (614).
Rudolf Ulrich Krönlein (CH), in 1884, would also perform an
appendectomy for appendicitis. The patient died from complications within a few days (802).
Thomas George Morton (US) was one of the first to deliberately
operate for and remove the inflamed appendix after correct diagnosis, April
1887. The patient survived. Case reported by Woodbury (1483).
Nicholas Senn (CH-US) was among the first surgeons to diagnose
acute appendicitis and to perform a successful appendectomy (1233).
Edward R. Cutler (US) performed the first clean (unruptured) appendectomy in 1887 (1165).
Owen Harding Wangensteen (US) and Clarence Dennis (US) provided
experimental proof of the obstructive origin of appendicitis in man (1429).
1524
Ulrich Ellenbog (DE) wrote the first work on an occupational
disease. It is a pamphlet on the diseases of goldsmiths and the first known
work on industrial hygiene and toxicology. Written in
1473 it was not published until 1524 (480).
Theophrastus Phillippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim;
Paracelsus (CH) wrote the first monograph on the diseases of an occupational
group, miners. He described diseases resulting from contact with metals, those
acquired from the breathing of fumes produced by smelters, including mercury
and arsenical poisoning (1043).
Bernardino Ramazzini (IT) discussed the etiology, treatment, and
prevention of over 50 diseases associated with various trades. He discussed
mercury poisoning in surgeons and lead poisoning in painters, as well as the
sciatica of potters and eye troubles of painters (1117-1119).
Théodore Tronchin (CH) showed that the so-called 'Poitou-colic'
was caused by drinking water that had passed through lead gutters (1362).
George Baker (GB) proved that Devonshire colic (from cider
drinking) was caused by the lead used in vats and cider presses (116).
John Ayrton
Paris (GB) noticed that arsenic fumes ("arsenical vapor") might
contribute to the occurrence of scrotal skin cancer in the copper-smelting
works of Cornwall and Wales (1055).
Jonathan
Hutchinson (GB) reported on the occurrence of skin cancer resulting from the
medical use of arsenic (719).
Ludwig
Wilhelm Carl Rehn (DE) reported the appearance of urinary bladder tumors among
men employed in the German aniline dyestuff industry in the production of
'fuchsin' (magenta) (1132).
By the year
1907 it was officially recognized in Great Britain that cancer of any cutaneous
site could be caused by pitch, tar, or tarry compounds (658).
Katsusaburo Yamagiwa (JP) and Koichi Ichikawa (JP) were the first
to demonstrate that skin cancers can be induced by repeated exposure of mammalian
skin to coal tar (1490; 1491).
1525-1527
Smallpox (red
plague) in Peru killed the Inca ruler, Huayna Capac, and some 200,000 others,
and destroyed the Inca Empire (793).
c.
1526
"All substances are poisonous, there is none which is not a
poison; the right dose differentiates a poison from a remedy." Paracelsus (1047).
Theophrastus Phillippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim;
Paracelsus (CH) in his, Die Grosse
Wundartznei, discouraged the treating of wounds with irritating solutions
and emphasized the natural healing powers of the tissues. His monograph Diseases that Deprive Man of His Reason
is an early classic on mental diseases. He observed cysticeri—the larval stage
of parasitic worms—in brains of deceased patients with epilepsy; noted the relationship between cretinism and endemic goiter;
prepared and popularized many tinctures and extracts including laudanum (alcoholic tincture of opium)
which he named; and popularized the use of mercury, lead, sulfur, iron,
arsenic, and copper sulfate in medicine (1044-1047).
1526
Jean Francois Fernel; Joannis Fernelii; Joannes Fernelius (FR) was
the first modern physician to make dissection an important part of his clinical
duties, and the first to describe post-mortem appendicitis (See, Aulus Cornelius Celsus (Roman) in
30 B.C.E.), peristalsis, and the central canal of the spinal cord. He
introduced the terms physiology and pathology, noted that the arteries
increased in size during systole, reported that some nerves are sensory and
others motor (See, Herophilus of
Alexandria, 300 B.C.E.), that the meninges of the brain have sensation while
the brain itself lacks a sense of touch, and the anterior brain is the origin
and seat of sensation, and the posterior of motion. He described an epidemic of
influenza (grippe) in 1544 and noted encephalitis
as a complication, gave an excellent description of syphilis (which he called lues
venereae) and pointed out that an infant could contract it from suckling.
He rejected mercury in its treatment, preferring guaiac. Fernel was also an
astronomer and the first to accurately measure a meridian of longitude. Within
30 years after Columbus’ voyages he wrote three treatises on the earth as a
sphere, whirling with other planets about the sun (511; 512; 514-516; 518).
1526
Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés (IT) wrote Sumario de la Natural
Historia delas Indias; largely a translation of the writing of Francisco
Hernández de Toledo (ES). It described many New World animals, such as the
tapir, opossum, manatee, iguana,armadillo, ant-eaters, sloth, pelican, humming
birds, etc. (422). Note: Francisco
Hernández de Toledo (ES) described over 3,000 Mexican plants, a feat that was
significant because classical texts did not amass so much plant biodiversity.
His dedication to helping generate an early taxonomy for New World plants
allowed for European use. Since the pre-existing botanical terminology was so
limited, he used native names (mostly Nahuatl) when classifying the plants.
Some specific plants of the New World he described include: vanilla, the first
written account of it; corn (Zea mays L.), in long and detailed
chapters; four varieties of cacao; tobacco; chilis; tomatoes, in four chapters;
and cacti, in 14 chapters. His notes were published in Mexico in 1604 and 1614,
describing many animals for the first time: coyote, buffalo, axolotl,
porcupine, pronghorn antelope, horned lizard, bison, peccary and the toucan. He
also figured many animals for the first time: ocelot, rattlesnake, manatee,
alligator, armadillo, and the pelican.
c.
1527
Luca Ghini (IT) is notable as the creator of the first recorded
herbarium, as well as, the first botanical garden in Europe (731).
1527
Theophrastus Phillippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim;
Paracelsus (CH) mentions in his writings of 1527 that adding wine or vinegar to
urine could cause some urines to curdle and yield a milky precipitate (479). Doubtless
this was albumin in the urine.
Frederik Dekkers (NL) in examining the urine of diabetics found
that it contained albumin (acetic acid test) and tasted like sweet milk (124). He also
found that the urine of patients with phthisis
(pulmonary tuberculosis) contains
protein, i.e., proteinuria (436).
Frederick Dekkers (NL) reported in 1694 that certain urines are
coagulable by heat (187). See, Domenico Felice Antonio Cotugno,
1775.
William Cruickshank (GB) carried out extensive chemical studies
and reported in 1797 that the urines of certain dropsical patients could be
coagulated by nitrous acid or by heat, but that “in the dropsy proceeding from
diseased liver and other morbid viscera the urine does not coagulate either by
nitrous acid or heat (1157).
William Charles Wells (US-GB) related that albumin is commonly
found in the urine of patients suffering from dropsy (edema). This is
commonly referred to as proteinuria (1444). See, Richard Bright, 1827.
1528
Typhus (camp fever) attacked French troops besieging Naples,
killing well over half the army. The remaining soldiers retreated and were then
destroyed by forces of the Holy Roman Empire. The troops of Charles V later
suffered their own defeat to typhus (camp fever) at the French city of Metz in
1552 (793).
1529-1530
Sweating-sickness is in England then spreads over Europe. ref
1529
An outbreak of the dreaded sweats
(the modern-day equivalent of this disease is unknown) led Martin Luther and
Zwingli to break off their colloquy in Marburg, without achieving agreement on
a definition of the Eucharist. This appears to have sealed the split between
Lutheran and Swiss (soon to become Calvinist) reform along lines that deeply
affected subsequent European history, and has endured to the present (338; 793).
Joannes Theodor van den Kasteele (NL) discussed the epidemiology
of sweating-sickness (1378).
1530
Otto Brunfels (DE) authored his two volume Herbarum Vivae Icones that made him immortal in the field of botany (247). In a
dedicatory letter to the Senate of Strasbourg he described this work as
follows, "In this whole work I have no other end in view than that of
giving a prop to fallen botany; to bring back to life a science almost extinct.
And because of this has seemed to me to be in no other way possible than by
thrusting aside all the old herbals, and publishing new and life-like
engravings, and along with them accurate descriptions extracted from ancient
and trustworthy authors, I have attempted both; using the greatest care and
pains that both should be faithfully done."
The plant genus Brunfelsia
was named in his honor in 1703 (1100).
Girolamo Fracastoro; Hieronymus Fracastorius (IT), a Veronese
physician, poet, and geologist wrote the poem Syphilis sive Morbus Gallicus. The main figure in this poem is the
shepherd Syphilis from whom the name for the venereal disease is derived. In
the poem the young shepherd is stricken by a malady as a penalty for lack of
respect to the gods. So immensely popular was the poem that the name of its
hero has remained associated with the disease ever since. Records indicate that
the disease in Europe, in its acute phase, was extraordinarily malignant for
about 60 years beginning in the 1490’s; thereafter, it became milder, though
its late consequences remain serious (537-539).
1531-1536
Plague is reported
in England ref.
1535
Valerius Cordus (DE) authored Dispensatorium,
or manner of preparing all medicines, which was so popular that it was
reprinted for 150 years. In 1561 his four volume De Historia Plantarum was published followed by a fifth volume in
1563 (351; 352).
Although Cordus died at the age of twenty-nine his works place him
among the great botanists of all time. Edward Lee Greene in describing him said,
"Cordus left no dissertations on the philosophy of plants, but only his
descriptions of some five hundred species; and it is out of these fragments,
all posthumously published, that we gather proofs of his resplendent genius" (477). The plant
genus Cordia was dedicated to him in
1703 (1100). In his De Historia Plantarum he was the first
to use the term pollen (575).
Jean Ruel (FR) authored De
Natura Stirpium, a great classic in the field of botany (1170). Of this
work Edward Lee Greene says, " …it is the first volume produced within the
period of the Renaissance which from beginning to end carries the implication
that botany is botany, and that pharmacy, like agriculture, pomology, and
horticulture, is but one of its departments, and all of them subsidiary to the
philosophy of plant life as a whole" (477).
1535-1536
Plague, typhus (camp fever), smallpox (red plague), and relapsing fever
are all epidemic in Ireland (793).
1536
Nicolo Massa (IT) discussed the cerebrospinal fluid and described
the prostate gland for the first time (934).
Girolamo Cardano; Jerome Cardan (IT) gave one of the earliest
descriptions of typhoid fever. "The thirty-sixth fatal error is, in that
disease, which produces in the body, marks like the bites of fleas. For they
seek to call this by the name of measles, we shall call it from its resemblance
pulicaris…. Measles are elevated above the skin… Morbus pulicaris is wholly without elevations, and only spots on
the skin are present, in its nature deadly." (272)
1537
Ambroise Paré (FR), a master barber-surgeon who served many years
in the army, declared that supposedly poisoned gunshot wounds were simple
contused wounds, and proceeded to bandage them without hot oil. (Note: Most surgeons of the day practiced
searing heavily. They disinfected gunshot wounds with boiling oil and stopped
the bleeding by cauterizing the arteries without anesthetics. Paré used
soothing ointments for gunshot wounds and tied off arteries and veins to stop
bleeding.) He successfully treated gunshot wounds with bandages soaked in egg
yolk, turpentine, and oil of roses. He was the first to employ the ligature in
the case of arterial hemorrhage and in amputation. He invented many surgical
instruments, introduced massage, artificial limbs and artificial eyes into
surgery, described congenital syphilis
in detail, championed the podalic version in difficult labor and practiced
induced labor for serious uterine hemorrhage. With Franco (FR) he was one of
the first to describe in detail the principles and techniques in the surgical
treatment of cleft palate (454; 1048; 1050; 1053; 1054). Note:
The use of ligature to stop bleeding was not his invention but rather had been
in use for at least three centuries before his time.
Antonio Musa Brasavola; Antonius M. Brasavola; Antonius M.
Brasavolus; Antonius M. Brassavolus (IT) authored Examen Omnium Simplicium (An
Examination of All Medicinal Simples), covering drugs/herbs dispensed in
the shops or apothecaries. It became the most popular book on botany that had
ever been written (221).
1538-1540
Jean Francois Fernel; Joannis Fernelii; Joannes Fernelius (FR)
mentions the beginning of a pandemic of dysentery
(bloody flux) in Europe (517).
1538
1539
Influenza (grippe) is common in Europe and England. ref
c.
1540
Girolamo Dorzellini (IT) and Alessandro Massaria (IT) wrote
epidemiological works on plagues (935; 1232).
1541
Giovanni Battista Canano; Jean Baptiste Cananus (IT) wrote Musculorum Humani Corporis Picturata
Dissectio in which he illustrated and described his discovery of the palmaris brevis muscle, the oblique head
of the adductor pollicis. He was the
first to present anatomical drawings of lumbricales
and interossei of the hand (267). He is
incorrectly credited with the discovery of the function of the valves within
the veins. See, Amatus Lisitanus,
1547.
1542
Nicolaus Copernicus (DE) described the true system of the sun,
stars and planets in his great work, De
Revolutionibus Orbium, which established the Sun, not the Earth, as the hub
of our solar system (349). See, Nicholas of Cusa, 1444.
Leonhard Fuchs (DE), along with his paid assistants Albrecht Meyer
(DE), Heinrich Füllmaurer (DE), and Veit Rudolf Speckle (DE) authored Historia Stirpium. One of the most
beautiful of all herbals; it contains 500 large high-quality plates of plants. Digitalis purpurea (red foxglove) is
here described for the first time (548; 959). The plant
genus Fuchsia was named in his honor
in 1703 (1100).
1542
Joachim Brandenburg's army, in its attempt to regain the cities of
Buda and Pest, was hampered by an epidemic of typhus (camp fever) (793).
Jean Francois Fernel; Joannis Fernelii; Joannes Fernelius (FR)
found that cardiac systole and diastole coincide respectively with expansion
and contraction of the arteries and demonstrated that the mitral valve was
completely closed during systole and that the transmission of pulsations back
to the pulmonary vein was thus checked (513).
1543
Luca Ghini (IT) was one of the first to use dried plants for
scientific study. In 1543-44 he established the first botanic garden, at Pisa,
Italy (83). Cesalpino
was one of his pupils. Botanical gardens were soon established in Florence
(1544), Bologna (1547), and Paris (1626) (528).
Pitton de Tournefort (FR), around 1700, used the term herbarium
for a collection of dried plants. Linnaeus took up this term (83; 427).
Andreas Wesele Vesalius (NL) published a book, which was the most
accurate description of the human anatomy to date. De Corporis Humani Fabrica (On
the Structure of the Human Body) with its excellent illustrations by Johann
Stephan van Kalkar (NL) is one of the great books in the history of science;
containing many exceptional illustrations drawn from what was seen in actual
dissections rather than resorting to a previous authority. He was the first to
illustrate the malleus and the incus and to show their correct association with
the tympanic membrane; he gave them their common names. He did not, however,
describe the third ossicle, i.e., the stapes. He concluded that the central
seat of olfaction is probably the brain, and not the ventricles. He used glandula
pituitaria, from which the English name pituitary gland is
ultimately derived (1389). Vesalius
did away with the old system of having demonstrators present the parts as the
teacher mentioned them. He performed the dissections himself, often before
large crowds, and soon realized that the anatomy presented by Galen (Galeni)
was weak and often wrong. Vesalius taught in the medical school at Padua, Italy
from 1539 to 1546 and is considered the founder of scientific anatomy and of
the technique of modern dissection.
Vesalius used endotrachael ventilation in pigs and dogs to view
the functioning of the heart and lungs. The trachea of a pig or a dog was
exposed and a reed or cane was inserted into it and he advised: "You will
then blow into this, so that the lung may rise again and the animal take in
air. Indeed, with a slight breath in the case of this living animal the lung
will swell to the full extent of the thoracic cavity, and the heart become
strong and exhibit a wondrous variety of motions" (782; 1389). See Alessandro
Achillini, 1522
Volcher Coiter; Volcher
Koiter; Volcherus Coeiter; Volcker Koyter (NL) wrote the first monograph on the
ear. In it he correctly traced the vibrations constituting sound from the
external ear to the cochlea. This collection also contains his first treatise
on bird anatomy (333). Note: This book is a collection of
monographs.
Giovanni Filippo Ingrassia (IT), in 1548, was the first to
accurately describe the stapes, the oval window, and the round window of the
ear (728; 1201). His book
was published posthumously.
Antonio Maria Valsalva (IT) described what has come to be called
the Valsalva maneuver. "Thus (in
order to offer one of many proofs) if someone would instill a medicinal fluid
into the tympanic cavity…or in the outer portion of the auditory meatus and if
now, with mouth and nose closed, an attempt is made to compress the air, fluid
would flow copiously from the auditory meatus. I recommend this for a prompt
evacuation of a suppurative lesion since this may be remedial for the illness
that might not occur by itself…. However, many more benefits may be derived
from the physician's knowledge of these functions."
He wrote that the zona
cochlea is composed of the finest terminations of the auditory nerve; used
the terms scala vestibuli and scala tympani; divided the ear into
external, middle, and inner parts; and recognized perilymph within the inner
ear. He coined the term Eustachian tube (1373; 1374).
Christian Ludwig Willich (DE) discovered the endolymph within the
membranous labyrinth of the ear (1460).
Marie-Jean-Pierre Flourens (FR) suggested that the semicircular
canals of the inner ear do not function in hearing. He argued that they play a
role in reflexive orientation (529).
adam Politzer (HU-AT) provided experimental proof that the
ossicles of the ear vibrate to sound stimuli (1102).
Andreas Wesele Vesalius (NL) was the first to state the theory
behind artificial ventilation, "But that life may ... be restored to the
animal, an opening must be attempted in the trunk of the trachea, in which a
tube of reed or cane should be put; you will then blow into this, so that the
lung may rise again and the animal take in air. ... And as I do this, and take
care that the lung is inflated in intervals, the motion of the heart and
arteries does not stop..." Andreas Wesele Vesalius (1389).
Marianus
Sanctus de Barletta; Mariano Santo di Barletta (IT) gave the first account of median
lithotomy, a new method that appeared around 1520. Francisco Romano of
Cremona (IT) was the person who devised this technique (394).
England experienced the plague. ref
1545
A smallpox
(red plague)
epidemic occurred in Goa, India. Some 8,000 children were reported to have died
(952).
Charles Estienne; Carolus Stephanus (FR) and Etienne Jollat de la
Rivière (FR) described the veins of the human liver and the central canal of
the spinal cord. They were the first to trace blood vessels into the substance
of bone. They first described what is now known as Glisson’s capsule of the
liver and recognized that the esophagus and trachea were different organs. Additionally,
their text emphasized the parotid, lacrimal, thymus, and lymphatics at the root
of the mesentery, and the armpit and groin. Their drawings of the human sternum
refuted Galenic errors (487).
Ambroise Paré (FR) reported a controlled medical experiment in
which he evaluated onions as a dressing for wounds, a treatment that had been
suggested to him by "an old country woman". He dressed parts of the
wounds and burns with crushed onion and left other parts either untouched or
treated with more traditional remedies. Crushed onion seemed to be more
effective than the alternatives (1052). This is
one of the earliest recorded medical experiments with controls.
Thomas
Phaer; Thomas Phayer; Thomas Phaire (GB), in 1545, wrote the first
English-language book on pediatrics, The
Boke of Chyldren, which included chapters
on aposteme of the brayne (meningitis), scalles of the heed,
styfnesse of the lymmes, bloodshoten eyes [Kawasaki disease?],
diseases in the eares, canker in the mouth, quynsye or swelling
of the throte, coughe, feblenesse of the stomacke and vomiting,
flux of the belly (diarrhea), wormes, small pockes and measels,
fevers, and consumpcion (1074).
1546
Charles Estienne; Carolus Stephanus (FR), Etienne de la Rivière
(FR), Jollat (FR), and Geoffrey Tory (FR) described morbid cavitation in the
spinal cord (syringomyelia) (486).
George Bauer; Georgius Agricola (DE) wrote the first book on
physical geology, De Ortu et Causis
Subterraneorum, which is important because of its descriptions of wind and
water as powerful geological forces, and for its explanation of earthquakes and
volcanic eruptions as produced by subterranean vapors and gases heated by the
Earth's internal heat. His book De Natura
Fossilium (On the Nature of Fossils),
also published in 1546, is considered his most important contribution to
paleontology. This book is not restricted to what we call fossils today: the
Latin word fossilis meant anything
dug out of the ground, and Agricola's book included descriptions of all kinds
of minerals, gemstones, and even gallstones, in addition to what we would call
fossils now. Agricola's work summed up what the ancient Greek and Roman authors
had written about minerals and included a list of a hundred ancient authors
whose works Agricola had consulted -- but Agricola was not afraid to contradict
the ancients' opinions if they did not fit with his own experience. His work
represented a major advance over previous writings on rocks and minerals in
that it classified them, not alphabetically or by their supposed mystical
powers, but by simple physical properties: "Thus minerals have differences
which we observe by color, taste, odor, place of origin, natural strength and
weakness, shape, form, and size." Agricola gave standardized names to
various minerals, and not only recorded their appearance but the localities
where they could be found. He also noted how the same fossils might have
different colors and appearances in different places. Although Agricola's work
included no pictures, his descriptions of fossils are often instantly
recognizable. In his book De Re Metallica
(On the Nature of Metals) Agricola
noted that rocks were laid down in definite layers, or strata, and that these
layers occurred in a consistent order and could be traced over a wide area.
This observation of Agricola's was one of the first contributions to
stratigraphic geology, and one that would become important in understanding the
arrangement and origins of the rocks of the Earth.
He destructively distilled amber and found that succinic acid
sublimed and settled as crystals (28-30; 521).
Girolamo Fracastoro; Hieronymus Fracastorius (IT) in his treatise De Contagione et Contagiosis Morbis et Eorum
Curatione described three types of contagion: 1) contagion by contact
alone; (2) contagion by fomites; and (3) contagion at a distance. He defines
fomites as clothes, wooden things, and other things of those sorts, which in
themselves are not corrupted but are able to preserve the original germs of the
contagion and to give rise to its transference to others. It was his belief
that infection which appears among fruits is transferred in a similar manner as
that produced by contact among humans.
Fracastoro points out that all contagions do not behave alike.
Some attack one organ, others another organ. Variola (smallpox, red
plague) and measles attack children
by preference. Every person is attacked once, but it is rare for people who
have had these diseases once to have them again. He believed that tuberculosis
was infectious and attacked only the lungs. He discussed the epidemiology of petechial fever and syphilis vividly, noting that syphilis
could be transferred to infants by way of an infected mother’s blood.
He observed that hydrophobia (rabies)
was only propagated by the bite of a rabid dog and described the affliction as
follows: "Its incubation (following a bite by a rabid animal) is so
stealthy, slow and gradual that the infection is very rarely manifest before
the 20th day, in most cases the 30th, and in many cases not until four or six
months have elapsed. There are cases recorded in which it became manifest a
year after the bite." Once the disease takes hold "the patient can
neither stand nor lie down; like a madman he flings himself hither and thither,
tears his flesh with his hands, and feels intolerable thirst. This is the most
distressing symptom, for he so shrinks from water and all liquids that he would
rather die than drink or be brought near to water; it is then that they bite
other persons, foam at the mouth, their eyes look twisted, and finally they are
exhausted and painfully breath their last" (538).
Antonio Musa Brasavola; Antonius Musa Brasavolus (IT) published an
account of tracheostomy for tonsillar obstruction. He is the first person known
to have performed the operation (222). See,
The Rgveda, 2K B.C.E., Asclepiades c. 100 B.C.E.,and The Talmud c.400.
1547
Amatus Lusitanus; Amato Lusitano; João Rodriques de Castelo Branco
(PT) along with others he discovered the circulation of the blood, and through
dissections of the Azygos vein, he was the first to observe and speculate about
function of the venous valves found there (889).
Plague is in
England. ref
1549
Pedro Jimeno; Pedro Gimeno (ES) described the stapes of the ear (744). See,
Ingrassia, 1543
1551
Pierre Bélon; Pierre Bélon du Mans; Petrus Bellonius Cenomanus
(FR) wrote L'Histoire Naturelle des Estranges Poissons Marins [The Natural History of Strange Marine Fishes]
(1551) and La Nature et Diversité des Poissons [The Nature and Diversity of Fishes] (1555).
This latter work included 110 animal species and offered many new observations
and corrections to Herodotus. L'Histoire de la Nature des Oyseaux Avec Leurs
Descriptions et Naïfs Portraicts [The Natural
History of Birds with Their Descriptions and Natural Portraits Taken from
Nature] (1555) was his picture book, with improved animal
classification and accurate anatomical drawings. In this he published a man's
and a bird's skeleton side by side to show the resemblance (152-157).
Konrad Gesner; Conrad Gessner; Conrad Geßner; Conrad von Gesner; Conradus Gesnerus; Conrad Gesner (CH) wrote Historia Animalium, a five-volume work
of over 3,500 pages containing nearly 1,000 woodcuts. It marks the beginning of
scientific zoology and is considered the best purely zoological work of the
Renaissance. He also wrote Opera Botanica.
These works would influence such later taxonomists as Carl Linné; Carl von
Linné; Carolus Linnaeus and Cuvier (576; 577; 1354). The plant
genus Gesnera was dedicated to him in
1703 (1100).
Ambroise Paré (FR) states that severing a nerve is acceptable
treatment for severe pain (1049).
Influenza (grippe) is common in France. ref
Sweating-sickness is epidemic in England (793).
1552
Jerome Bock; Jerome Boch; Hieronymous Tragus; Hieronymous Bock;
Hieronymous Herbarius; Jerome Botanist; Jerome Herbalist (DE) authored De Stirpium, a botanical treatise of the
highest order, in which he described many plants in superb verbal delineation;
some for the first time (195). The plant
genus Tragia was dedicated to him in
1703 (1100).
Jacobus Benignus Winslow (DK-FR) coined the phrase sympathetic nerve because he believed
that these nerves were concerned with both the control of viscera and the
production of sympathy (1469).
Girolamo Cardano; Jerome Cardan (IT), mathematician and physician,
in 1552, showed remarkable insight into the concept of allergy when he cured
John Hamilton, the Archbishop of Edinburgh, of asthma by forbidding him to use
feathers in his bed (273).
Typhus (camp fever) was epidemic in Metz, France and Charles V's
army suffered dysentery (bloody flux) (793).
c.
1553
Blaise de Vigenere (FR) produced benzoic acid as a sublimation
product from benjamin (gum benzoin) (958).
Theodor Turquet de Mayerne (FR), Pierre-Jean Robiquet (FR), and
Antoine-Francois Boutron-Charlard (FR) are also credited with producing benzoic
acid, although at later dates (1150; 1154).
Cristóbal Méndez (ES) wrote Libro del Exercicio Corporal [Body Exercise Book] in
which he extols the virtues of exercise (953).
1553
Miguel Servet y Reves; Michael Servetus; Miguel Serveto;
Villanovanus (ES) described the lesser circulation (pulmonary circulation) of
blood through the lungs and showed that the blood is purified by respiration in
the lungs. He asserted that there are vessels in the lungs “formed out of vein
and artery.” Servetus reasoned that the pulmonary artery is too large and
carries too much blood to serve merely for nutrition of the lungs (339; 1240; 1241; 1486).
Quoting Servetus, "It is in the lungs, consequently, that the
mixture (of the inspired air with the blood) takes place, and it is in the
lungs also, not in the heart, that the crimson colour of the blood is acquired" (1029). See, Ibn Nafis, 1246. Note: Severtus sent his book to John
Calvin, who considered it heresy, had him arrested, jailed, and burned at the
stake within the year of publication.
Pedro de Cieza de Leon (ES) wrote Chronica del Peru [Chronicles
of Peru], which contains among other things accounts of how natives used
coca leaves, potato, and curare (313). Note:
Nicolas Monardes (ES) made the first scientific reference to coca (970). Coca was
later named Erythroxylon coca,
meaning red wood.
1554
Rembert Dodoens; Rembertus Dodonäus; Rembert van Joenckema (BE)
authored Cruydeboeck into
which he collected and edited much of the botanical knowledge available. It
treated in detail especially the medicinal herbs (452). The plant
genus Dodonæa was dedicated to him in
1737 (867).
Guillaume Rondelet (FR-IT) published books describing and
illustrating fish, seals, whales, mollusks, and worms. Rondolet identified 244
species of fish (1158; 1159).
Johannes Lange (DE) gave one of the first descriptions of anemia,
which he called morbus
virgineus[virgin disease]. "Her
face, which…was distinguished by rosiness of cheeks and redness of lips, is
somehow as if exsanguinated, sadly paled, the heart trembles with every
movement of her body, and the arteries of her temples pulsate, & she is
seized with dyspnoea in dancing or climbing the stairs… & the legs…become
edematous at night…. This disease frequently attacks virgins, when now mature
they pass from youth to virility. For at this time, the menstrual blood flows
from the liver to the…womb" (819).
Jean de
Varanda (FR) renamed this disease chlorosis.
The popular English term was the green
sickness, referring to the
greenish hue assumed by Caucasians when their blood is
low in hemoglobin (429).
Pierre Blaud
(FR) enjoyed considerable success recommending the use of pills containing
ferrous sulfate for the treatment of chlorosis (189).
Jean Francois Fernel; Joannis Fernelii; Joannes Fernelius (FR) in
referring to gallbladder problems stated, “Obstruction, calculus, fullness
& emptiness attack the gall bladder. The obstruction is either of the duct
by which the bile is led away from the liver, or of that by which it is
discharged from the gall bladder into the intestine…. In both [the] feces [are]
whitish [and] the bile diffused with the blood throughout the whole body
disfigures the skin with jaundice.” Here he gives the earliest description of endocarditis, notes
the systole and diastole of the heart and is the first to describe peristalsis in the
gastrointestinal tract. Among his anatomical observations was the earliest
description of the spinal canal (515).
1555
Charles de l’Écluse; Carolus Clusius (FR-DE-NL), who was appointed
to a professorship at Leyden, is considered the founder of scientific botany (1342).
Antonio Musa Brasavola; Antonius Musa Brasavolus (IT) wrote an
epidemiological work on syphilis (223).
Smallpox (red
plague) struck Brazil for the first time, killing vast numbers of natives (793).
Andreas Wesele Vesalius (NL), in the second edition of his De Humani Corporis Fabrica, noted a
young girl to have a head larger than a man’s. The fluid was described as not
being collected between the skull and the exterior membrane, but within the
cavity of the brain itself. Nine pounds of water was removed from the
ventricles at autopsy. Doubtless this was a case of hydrocephalus (1390).
John Friend (GB) gave one of the first accounts of hydrocephalus (544).
See, William
Heberden, 1768.
John Cheyne (GB) described acute hydrocephalus (303).
1555-1562
Brazil was exposed to epidemic smallpox (red plague) (793).
1556
Jacques Dubois; Jacobus Sylvius (FR) wrote In Hippocratis et Galeni Physiologiae Partem Anatomicam Isagoge a
Jacobo Sylvio [In the Physiology of Hippocrates and Galen, the
Anatomical Part of Isagoge by James Sylvius], in which
he gave names to many blood vessels and muscles; names we still use today (464).
Andre Thevet (FR), a Franciscan monk, was the first to bring
tobacco from the Americas to Europe. He transplanted Nicotiana tabacum from Brazil to France and described tobacco as a
creature comfort (10).
1557-1558
Influenza (grippe) is epidemic in Europe and England. ref
1557
Ippolito Salviani (IT) produced the first iconography of the
fishes of the Mediterranean. They were printed from copper-engraved plates.
Ninety-three fishes and other marine life are illustrated in the 81 plates with
18 species being new to science (1181).
Felix Platter (CH) was the first to carry out a public dissection
of the human body in a Germanic country. He was the first physician to describe
persistent thymus (persisting into adulthood and occasionally exhibiting
hypertrophy) with thymic death and
wrote excellent descriptions of myxedema and gallstones. He gave the first
clinical description of cretinism (1085; 1088). Note: The diagnosis of thymic death is
frequently made the dumping ground of unexplained sudden death. A large thymus
is rather the rule than the exception in patients dying suddenly.
1559
Matteo Realdo Colombo (IT) wrote De Re Anatomica in which he placed the lens of the eye in its
proper position, described the mediastinum, the pleura, and the peritoneum in a
way superior to his predecessors and determined that the pulmonary vein is
always full of blood contrary to the teaching of Galen (Galeni). He described
the lesser circulation (pulmonary circulation) of blood through the lungs in
detail (340; 350). See, Ibn Nafis, 1246.
c.
1560
Pierre Franco (FR) was an outstanding practitioner of lithotomy,
amputations, treatment of hernia, cataracts, and harelip (540).
1561
Gabriele Falloppio; Gabriel Fallopius (IT) wrote Observationes Anatomicae in which he
described the human inner ear (Chorda
tympani, the semicircular canals), the trigeminal nerve (5th cranial
nerve), the sphenoidal sinuses, the human ovaries, virginal hymen, clitoris,
round ligaments, and the tubes leading from the ovaries to the uterus; today
these oviducts are called Fallopian tubes
in his honor. He gave the first clear description of primary dentition, the
follicle of the tooth bud, and the manner of growth and replacement of the
primary by the secondary tooth, as well as the first denial of the belief that
teeth and bones are derived from the same tissues. He was also the first to
describe the three muscle coats of the urinary bladder. Falloppio introduced
the modern scientific terms vagina, placenta (Gk. plakuos, a flat cake), cochlea, labyrinth, palate, velum palati, and described the seminal
vesicles in the human male. His description of the Fallopian tube is as follows:
"That slender and narrow seminal passage arises from the horn of the
uterus very white and sinewy but after it has passed outward a little way it
becomes gradually broader and curls like the tendrils of a vine until it comes
near the end when the tendril-like curls spread out and it terminates in a very
broad ending which appears membranous and fleshy on account of its reddish
colour" (501; 503).
Luigi Anguillara (IT) authored Semplici
Del Excellente and was hailed as the greatest botanist of his time (68).
1563
Felix Wurtz; Felix Wirtz; Felix Wirz, Felix Wuertz (CH-DE) wrote
his Practica in which he criticized
bloodletting, probing, cataplasms, plasters, and salves. He treated wounds with
soothing applications, decried the employment of irritating solutions, and
taught that wounds should heal by primary intention whenever possible. Long wounds,
wounds of the face and of the abdomen should be sutured but not wounds in which
there was much pus. The cautery should be used only for amputations and in
arterial bleeding; otherwise compression is the method of choice. Wurtz was the
first surgeon to describe amputation at the thigh (1487).
Bartolomeo Eustachi; Bartolomeo Eustacchio; Bartolomeo Eustachius
(IT), in 1563, wrote A Little Treatise on
the Teeth: the First Authoritative Book on Dentistry (493).
Garcia de Orta (PT) deals with a series of medicinal substances,
many of them unknown or the subject of confusion and misinformation in Europe
at this period. He was the first European to describe Asiatic tropical
diseases, notably cholera; he performed
an autopsy on a cholera victim, the
first recorded autopsy in India (421).
Gabriele Falloppio; Gabriel Fallopius (IT) described his
contraceptive sheath used for preventing transmission of syphilis. It was a medicated sheath covering the tip of the penis
and under the foreskin, held in place by a pink ribbon so that it would appeal
to women. In referring to his clinical trial, he says, "I tried the
experiment [the use of condoms] on 1,100 men, and I call immortal God to
witness that not one of them was infected" (502). The Earl
of Condom (GB), at the request of Charles II, devised an oiled sheath made from
sheep intestine as a contraceptive.
Thomas Gale (GB) wrote An
Enchiridion of Chirurgerie [A
Handbook of Surgery], the first complete work on surgery in the English
language (555).
Bubonic
plague
(Yersinia pestis) struck London again
in 1563, in what was probably its worst outbreak ever, killing an estimated
quarter to a third of the population. Subsequent outbreaks occurred in 1578,
1593, 1603, 1625, 1636, and 1665, each time killing thousands. In terms of
proportion of the total population destroyed, the 1563 and 1665 epidemics were
the worst (793).
1564
Julio Cesare Aranzio; Giulio Cesare Aranzi; Julius Caesar Arantius
(IT) described both the fetal foramen
ovale and the ductus arteriosus,
but modestly claimed only to elaborate in detail on Galen's (Galeni’s) earlier
descriptions. He thought these anatomical structures were supposed to nourish
the heart and lungs with venous and arterial blood, respectively. He noted the
post-natal closing of the ductus
arteriosus and the foramen ovale (76).
Leonardo Botallo (IT) published the first description of hay fever
and appears to have been the first to describe a persistent foramen ovale after birth, but without
understanding its function in the fetal state. He called it vena arteriarum nutrix (201). Galen;
Galenos; Claudii Galeni; Aelius Galenus; Claudius Galenus; Clarissimus Galen of
Pergamon (modern Turkey) (GR-Roman) had also described the foramen ovale in the second century in his De Usu Partium (559).
Francesco Plazzoni (NL) was the first to delineate the uterus, the
fetus, and the placenta in the various stages of development, and was the first
to record a pelvic deformity. He also made the first valid pronouncement on
pelvic contraction in the history of obstetrics, a clear description of its
effect on labor (1092). The first
edition was in 1564.
An epidemic of plague occured in Lyon, France (793).
1565
Simon de Vallambert (FR) noted that a child born of a mother who
is without obvious venereal symptoms and shows this disease when it is a few
weeks old will infect the healthiest nurse and yet this child is never known to
infect its mother (428).
Abraham Colles (IE) rediscovered this relationship in 1837 when it
became known as Colles’ law. He incorrectly concluded that the mother is
resistant. He was ignorant of the fact that the mother already had the
disease (337).
Geronimo
Mercuriali; Girolamo Mercuriali; Girolamo Mercuriale;
Mercurialis; Hieronymus Mercurialis (IT) wrote De Arte Gymnastica, the first book on sports medicine (954).
1566-1567
Typhus (camp fever) was epidemic in the army of Maximilian II in Hungary (793).
Plague appeared
among British troops in Ireland. ref
1567
Marcello Donati describes epidemic smallpox (red plague) and measles
at Mantua, Italy.
1568-1569
Severe plague is
epidemic in Edinburgh. ref
c.
1570
Thomas Jordanus (AT) wrote on the epidemiology of purple or
petechial fever (754).
1570
Plague is reported
in Europe. ref
Matthias de L'Obel (Flemish-GB) and Petrus Pena () authored adversaria Nova, a botanical
presentation emphasizing the philosophy of botany and the abstractness of
systematization. Its natural taxonomy is what ranks it as a great book (412).
1573
Volcher Coiter; Volcherus Coeiter; Volcker Koyter (NL) made a
series of observations of the chick’s day by day development in the incubated
egg. He was the first to observe the blastoderm of the chick (333). Note: This work contains the earliest
study of the growth of the skeleton as a whole in the human fetus, the first
descriptions of the spinal ganglia, and musculus
corrugator supercilii, and the first published study of chick embryo
development based upon direct observation since the three-period description
(after three, ten and twenty days of incubation) given by Aristotle in his Historia Animalium.
Constanzo Varolio (IT) describes what is obviously cerebrospinal
fluid and publishes a new method of dissecting the brain whereby he separated
the brain from the skull and began the dissection from the base. Varolio
described many of the brain's structures for the first time including the pons
or pons Varolii (442; 1385).
1574-1577
There is a pandemic of plague
(793).
1575
Amboise Pare (FR) described aneurisms and lamented their incurable
nature. He also described surgical treatment of emphysema arising from pleurisy (1051; 1052).
1576
Mexico's first epidemic of typhus (camp fever) killed many
natives. This was another of the lethal diseases introduced by Europeans (793).
Paris and several other European cities suffered from outbreaks of
diphtheria (793).
Guillaume de Bailout; William of Billion; Wilhelm Balconies (FR),
following autopsy of a seven-year-old boy, described the false membrane
covering the airway that characterizes diphtheria
(901).
John Fothergill (GB) described diphtheria (532).
Typhus (camp fever).was epidemic in Oxford, England (793).
1578
Hieronymus Fabricius abs Aquapendente; Girolamo Fabrizio of
Aquapendente; Jerome Fabricius of Acquapendente (IT) gave the first clear
illustrations of the one-way valves in the veins of man in his book De Venarum Ostiolis (498). He had made
the announcement at Padua in 1578-1579. See,
Canano, 1541.
Guillaume de Baillou; William of Ballion; Wilhelm Ballonius (FR)
described whooping cough (called quinte)
in its first confirmed outbreak. The disease had probably existed prior to this
time (392).
Jean de Lery (FR) was a
member of the French colony at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He published observations
on the local fauna (415).
Whooping cough is epidemic in Paris, France (793).
1580-1584
Plague is present
in London
1580-1582
An influenza (grippe) pandemic
spreads from Europe to Asia to Africa (367).
1580
Geronimo
Mercuriali; Girolamo Mercuriali; Girolamo Mercuriale
Girolamo Mercurialis; Hieronymus
Mercurialis (IT) formulated the concept of syncope (fainting) and
demonstrated its connection with a slow pulse rate: "Ubi pulsus sit rarus
semper expectanda est syncope. [Whenever the pulse is rare, always a syncope has to be expected]." He
distinguished between cardiac and nervous syncope
noting that cardiac syncope could be
life threatening (265; 886; 955).
Julio Cesare Aranzio; Giulio Cesare Aranzi; Julius Caesar Arantius
(IT) was the first to use a light source to visualize a cavity in the human
body. To achieve this, he focused sunlight through a flask of water and
projected it to visualize the nasal cavity (80).
Influenza (grippe) is epidemic in Italy and smallpox
(red plague)
is epidemic in Venezuela (793).
1583-1618
Diphtheria is epidemic
in Spain. ref
c.
1583
Prospero Alpini (IT), while studying the date palm in Egypt, was
the first person to realize that plants, like animals, can exist as male and
female. He was the first European to describe the coffee plant, Coffea spp. (55). Linnaeus
commemorated him with the genus Alpinia.
1583
Andrea Cesalpino; Andreas Caesalpinus (IT) authored De Plantis (Concerning Plants) which marked the beginning of systematic botany.
It presents plants for the first time arranged according to what are believed
to be their natural affinities with primary emphasis placed on similarities of
fruit, and seed. His use of characters such as position of ovary within a flower
and the number of locules in an ovary profoundly influenced the thinking of
later botanists (292). Cesalpino
is commemorated by the genus Caesalpinia.
Felix Platter (CH) proposed that the retina, rather than the
crystalline lens, is the true visual receptor of the eye. The lens serves only
to focus the light (1085).
George Bartisch (DE) wrote Ophthalmodouleia,
the first systematic work on ocular disease and ophthalmic surgery (133).
1584-1588
Scotland experiences the plague. ref
1585
Salomon Alberti (DE) began public demonstrations of the venous
valves in 1579 and was the first to provide illustrations of these structures (35).
Ambroise Paré (FR) explained how to surgically remove a cancer
from the lip (1054).
Smallpox
(red plague)
is epidemic in Peru and plague is epidemic in Edinburgh (793).
1586
Arcangelo Piccolomini (IT) distinguished between cortex and white
matter, described abdominal muscles, the termination of the acoustic nerve, the
anastomoses of the fetal heart, and the differences between the male and female
pelvis. He was the first anatomist after Salomon Alberti (DE) to describe the
venous valves as a general phenomenon. Fabricius had announced their discovery
at Padua in 1578-1579 (1076; 1079).
Marcello Donati (IT) was probably the first to record a case of
gastric ulcer (457).
Exeter, England suffered an epidemic of typhus (camp fever) (793).
1587
Abraham Ortelius; Abraham Oertel; Abraham Wortels (BE-NL), a
cartographer, suggested the possibility of continental drift (1024).
Frank Bursley Taylor (US) developed the idea that the continents had
once slid around. Taylor suggested that the crunching together of continents
could have thrust up the world’s mountain chains
(1325).
Alfred Lothar Wegener (DE) proposed that originally the continents
had formed a single mass (Pangaea or All-Earth)
surrounded by a continuous ocean (Panthalassa or All-Sea). This large granite mass broke into chunks that slowly
separated, floating on a basalt ocean, and, over hundreds of millions of years,
took up the pattern of the fragmented continents we now have. In this fashion
Wegener undertook to explain the changing pattern of glaciations, for, of
course, the relative positions of the poles with respect to the continents
changed. He also used this hypothesis to explain patterns of species
similarities; wherein related species were found in widely separated parts of
the world, and so on. This represents an early expression of the concepts of continental drift and plate tectonics (1435-1438).
Arthur Holmes (GB) suggested a mechanism that could explain Alfred
Lothar Wegener's theory of continental
drift, the power of convection. Heat from radioactive decay of elements in
the interior of the Earth drives convection currents in the Earth's mantle.
These convection currents could force the continents toward or away from one
another, creating new ocean floor and building mountain ranges (690; 691).
Harry Hammond Hess (US) hypothesized that seafloor opens anew
where continents move apart. In his model, the driving force is the constant
upwelling of magma by thermal convection producing new mantle rock as it cools.
Midocean ridges mark the line along which mantle up-flow diverges to flow horizontally
away on either side. The upper surface of the advecting mantle flows is the
seafloor. Continents floating in the mantle, go with the flow. Continents on
either side of an oceanic ridge separate as the seafloor spreads between them (664-667).
Frederick J. Vine (GB) and Drummond H. Matthews (GB), using
magnetic studies of the Atlantic Ocean floor, demonstrated conclusively that
the seafloors are spreading in precisely the manner Hess had suggested and that
the continents are also in motion (1394). Lawrence
Whitaker Morley (CA) reached the same conclusions as Vine and Matthews but
could not get his manuscript published. The 1963 theory of magnetic reversals on the ocean floor is sometimes
referred to as the Morley-Vine-Matthews
hypothesis.
Walter C. Pitman, III (US) and James R. Heirtzler (US) established
that sea-floor spreading was indeed the process by which ocean floor is being
formed at the crests of midocean ridges. They had measured the rates and
directions of spreading in all the oceans (1082).
James R. Heirtzler (US), Geoffrey Owen Dickson (AU), Ellen M.
Herron (US), Walter C. Pitman, III (US), and Xavier Le Pichon (FR) proposed
that a geomagnetic polarity timescale (GPTS) can be constructed using oceanic
magnetic anomaly record(s), assuming constant seafloor spreading rate(s), and
interpolating between available radiometric ages (443; 444; 654; 655; 828; 1083). This
method is most accurate in dating rocks 780,000 to 200,000 million years old.
Xavier Le Pichon (FR) established the parameters of motion between
plates in all major oceans using the rates and directions of spreading at
mid-ocean ridge crests, thus establishing the rigidity of plates. A worldwide
pattern of relative motion between the six major plates was then computed.
Finally, reconstructions of the evolution of the world oceans and continents at
various stages were attempted (827).
Julio Cesare Aranzio; Giulio Cesare Aranzi; Julius Caesar Arantius
(IT) discovered the musculus levator
palpebrae superioris, the pedes
hippocamp, the cerebellum cistern,
the ammon horns, the fourth
ventricle, the arterial duct (ductus
arteriosus) as well as the ductus
venosus (Arantii). Contrary to Vesalius he maintained the impermeability of
the dividing walls of the heart. He also discovered that the blood of mother
and fetus is kept separate during pregnancy. In 1564 he coined the term hippocampus to describe an
intraventricular formation in the brain which had been previously outlined by
Constanzio Varole in 1573 (76-82).
1588
Giambattista della Porta (IT) in his Phytognomonica was the first to observe seeds (spores) in agarics
and truffles (437).
Jacob Theodor von Bergzabern; Tabernaemontanus (DE) described a
variegation pattern in kernels of Zea
mays. The details of the report make it clear that the phenotypes described
followed a Mendelian segregation. This could well be the first report
describing the action of what would later be called a controlling element or transposon (995; 1335). See, McClintock, 1947. He is
commemorated in the pan-tropical genus of flowering shrubs and small trees Tabernaemontana.
1589
José de Acosta (ES) wrote De Natura Novi Orbis Libri duo (1589) and Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias (1590),
describing many previously unknown animals from the New World.
José de Acosta (ES), a Jesuit missionary to South America, was the
first to suggest that the original Americans had somehow migrated from Siberia
many thousands of years ago (388).
c.
1590
Li Shi-Zhen (CN) produced an extensive work on
medical treatments using both plant and animal materials. It was based on his
own medical and herbal experience and on data from earlier herbals, such as the
well-known 11th-century herbal, Zheng Lei Ben Cao. Li's herbal describes
1,892 drugs (with 1,110 drawings), including 11,096 prescriptions, for treating
hundreds of illnesses, ranging from the common cold to drunkenness and food
poisoning. He mentions a method of variolation for immunization against smallpox (red plague) (1260).
Plague (Yersinia pestis) sweeps many European
cities again (793).
1590
José de Acosta (ES) gives a vivid description of mountain
sickness. "There is in Peru, a high mountaine which they call Pariacaca,
and having heard speake of the alteration it bred, I went as well prepared as I
could…. When I came to mount the degrees, as they call them, which is the top
of this mountaine, I was suddenly surprized with so mortall and strange a payn,
that I was ready to fall from the top to the ground…. I was surprised with such
pangs of straining & casting, as I thought to cast up my heart too…. In the
end I cast up blood, with the straining of my stomacke" (389). See, Too Kim, 50 B.C.E.
Thomas Harriot (GB) was a naturalist with the first attempted
English colony in North America, on Roanoke Island, North Carolina. He describes
the black bear, gray squirrel, hare, otter, opossum, raccoon, skunk, Virginia
and mule deer, turkeys, horseshoe crab (Limulus), etc. (637).
1591
Smallpox (red
plague) struck the Philippines for the first time, arriving on a Spanish ship
from Mexico and spreading through the country with high mortality rates (793).
A pandemic of the plague
occurred.
Prospero Alpini (IT), who went to Cairo with the Venetian consul
Giorgio Emo in 1580 and remained with him in Cairo for three years, described
the extraction of urinary calculi by the Aegyptian physicians without incision.
The usual method of removing stones from the urinary bladder was by median or
lateral incision through the perineum.
The technique consisted essentially in a very considerable
dilatation of the urethra.
One of the two methods described by Alpini is in brief as follows:
"One uses several bougies of different size made of an elastic
cartilaginous material. First the bougie with the smallest diameter is
introduced into the urethra until it has reached the collum vesicae. Then by
blowing into the bougie, it is dilated as much as possible and a larger one is
introduced and likewise blown to a maximum diameter: a third and eventually a
fourth still larger one may be added in the same way. The patient is placed in
a convenient position and by introducing a finger into his anus; the stone is
pushed towards the collum vesicae and into the internal opening of the largest
bougie. Then by releasing the compressed air, the bougies retract, and when
removed carry the stone with them. If it is a soft stone, it is occasionally
broken. Experts in this way could remove stones of even the size of an olive (54).
1592-1596
One of the earliest outbreaks of measles among Native Americans in
North America struck the Seneca Indians in Central New York State, and caused
hundreds or maybe thousands of deaths (793).
1592-1593
Plague is epidemic
in London (793).
1592
Thaddaeus Dunus of Locarno (CH) gave the first clear description
of the broad or fish tapeworm, Diphyllobothrium
latum. He called it Lumbricus latus
(471).
Edward Tyson (GB) presented to the Royal Society of London a
24-foot Lumbricus latus he removed
from a patient (1367; 1368).
Thomas Spencer Cobbold (GB) introduced the genus Diphyllobothrium in 1858 (328).
Constantine Janicki
(CH) and Felix Rosen (CH) identified the copepod Cyclops streinuus as the first intermediate host
of D. latum in European waters. They were
able to complete the life cycle of this parasite
(737).
1593
Andrea Cesalpino (IT) correctly deduced the direction of blood
flow as shown in his book Medical
Questions, where he says, "This is a fact well known by experience to
those who let blood; for they place the ligature on the near side of the place
of incision, not on the far side, because the veins swell on the far side, not
on the near side of the ligature. But exactly the contrary ought to happen if
the movement of the blood and the spirits took place in the direction from the
viscera to all parts of the body. Thus, there is a way of perpetual movement
from vena cava, through the heart and lungs, into the aorta artery, as I have
explained in my Peripatetic Questions" (291).
1594-1595
"O'er ladies'
lips, who straight on kisses dream, Which oft of the angry Mab with blisters
plagues..." William Shakespeare (1248). Shakespeare was likely talking about the
characteristic lesions caused by Herpes
simplex virus (HSV-1), more commonly known as cold sores or fever blisters.
Richard Boulton (GB) introduced the names Herpes simplex,
Herpes miliaris and Herpes exedens (205).
The first
permanent anatomical theatre in Europe was built at Padua, Italy. It is still
in existence today.
c.
1595
Duke Ferdinand placed a silver band on a Grey Heron about 1669:
the bird was recovered by his grandson about 1728, indicating the heron lived
at least 60 years.
In 1710, in Germany, a falconer captured a grey heron with several
rings on one leg. The bander was unknown but one of the rings was apparently
placed on the heron in Turkey, more than 1200 miles to the east.
John James Audubon (US) and Ernest Thompson Seton (CA) were
pioneers although their method of marking birds was different from modern
ringing. To determine if the same bird would return to his farm, Audubon tied
silver threads onto the legs of young eastern phoebes (Sayornis phoebe) in 1803, while Seton marked snow buntings in
Manitoba with ink in 1882 (355).
Paul Bartsch (US), a well-known conchologist whose hobby was the
study of birds, began the first scientific system of banding in North America.
He banded 23 Black-crowned Night-Herons (Nycticorax nycticorax) at
Washington, DC with bands inscribed "Return to Smithsonian
Institution" (135).
1596-1597
Dysentery (bloody flux)
is common in England. ref
1596-1602
Plague is epidemic in Spain (793).
1596
Gaspard Caspar Bauhin (CH), in a work which delt with over 6000
different plants, was the first to introduce some degree of order into the
chaotic muddle of nomenclature and synonymy in the botanical sciences,
classifying them in a manner that draws comparisons to the later binomial nomenclature
of Linnaeus (140; 143).
1597
Gaspare Tagliacozzi (IT) wrote De
Curtorum Chirurgia per Insitionem, an outstanding classic in reconstructive
or plastic surgery. He described operations for the restoration of lost noses,
lips, and ears. While he did not originate these operations—Hindu surgeons in
ancient India performed such operations— he and his family brought them to a
high level of perfection (1319). "We
bring back, refashion, and restore to wholeness the features which nature gave
but chance destroyed, not that they may charm the eye but that they may be an advantage
to the living soul, not as a mean artifice but as an alleviation of illness,
not as becomes charlatans but as becomes good physicians and followers of the
great Hippocrates. For although the original beauty of the face is indeed
restored, yet this is only accidental, and the end for which the physician is
working is that the features should fulfill their offices according to nature's
decree" (592). Note:
Branca de Branca (IT) may deserve credit for originating this technique in
1442.
Karl Ferdinand von Graefe (DE) revived then modified the Italian
(Tagliacozzi) method of rhinoplasty and introduced the Indian method in
Germany. He coined the word rhinoplasty
and reported the first truly successful case of blepharoplasty, which was performed in 1809 (1404). See, Susruta c. 400.
Jonathan Mason Warren (US) performed
the first operation for rhinoplasty in the United States (1431).
Plague is
epidemic in Edinburgh (793).
1598
"There is
a history in all men’s lives." William Shakespeare, Second Part of King Henry IV, act III, scene i (1249).
"And so,
from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then, from
hour to hour, we rot and rot;
And thereby
hangs a tale." William Shakespeare, As
You Like It, act II, scene vii (1250).
Carlo Ruini (IT) wrote
Anatomica del Cavallo, Infermità et Suoi Remedii the first great book on
the anatomy and diseases of the horse; a book said to rival Vesalius’s work in
precision and beauty. This is more remarkable since Ruini was a lawyer (1177).
1599
Ulisse Aldrovandi (IT) began the publication of Ornithologiae, De Animalibus Insectis Libri Septem, De Piscibus, Serpentum,
and De Quadropedibus Solidipedibus,
large books containing descriptions and exceptional illustrations of various
animals (39; 40; 42-44).
c.
1600
Members of the first Academia dei Lincei, a scientific society
that included Galileo Galilei coined the word microscope (1152).
Giovanni Fabri (IT) is reported to be the first to have used the
word microscope. It was in a letter
to Federico Cesi (IT) in 1625 (604).
1600
William Gilbert (GB), an Elizabethan physician and experimenter on
electricity, wrote the first great scientific book by an Englishman. From his
experiments he concluded that the earth behaves as an immense magnet. Gilbert
also discussed the medicinal power of iron (582).
Giulio Cesare Casseri; Julius Cesare Casserius (IT) wrote De Vocis Auditusque Organis Historia
Anatomica, considered by some to be the most beautiful book ever published
on the ear and throat. The illustrations are in copper plate engraving and are
thought to be by the German artist, Joseph Maurer. Casserius described the
muscles of the ossicles of the ear, the musculocutaneous nerve and the larynx (279).
1600-1608
Plague is epidemic in Scotland (793).
1601
Carolus Clusius; Charles de L’Écluse; Carlus Clusius;
Jules-Charles L'Écluse (FR-DE-NL) produced Rariorum
Plantarum Historia containing the descriptions of many native and
ornamental plants of Spain, Austria, the Netherlands, and Belgium. This book
contained an index Fungorum Historia
in which more than 100 fungi are described (324). Note:
In Leiden he planned and established the later famed botanical garden. Clusius
is credited with introducing the tulip—a native of Central Asia and Turkey—
into the Netherlands and the potato from the Americas into Europe.
Giulio Cesare Casseri; Giulio Cesare Casserio; Julius Cesare
Casserius (IT), was assistant to Girolamo Fabrizio (IT). Recognized for his
skill as a dissectionist, anatomist, and lecturer he illustrated for the first
time the urachus, the lateral umbilical ligaments, the inguinal fossa, the
peritoneum (shown detached from the abdominal wall), mammillary bodies
(nipples), and the tarsal gland of the eyelid (277).
1602
Ulisse Aldrovandi (IT) wrote De Animalibus Insectis (Of
Insect Animals) (41).
1602
Plague is epidemic in Prussia (793).
1603
Hieronymous Fabricius ab Aquapendente; Girolamo Fabrizio of
Aquapendente; Jerome Fabricius of Acquapendente (IT) was the first to explain
and depict with thorough understanding the placenta and the fetal membranes of
mammals. In the first examples of comparative embryology he compared the
embryonic development of the chicken, man, rabbit, guinea-pig, mouse, dog, cat,
sheep, pig, horse, ox, goat, deer, dog-fish, and the viper in his two books De Formatione Ovi et Pulli and De Formato Foetu, published in 1603. The
work on the chicken contains the best description of the reproductive tract of
the hen up to that time. Fabricius discovered the bursa now called bursa of Fabricius and was the first to
establish with any degree of accuracy the role played by the ovary and oviduct
in the formation of the hen's egg. He was the first to describe the germinal
disc distinctly (497; 499). Fabricius
was an outstanding surgeon who re-introduced tracheotomy and improved
herniotomy.
Four young noblemen led by the Roman Prince Federico Cesi founded
Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei.
Plague is epidemic in London (793).
1604
Zaccharias Janssen; Sacharias Janssen; Zaccharias Jansen (NL), an
optician and counterfeiter by trade, may have invented the compound microscope.
He combined two convex lenses within a tube, thus constructing the forerunner
of the compound microscope. His intention was to construct a telescope. Janssen
has been falsely credited with the invention of the telescope (431; 640).
Johannes Kepler (DE), a mathematician and astronomer, invented a
microscope with double convex lenses in 1611 (778). See, Pierre Borel, 1608.
Cornelius Jacobszoon Drebbel (NL) is credited as an inventor of
the compound lens microscope with two convex lenses in c. 1620 (1381).
Johannes Kepler (DE) established the fundamental principles of the
visual process that are still valid today. Kepler described for the first time
the pupillary contraction that accompanies visual accommodation, and he
corrected older statements about the size of the visual angle. He set forth for
the first time, a correct account of how the light rays penetrate through the
crystalline lens and reach the retina. Kepler also correctly postulated that
the retina is the real organ of vision. On its surface, an inverted image of
the contemplated object appears, point by point. Kepler explained the effect of
glasses both in nearsightedness and presbyopia, depicting the directions that
the rays of light followed through the lenses. He realized that the image of an
object would remain out of focus until the rays could converge on the surface
of the retina (777-779). Benedetto
Castelli (IT) made the same observation in 1639 (282).
Christoph Scheiner (Swabian) confirmed Kepler’s thesis when he
observed the sharp and inverted image of an object on the retina of an
enucleated animal and human eye. Scheiner described the lateral emergence of
the ocular nerves from the eyeball and the eye’s convergence. He also
demonstrated that the refractive conditions in the eye varied through
accommodation for distant or near vision (1200).
Gaspard Caspar Bauhin; Gaspard Casparus Bauhinus; Gaspard Kaspar
Bauhin (CH) was an important botanist and anatomist. He discovered the
ileo-cecal valve, named for him, and correctly explained its function of
preventing the intestinal contents from coming back from the colon to the small
intestine (141; 142; 144).
1604-1605
Plague is epidemic in Ireland (793).
c. 1605
Francis Bacon, a philosopher and Lord Chancellor of England,
popularized the scientific method and thus lead a scientific revolution. One
should begin with data, not faith, and then propose a testable hypothesis to
explain those facts. This method of reasoning from the particulars to the
general is known as induction. He emphasized the importance of experimentation
as a way of testing ideas. Bacon also warned that to achieve accurate thinking
we must guard against belief systems (Idols) common in our culture. He
characterized the idols as: The Idol of the Tribe (community beliefs), The Cave
(individual beliefs), The Marketplace (semantic communication problems), and
The Theatre (deduction from believed but unproven premises) (109-111).
Using his powerful inductive powers Bacon arrived at an
explanation of the nature of heat. For his time this was a remarkable feat of
reasoning since there was not enough data available during Bacon’s time to
allow him to reach such a conclusion. Here we have the combination of a
remarkable intellect using logic and a good guess to arrive at the correct
answer; I include it here.
“From instances taken collectively, as well as singly, the nature
whose limit is heat appears to be motion. This is chiefly exhibited in flame,
which is in constant motion, and in warm or boiling liquids, which are likewise
in constant motion. It is also show in the excitement or increase of heat by
motion and by bellows and draughts… It is also shown by the extinction of fire
and heat upon any strong pressure, which restrains and puts a stop to motion…
(thus is with tender, or the burning stuff of a candle or lamp, or even hot
charcoal cinders, for when they are squeezed with snuffers, or the foot, and
the like, the effect of the fire instantly ceases) … It is further shown by
this circumstance, namely, that every substance is destroyed, or at least
materially changed, by strong and powerful heat: whence it is clear that tumult
and confusion are occasioned by heat, together with a violent motion in the
internal parts of bodies, and this gradually tends to their dissolution… It
must not be thought that heat generates motion, or motion heat, (though in some
respects this is true) but that the very essence of heat… is motion and nothing
else” (111).
Adriaan van de Spiegel; Adriaan van de Spigelius (NL) published
the first instructions on making dried herbarium specimens (1376). Spigelia marilandica a plant of the
family Loganiacae was named in his honor.
Marco Aurelio Severino (IT), in 1643, described dextrocardia, in which the heart
is located on the right side of the thorax (319; 1243).
Matthew Baillie (GB) gave the first description of transposition of the great arteries (319). Other
terms associated with this syndrome are
situs inversus totalis, situs
inversus with dextrocardia, situs
inversus with levocardia, mirror
image of situs solitus, mirror-image
organs, situs solitus, situs ambiguous, Kartagener syndrome, Kartagener's
syndrome.
1607
"CHARMAIN
Is this the man? Is’t you, sir, that knows things?
SOOTHSAYER
In nature’s infinite book of secrecy, a little I can read."
William Shakespeare. Antony and Cleopatra, act I, scene ii (1166).
John Harington (GB), wit, courtier, master of horse, poet,
translator of the School of Salerne (Salerno), and godson of Queen Elizabeth I
was the inventor of the water closet (902).
John Harington (GB) translated from Italian to English verse Regimen
Sanitatis Salernitanum [Health Regimen of the School of Salernum], a
medieval collection of health tips. The translation was published in 1607 in
London (635).
Flax, especially prized during the time of the American
Revolution, was a staple of life throughout the 18th century and later. The
first American sailing ships–Discovery, Susan Constant, and Godspeed–that
cruised up the James River in Virginia in 1607, as well as the Mayflower in
Massachusetts, and, indeed, vessels from all over the world in past centuries,
had elaborate sails made from the plant known as flax, Linum usitatissumum. The process of making linen materials, such as
sails, from the flax plant depends upon two bacteria, Clostridium felsineum and Clostridium
pectionvorum. Early American shipbuilders would have been hard pressed to
find an acceptable sail material if there had not been microbial activity for
the proper flax processing. The fibers of the flax plant were also employed to
make blankets, handkerchiefs, paper, and clothing. In very moist environments
bacteria would digest away much of the pectin thereby loosening the fibers of
flax, which were then peeled away and spun into linen or used in other
products.
John Smith (GB), head of the Jamestown colony, wrote A Map of
Virginia in which he describes the physical features of the country, its
climate, plants and animals, and inhabitants. He describes the raccoon,
muskrat, flying squirrel, as well as a score of animals, all well identifiable (1268).
1608
"Pursue him to his house, and pluck him thence;
Lest his infection, being of catching nature,
Spread further." William Shakespeare. Coriolanus, act III, scene i (1166).
Hans Lippershay; Hans Lipperhey (NL), on October 2, 1608, applied
to Count Maurice of Nassau, Holland, for a patent on a device to make distant
objects seem clear (a telescope) (968).
Jacob Metiús (NL) applied for a patent only weeks after Lippershay.
Albert van Helden (NL) credits Metiús with the invention of the telescope (1380).
Pierre Borel (FR) cites Sacharias Janssen (Zacharias Janssen) as
the first inventor of the telescope (1590) and Hans Lippershay as its second
inventor (199).
1609
Felix Platter (CH) was the first to recognize Diphyllobothrium (fish tape worm) as being distinct from Taenia. He also provided the first descriptions
of the disease (1086).
Charles Bonnet (CH) was the first to accurately describe the
proglottids of Diphyllobothrium, but,
unfortunately, the worm he illustrated had a Taenia scolex, a mistake he remedied in 1777 (197; 198).
Peter Christian Abildgaard (DK) observed that the intestine of sticklebacks
often contained worms that resembled the tapeworms found in fish-eating birds.
This represents the first clue that some parasites pass different parts of
their life cycle in different hosts (16).
Pierre-Joseph van Bénéden (BE) was able to show through his
studies of the digestive tracts of many fishes that organisms known, as
cysticerci were larvae of intestinal worms then called taenia (adult
tapeworms). His work covered a wide range of parasites in diverse animals (1375).
Maximillian Gustav Christian Carl Braun (DE) realized that the
unsegmented tapeworms common in pike and other fish are the larval stages of Diphyllobothrium latum and succeeded in
infecting dogs with these plerocercoids; in 1882 he achieved similar results in
humans (224).
Constantine Janicki (PL) and Felix Rosen (PL) incriminated
copepods in the Diphyllobothrium life
cycle and showed that they feed on the eggs of the tapeworm and are then eaten
by fish, which, in their turn, are eaten by humans (738).
Jacques Guillemeau (FR) is credited with originating the classical
method of assisted breech delivery. The after-coming head is delivered with the
child resting on the physician’s forearm: Straddling the baby over the right
arm, the index finger of that hand is introduced into the mouth of the child
and applied over the maxilla: two
fingers of the other hand are then hooked over the neck, grasping the
shoulders. Downward traction is made until the occiput appears under the symphysis
pubis. The body of the child is then
raised up toward the mother’s abdomen and the mouth, nose, brow, and occiput are successively brought over
the perineum. This maneuver was of
great importance before the forceps and Caesarean section. It is referred to by
many names including the Mauriceau-Levret
manipulation (621). Note:
Guillemeau was also the first to employ podalic (feet-first) delivery in placenta praevia.
1610-1613
Smallpox (red
plague) is reported in Scotland and England. ref
1610-1611
Plague is epidemic in Basel, Switzerland .(793)
1611
"A devil upon whose nature nurture will never work" William Shakespeare,
in The Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1 where Prospero describes Caliban(1166). Note: The use of 'nature' and
'nurture' to distinguish inborn differences from differences due to upbringing.
Caspar Bartholin (BK) was the first to describe the workings of
the olfactory nerve (132).
Mateo Alemán (ES), in 1611, may have written the first true
description of amoebiasis when he
described the case of Fray García Guerra, Archbishop of Mexico and Viceroy of
the New Spain. The patient developed diarrhea (flux) followed a few days later
by hepatic suppuration (1393).
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (NL), born Thonis Philipszoon, in his 34th
letter to the Royal Society of London, dated 4 November 1861 described
examining human feces and discovering what were surely spirochetes. He also
described Giardia (Jee-ardia) from his own feces and records symptoms of giardiasis (1222).
Johann Künstler (DE) named a parasite of tadpoles Giardia
agilis, after the French zoologist Alfred Mathieu Giard (808).
Vilém Dusan Lambl (CZ) identified the parasite responsible for amoebiac dysentery, naming it Cercomonas intestinalis (815; 1406).
William Thomas Councilman (US) and Henri Amadée Lafleur (US)
clearly distinguished between bacillary and amoebic dysenteries (356).
Leslie L. Lumsden (US), Charles Wardell Stiles (US), and Allen W.
Freeman (US) renamed it Giardia lamblia, in honor of Alfred Mathieu Giard
(FR) and Vilém
Dusan Lambl (CZ) (652; 887). However, Giardia
intestinalis is considered by many to be the correct name for this
protozoan.
Harold B. Fantham (GB) and Annie Porter (GB) found that during WW
I soldiers with diarrhea (flux) passed Giardia cysts, which could cause similar
symptoms when administered to laboratory animals
(504).
Clifford Dobell (GB) suggested that Giardia is a pathogen (451).
Reginald Miller (GB) conclusively showed that some children
infected with Giardia did suffer from malabsorption whereas others acted as
unaffected carriers (962).
Charles Wardell Stiles (US) began to suspect that there was a
causal relationship between the presence of Giardia and diarrhea (flux) (1303).
Robert C. Rendtorff (US) produced unambiguous evidence linking the
Giardia parasite with diarrhea (1140).
Guillaume de Baillou; William of Ballion; Wilhelm Ballonius (FR),
in 1611, provided one of the best early descriptions of rheumatism as arthritis
(390).
Guillaume de Baillou; William of Ballion; Wilhelm Ballonius (FR)
gave a clinical description of rheumatoid arthritis in adults and coined
the word rheumatism to describe
clinical manifestations of muscular pain and acute rheumatic fever (391).
Augustin Jacob Landré-Beauvais (FR), in 1800, was the first to clearly
describe rheumatoid arthritis, calling it goutte asthénique primitive
(primary asthenic gout) (816;
817).
Alfred Baring Garrod (GB), in 1858, coined the phrase rheumatoid arthritis (568).
1612
1614
Santorio Santorio; Santorio Santorii; Sanctorius of Padua (IT) was
the first to modify the thermometer (air thermometer invented by Galileo) into
a clinical instrument to measure human body temperature. He devised a pulse
clock using a pendulum to make the first quantitative measurements of pulse
rate. By careful weighing of the human body he was the first to prove that
humans loose weight by the evaporation of perspiration off their bodies (1186-1188; 1262).
Felix Platter (CH) provided the first account of a meningioma: "There was discovered
on [the corpus callosum] the brain a
remarkable round fleshy tumor like an acorn. It was hard and full of holes and
was as large as a medium-sized apple. It was covered with its own membrane and
was entwined with veins…. We perceived that this ball by compressing the brain
and its ducts with its mass and by flooding them, had been the occasion of the
lethargy and listlessness and finally of death" (1087).
1615
"It is clear from a churchman who has been elevated to a very
eminent position that the Holy Spirit’s intention is to teach us how to go to
Heaven, and not how the heavens go." Galileo Galilei (IT). This statement
is contained in a Letter to Madame Christine of Lorraine, Grand Duchess of
Tuscany, in 1615 (564). It is
commonly held that Cesare Baronio (Cardinal Caesar Baronius) is the person from
whom Galileo directly heard these words.
Giulio Cesare Vanini (IT) published
two books, Amphitheatrum Aeternae
Providentiae Divino-magicum. Christiano-physicum, nec non Astrologo-Catholicum.
Aversus Veteres Philosophos and De admirandis
Naturae Reginae Deaeque Mortalium Arcanis. It was for these two books,
especially the second, that he was condemned and forced to flee Paris, and for
opinions like those in the second that he was then executed in 1619. Based on
these works Vanini is one of the first who began to treat nature as a machine
governed by laws (1383; 1384).
1616
Fabius Columna; Fabio Colonna (IT) authored Ecphrasis in which he described, drew, and systematically arranged
210 species of plants (341).
c.
1617-1619
A smallpox (red plague)
outbreak killed 90% of the Massachusetts Bay Indians, probably introduced from
fishing boats that visited the coast before there was a permanent English
settlement there. The few remaining natives were weakened and were unable to
resist the landing of the Mayflower settlers at Plymouth in 1620 (793).
1617
John Woodall (GB), first surgeon-general to the East India
Company, anticipated modern knowledge of the properties of vitamin C in regard
to scurvy, a condition due to vitamin C deficiency and the scourge of sailors
for generations. At sea, he states that experience shows that "the
Lemmons, Limes, Tamarinds, Oranges, and other choice of good helps in the
Indies... do farre exceed any that can be carried tither from England" (1482).
Johann Georg Heinrich Kramer (AT-HU), in 1720 and 1737, observed
a scurvy-fruit/vegetables link (correlation). Soldiers who ate fresh fruit and
vegetables generally did not get scurvy; those who did not, generally speaking,
got it (862).
James Lind (GB) while in medical school at Edinburgh treated
scurvy-ridden sailors with various diets and discovered that citrus fruits
cured the disease (862; 863).
In 1795, lime and lemon juice were introduced into the British
navy rations to control scurvy (249).
Theobald Smith (US) was the first to experimentally induce scurvy
in animals (guinea pigs). He did so accidentally while studying bacterial
infections of swine and apparently did not associate the symptoms with scurvy (1271).
Axel Holst (NO) and Theodor Fröhlich (NO) made a thorough and
careful study of diet as a factor in inducing scurvy in guinea pigs. They found
that supplements of fruits, fresh vegetables, or their juices to a diet of grain
protected the animals against scurvy but if these antiscorbutic foods were
dried or heated at 100°C for 30 minutes to an hour they lost their
effectiveness. They also determined that while dried oats, barley (Hordeum vulgare), peas, beans (Phaseolus vulgaris), or lentils gave no
protection they acquired protective powers when allowed to germinate before
consumption (692; 693).
John H. Crandon (US), Charles C. Lund (US), and David Bruce
Dill (US) experimentally induced scurvy in a human. The results laid the
groundwork for our understanding of the biochemical and histologic changes in
human scurvy (360).
Stark (GB) had attempted to induce the disease in himself at an earlier date
but unfortunately died of secondary complications (462).
1618-1648
The period of the Thirty Years War in Germany was marked by
repeated epidemics, including typhus (camp fever), plague (Yersinia pestis),
scurvy, and dysentery (bloody flux)
that spread to other European countries (793).
1618
Italy was swept by outbreaks of diphtheria (793).
1619
Fabrizio Bartoletti; Fabrizio Bertoletti; Fabrizio Bartholet;
Fabrizio Barthold (IT) described the sugar of milk (lactose) (134; 1350).
Rembert Dodoens; Robert Dodonäeus (BE) in referring to foxglove
wrote, "for those who have water in the belly…it draws off the watery
fluid, purifies the choleric fluid, and opens the obstruction" (453).
William Withering (GB) wrote An
Account of the Foxglove and Some of its Medical Uses in which he recounted
obtaining the recipe for a home remedy for dropsy
(edema) from old women in Shropshire and realizing that Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) was the active
ingredient. In the book, he reports on a decade of observations and experience
with digitalis purpurea on numerous
dropsy patients (1472; 1473). Digitalis
from Foxglove remains a very important drug in the treatment of cardiac
disease. L’Heritier (FR) honored him with the plant genus Witheringia.
John Ferriar (GB) wrote in detail about the diuretic effects of
digitalis (519).
Augustine-Eugene Hormolle (FR) successfully isolated digitalin, a
digitalis glycoside (699).
Claude-adolphe Nativelle (FR) isolated from Digitalis lanata (foxglove) a crystallized version of digitalis and
named it digitaline (digitalin
with digitoxin) (992).
Johann Ernst
Oswald Schmiedeberg (RU-DE) arrived at the conclusion that
Nativelle’s preparations were composed mainly of the following principles which
he named: Digitonin, digitoxin,
digitalin, and digitalein. The
first is an inactive glucoside, while the three others have the property of
acting upon the heart, digitoxin possessing
this power in a most pronounced degree (1208).
James MacKenzie (GB) and Thomas Lewis (GB) discovered the role of digitoxin in treating supraventricular arrhythmias when they
realized that it caused a reduction in the transmission of electrical impulses
from the atria to the ventricles (857; 897; 950).
Sydney Smith
(GB) isolated the active glycoside named digoxin
(Lanoxin)
from the Balkan or woolly foxglove Digitalis
lanata (1270).
Amar K. Sen (US) and Robert L. Post (US) found that the cardiac
glycosides like digoxin inhibit the ATP-dependent sodium/potassium pump (Na+/K+-ATPase) in the cell membrane of the cardiac myocyte. This inhibition
increases the availability of intracellular calcium to contractile proteins in
myocardial cells, with modest positive inotropic effect. Low dose digoxin may
be of benefit in chronic heart failure by reducing symptoms and improving
quality of life and exercise tolerance (1230).
Alfred Fabian Hess (US) provided experimental evidence suggesting
that a
virus causes rubella (663).
Norman McAlister Gregg (AU) discovered that in humans the
occurrence of rubella in the early
stages of pregnancy has profound teratogenic effects on the fetus in utero and under these conditions can
produce a variety of congenital malformations (609; 610).
Charles Swan (AU) and Alfred L. Tostevin (AU), authorized by the
National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, confirmed Gregg’s
findings in 1946 (1315).
In 1969 a live attenuated rubella vaccine was licensed, then in
the early 1970s, a triple vaccine containing attenuated measles, mumps, and
rubella (MMR) viruses was introduced (98; 648).
c.
1620
Marco Aurelio Severino (IT) developed treatments for abscesses and
was performing resections of the ribs (1244).
1620
Deacon Dr. Samuel Fuller (GB-US), who arrived on the Mayflower, was the first non-native
person in North America to work as a physician. There is no record of his
medical training (902).
1621
Lazare Rivière; Lazarus Riverius; Lazari Riverii (FR) wrote a
textbook in which he described impairments on consciousness. He was the first
to note aortic stenosis (1646) (1149).
1622
Joachim Jungius (DE) founded the first nature-searching society, Societas
Ereunetica sive Zetetica, at Rostock, Germany (345).
1623-1625
Purpuric fever (childbed
fever) was common in England. The specific cause of this disease was then
unknown.
1623
"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main; …. any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in
mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bells toll; it tolls for
thee."John Donne (GB) (458)
"[The
universe] cannot be read until we have learnt the language and become familiar
with the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical
language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures,
without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word."
Galileo
Galilei (IT) (563).
Aleixo de Abreu (PT) wrote the first text on tropical medicine. In
it he describes, among other things, scurvy,
yellow fever, the Guinea worm (Dracunculus medinensis), and liver involvement in his amoebiasis (387).
Colin Chisholm (GB), in 1795, may have been the first to observe
the mode of transmission of the Guinea worm, Dracunculus medinensis, which he found in the water supply on the
island of Granada and which differed from any animalcule hitherto described. He
advanced the theory that the disease was carried from Africa to the Americas by
a slave ship, the Hankey (306).
Karl Asmund Rudolphi (SE-DE), in 1819, discovered adult female Dracunculus medinensis worms containing
larvae (1169).
Alexei Pavlovich Fedchenko (RU), in 1869, elaborated the whole
life cycle of Dracunculus medinensis,
(Guinea worm or Medina worm) the parasite of dracontiasis, including the stages
in the crustacean intermediate host (506; 507).
Robert Thompson Leiper (GB), in 1907, determined the complete life
cycle of Dracunculus (the Guinea
worm) (848).
Dyneshvar Atmaran Turkhud (IN), in 1914, succeeded in infecting
human volunteers with Dracunculus
medinensis by using infected cyclops (1364).
1625-1640
Bubonic
plague
(Yersinia pestis) spread through
France. Probably the worst single outbreak was in Lyon in 1628-1629 (793).
1625
Federico Cesi (IT) presented some of the first images generated
through the microscope. They are microscopic observations of bees carried out
by members of the Accademia dei Lincei (293).
Aulus Persius Flaccus (IT), Dichter Roimisches Reich (IT),
Francesco Stelluti (IT), and Naturforscher (IT), in 1630, wrote the first book
to contain illustrations of objects viewed through the microscope. Stelluti was
a friend of Galileo and founding member of the Accademia dei Lincei (525).
Giovanni Battista Cortesi; Cortesius of Messina (IT) recorded the
remarkable case of the Warden of St. Francis, who, suffered from a severe
inflammation of the throat, and complained of a foul breath. To make sure that
he was not merely imagining the odor, he asked a friend to smell the
exhalations from his mouth. Shortly thereafter the friend came down with the
illness and died of suffocation on the fourth day. “From this instance,” wrote
Cortesius, “I have come to the conclusion that the disease is more or less
contagious” (353). Note:
There is good reason to believe that the Warden had diphtheria.
Native Canadian Indians became fearful of French Jesuits because
they became convinced that the Jesuits were associated with smallpox
(red plague)
(591).
London experienced a high mortality from the plague (793).
1627
Gasparo Aselli; Gasparo Asellio (IT), while examining the
mesentery of a dissected dog, discovered the mesenteric chyle vessels
(lacteals)—he called them venae albae et
lacteae ("white and lacteal veins")— but did not understand their
significance in the circulatory system (94; 531). Note:
The discovery took place in 1622. See,
Olof Rudbeck, 1653. Herophilus of Alexandria; Herophilos of Chalcedon; Herofilos
of Chalkedon
(GR) and Erasistratos (GR) are also credited with the discovery of the lacteals
in c. 280 B.C.E. (1190).
Adriaan van de Spiegel; Adrianus Spigelius (BE-IT), in his De Humani Corporis Fabrica, described
the caudate lobe of the liver known today as the Spiegelian lobe (1377).
Giulio Cesare Casseri; Giulio Cesare Casserio; Julius Cesare
Casserius (IT), described the circle of arteries at the base of the brain which
would later be called the Circle of
Willis (circulus arteriosus
cerebri) (278).
Johann Vesling; Johann Wesling; Johannes Veslingus (DE-IT) from
Padua, gave descriptions or illustrations of the circle (470; 1391).
Johann Jakob Wepfer (CH) has priority for the description but not
the illustration of the Circle in his book on apoplexy of 1658 (1446).
Thomas Willis (GB) published the first complete description,
illustration, and understanding of the function of the circle, and more
importantly, he was able to relate the anatomy to the clinical effects of
vascular disease. The illustrations are probably the work of Christopher Wren (1462). Note: Although not
listed as authors, Ralph Bathurst,(GB), Richard Lower (GB), Thomas Millington
(GB), and Christopher Wren (GB) are known to have been contributors. “ . . .We
have already shewn, that these Vessels are variously and very much ingrafted or
inoculated among themselves, not only the Arteries with the Veins, but what is
more rare and singular, Arteries with Arteries; to wit, the Carotidick Arteries
of one side, in many, are united with the Carotides of the other side; besides
the Vertebrals of either side among themselves, and are also inoculated into
the posterior branches of the Carotides before united. The joynings together of
the Carotides, in most living Creatures, are made about the Basis of the Skull
under the Dura Mater...”(1461).
1628-1885
Smallpox (red
plague) is epidemic in London.
1628
"Search out and study the secrets of Nature by way of
experiment." William Harvey (GB) (641)
“For a long time, I turned over in my mind such questions as, how
much blood is transmitted, and how short a time does its passage take. Not
deeming it possible for the digested food mass to furnish such an abundance of
blood, without totally draining the veins or rupturing the arteries, unless it
somehow got back to the veins from the arteries and returned to the right
ventricle of the heart, I began to think there was a sort of motion as in a circle.
This I afterwards found true.” William Harvey (GB) (641) Harvey
never observed capillaries although he tried; this would come in 1688.
"Blood passes through the lungs and heart by the action of
the [auricles and] ventricles, and is sent for distribution to all parts of the
body, where it makes its way into the veins and pores of the flesh, and then
flows by the veins from the circumference on every side to the centre, from the
lesser to the greater veins, and is by them finally discharged into the vena
cava and right auricle of the heart…in such a quantity…as cannot…be supplied by
the ingesta…. It is necessary to conclude that the blood…is impelled in a
circle…in a state of ceaseless motion…and that is the sole…end of the motion
and contraction of the heart." William Harvey (GB) (641).
"We, however, maintain (and shall take care to show that it
is so), that all animals whatsoever, even the viviparous, and man himself not
excepted, are produced from ova; that the first conception, from which the
foetus proceeds in all, is an ovum of one description or another, as well as
the seeds of all kinds of plants. . . . The history of the egg is therefore of
the widest scope, inasmuch as it illustrates generation of every description.
We shall, therefore, begin by showing where, whence, and how eggs are produced;
and then inquire by what mean and order and successive steps the foetus or
chick is formed and perfected in and from the egg." William Harvey (GB) (642). Note: Although Harvey is
usually considered the author of the phrase “omne vivum ex ovo,” this phrase
has not been found in his writings.
William Harvey (GB) through actual dissection, emphasized that the
valves separating the two upper chambers of the heart from the two lower
chambers of the heart are one-way valves; blood can go from auricle to
ventricle but not vice versa.
By tying off selected arteries and veins he proved that blood
flows away from the heart in arteries and toward the heart in veins. He
calculated that every hour the heart pumped out a quantity of blood that is
three times the weight of a man. It was inconceivable that blood could be
formed and broken down at this rate—as the ancients thought. The inescapable
conclusion was that blood circulates from heart to arteries to veins and back
to the heart (641; 643). He guessed
that extremely fine vessels must connect arteries to veins (capillaries), but
these were too small for him to see without a microscope. See, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (NL), 1688.
"It was because of Harvey, and his experiments, that people
came to realize that, in fact, it was the blood which played the prime role in
physiology. This change in perspective created modern medicine. Without it we
would have no understanding of respiration, gland secretion (as with hormones)
or chemical changes in tissues" (1434).
William Harvey (GB) was most probably the first to record atrial
fibrillation in humans when he noted, "…but I have noticed that after the
heart proper, and even the right auricle were ceasing to beat and appeared on
the point of death, an obscure movement undulation or palpitation had clearly
continued in the right auricular blood itself for as long as the blood was
perceptibly imbued with warmth and spirit (641).
1629-1631
Plague is epidemic
in London. ref
Plague is epidemic in Italy (793).
1630-1633
Plague is epidemic in Florence, Italy (793).
1629
Jakob de Bondt; Jacobus Bontius (NL) went to Java and in the four
short years before his death sent back a wealth of information about the East
Indies. His posthumous works include the first description of beri-beri in European medical
literature, and descriptions of animals and plants unknown in Europe.
He relates, "The inhabitants of the East Indies are much
afflicted with a troublesome disorder which they call the Beriberii (a word signifying a sheep). The disease has, probably,
received this denomination on account that those who are seized with it,
exhibit a tottering of the knees, and a peculiar manner of walking which
resembles to a fancy the gait of that animal" (395; 396). This book
was published many years after the author’s death.
1630
Jean Rey (FR) was the first to prove that metals increase in
weight on calcination (oxidation). He
attributed these gains in weight to the union of metals with the air (1142; 1143).
Rey also gave the thermometer its modern form, though in a crude
state. He called it a thermoscope (1144).
Daniel Sennert (DE) was the first to give a description of the
scarlet fever. He was the first to mention the scarlatinal desquamation, the
early arthritis, and post-scarlatinal dropsy, but did not mention the sore
throat (1236).
Thomas Sydenham (GB) would later give a more detailed and accurate
description of the scarlet fever. See,
Sydenham, 1769.
1633
John Gerard (GB), Thomas Johnson (GB), Robert Priest (GB), Robert Davyes (GB), and
Rembert Dodoens (BE) published Gerard's Herball
or General Historie of Plants. Gerard
had by this time became caretaker of the physic garden (medical plants of the
College of Physicians of London) (574).
c.
1633
Smallpox (red plague) epidemic hit
Massachusetts, affecting settlers and Native Americans; among the casualties
were 20 settlers from the Mayflower, including their only physician (793; 952).
c.
1634
Johann Rudolph Glauber (DE-NL) reported heating wood in a closed
retort and collecting the volatile products as distillate. The products
included acetic acid, acetone, and wood alcohol (methanol) (590).
1634-1640
Measles and influenza (grippe) were epidemic in Quebec and Eastern
Canada, hitting the Huron Indians especially hard (793).
1634
The Musaeum Tradescantianum was the first museum open to the public
to be established in England. Located in Vauxhall in south London, it comprised
a collection of curiosities, assembled by John Tradescant the elder (GB) and
his son in a building called The Ark, and a botanical collection in the grounds
of the building.
Tradescant divided the exhibits into natural objects (naturalia)
and manmade objects (artificialia). The first account of the collection,
by Peter Mundy, is from 1634. At this time the collection was already quite large.
After the death of the elder Tradescant and his wife, the collection passed
into the hands of the wealthy collector Elias Ashmole (GB) who in 1691 gave it
to Oxford University as the nucleus of the newly founded Ashmolean Museum, the
world's first university museum.
William Wood (GB) wrote New England Prospect (1634) in
which he describes New England's fauna (1481).
Dutch traders introduced a catastrophic smallpox (red plague) epidemic into Connecticut. It killed 95% of
the Indians along the Connecticut River, and spread north into Canada. The
English settlers were mostly immune, having had the disease as children
themselves, but attributed their escape, and the Indians' death, to God's will.
The elimination of the natives in the Connecticut valley opened that area to
settlement (793).
John Winthrop (GB), governor of the colony of Massachusetts, wrote
that “the natives, they are neere all dead of the small Poxe, so as the Lord
hathe cleared our title to what we possess.” (591)
1636
Plague is epidemic in London .(793)
In 1636,
Harvard University, the oldest university in the United States of America, was
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