One of the oldest known medical texts, devoted to the surgical treatment of wounds.
In the Shang dynasty in China, illnesses and methods of healing are recorded on oracle bones, as part of religious divination practices.
In Mesopotamia, the scholar Esagil-kin-apli compiles an extensive diagnostic handbook that systematically links symptoms to diseases and prognoses.
In archaic Greece, the veneration of Asclepius, god of medicine, arises, and temple medicine and healing rituals spread around sanctuaries.
In India, surgical techniques and herbal remedies are extensively described in the Sushruta Samhita.
The Greek physician Democedes becomes personal physician to the Persian kings Darius I and Cambyses, thus connecting the Greek and Persian medical traditions.
On the Greek island of Kos, Hippocrates develops a rational medicine based on observation and the theory of the four bodily humours, free from divine punishment or magic.
In India, the oral tradition of Charaka is recorded, an extensive medical compendium that systematises internal medicine within Ayurveda alongside Sushruta's surgical work.
The foundational work of Chinese medicine lays the basis for concepts such as qi, yin-yang and acupuncture.
The Persian scholar Ibn Sina (Avicenna) writes an encyclopedic medical work that remains authoritative in East and West for centuries.
During the Song dynasty in China, physician Wang Weiyi designs life-size bronze statues with marked acupuncture points, used for teaching and examinations.
The Damascene, and later Cairo-based, physician Ibn al-Nafis is the first to correctly describe how blood circulates through the lungs, three centuries before European anatomists recognise this.
The Aztec ruler Moctezuma I has an extensive botanical garden laid out at Huaxtepec, where medicinal plants from across the empire are collected and studied.
Spanish missionaries document the extensive botanical medicine of the Aztecs.
The Ottoman sultan Süleyman the Magnificent has a great hospital and educational complex built where medicine is taught and practised according to the Islamic tradition.
The Chinese physician and naturalist Li Shizhen completes his life's work, a monumental pharmacological encyclopedia containing thousands of remedies based on plants, animals and minerals.
The English physician Thomas Sydenham develops a method of precise disease description and observation at the bedside, moving away from speculative theories.
The practice of inoculation against smallpox, originating in China and the Ottoman Empire, spreads to Europe.
Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch prove that microorganisms cause infectious diseases, fundamentally changing modern medicine.
Japanese and German researchers jointly develop a serum against diphtheria, one of the first successful applications of immunology in clinical practice.
British physician Ronald Ross demonstrates in India that malaria is transmitted by the Anopheles mosquito, a crucial breakthrough in tropical medicine.
Canadian researchers Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolate insulin, making type 1 diabetes treatable for the first time.
Alexander Fleming accidentally discovers a mould that kills bacteria, marking the beginning of the antibiotic era.
American microbiologist Selman Waksman isolates streptomycin, the first effective antibiotic against tuberculosis.
Allied pharmaceutical companies in the United States and Britain develop methods to mass-produce penicillin for wounded soldiers.
Jonas Salk introduces an inactivated polio vaccine in the United States, drastically reducing the spread of poliomyelitis worldwide.
The Chinese government trains millions of farmers as basic medical aides to bring healthcare to the countryside.
Thanks to a global vaccination campaign by the WHO, smallpox becomes the first human disease to be completely eradicated.
The World Health Organization launches a global initiative to eradicate polio entirely, just as smallpox was eradicated.
Scientists from the United States, Europe, Japan and China announce the complete sequencing of human DNA.
The SARS epidemic in China and Southeast Asia leads to new international protocols for combating emerging infectious diseases.
Researchers present a precise and affordable method for editing DNA, based on a bacterial immune system.
After decades of research, the WHO approves the RTS,S vaccine for use in children in malaria-endemic regions.
Within a year of the outbreak of the pandemic, mRNA vaccines are developed and distributed around the world.
Artificial intelligence enables healthcare workers in remote regions to diagnose diseases with human precision via smartphones.
Hospitals begin printing artificially grown organs on a large scale as an alternative to donor transplants.
Speculative future: CRISPR-based therapies and AI-driven diagnostics become globally accessible standard care.
An international consortium of research institutes introduces a broadly applicable therapy that slows and partially reverses biological aging at the cellular level, aiming to extend healthy life expectancy worldwide.
Microscopic nanorobots that navigate through the bloodstream and nervous system are deployed worldwide to cure neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's by repairing damaged tissue at the molecular level.
Sydenham, later called 'the English Hippocrates', emphasised the importance of detailed observation of symptoms and distinguishing between diseases such as measles, scarlet fever and gout, from which he himself suffered. He rejected the prevailing humoral theory as a guide for treatment and advocated empirically grounded therapies, including the use of cinchona bark against malarial fevers. His approach laid the foundation for modern clinical epidemiology and influenced generations of physicians throughout Europe and the colonies.