He traveled to Hong Kong in 1894 at the request of the Japanese government during an outbreak of the bubonic plague, and identified a bacterium that he concluded was causing the disease.
Pasteurization, invented by Louis Pasteur in 1864, kills harmful bacteria that tend to grow in dairy products, especially in the absence of refrigeration. At the time, the discovery was rather revolutionary; it allowed milk to be consumed less immediately and prevented many illnesses.
In 1809, Nicolas Appert, a French confectioner and brewer, observed that food cooked inside a jar did not spoil unless the seals leaked, and developed a method of sealing food in glass jars.
Nicolas Appert invents canning, revolutionizing food storage Read more
In the West, Jenner is often called “the father of immunology”, and his work is said to have “saved more lives than the work of any other human”.
British physician Edward Jenner develops first-ever successful vaccine Read more
Hanaoka Seishū was a Japanese of the Edo period with a knowledge of Chinese herbal medicine, as well as Western surgical techniques he had learned through Rangaku.
The Japanese surgeon Hanaoka Seishū is the first to use general anaesthesia Read more
Cullen used a pump to create a partial vacuum over a container of diethyl ether, which then boiled, absorbing heat from the surrounding air.
William Cullen invents the first artificial refrigeration machine Read more
Perhaps the first written record we have of a mother and baby surviving a cesarean section comes from Switzerland in 1500 when sow gelder, Jacob Nufer, performed the operation on his wife. The mother lived and subsequently gave birth normally to five children, including twins. The cesarean baby lived to be 77 years old.
The Canon of Medicine is an encyclopedia of medicine compiled by Persian physician-philosopher Ibn Sina. It presents an overview of the contemporary medical knowledge of the medieval Islamic world.
Ibn Sina publishes The Canon of Medicine Read more
The first documented use of toilet paper in human history dates back to the 6th century C.E., in early medieval China.
The medieval Chinese of the Song dynasty invent toilet paper Read more
The Hippocratic Oath is one of the oldest and most widely known codes of ethics.
The Hippocratic Oath is used for the first time Read more
