Medical Advances Timeline: 1866-1899

1866
- 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits voting discrimination, denies government office to certain Civil War rebels and repudiates Confederate war debts.
- February 11: The United States Christian Commission, which raised and spent more than $6 to support its war relief work, goes out of existence.
- March 21: Mrs. Mary Ann “Mother” Bickerdyke submits her resignation to the U.S. Sanitary Commission.
- May: Official termination of the United States Sanitary Commission, and the formation of the American Association for the Relief of Misery on the Battlefield.
- September 29: George A. Otis, M.D. is breveted Captain and Major for faithful and meritorious service in the Medical Department and Lieutenant Colonel for faithful and meritorious service during the war.
- Alfred Nobel invents dynamite.
- Ernst Haeckel publishes his General Morphology, describing the law of biogenetics.
- Robert Whitehead, an English engineer, invents the underwater torpedo.

1867
- Federal Medical Department authorizes the purchase of 4,095 prosthetic legs, 2,391 arms, 61 hands and 14 feet. In the budgets of many former Confederate states, the largest single expenditure was for artificial limbs.
- Nebraska becomes a state of the U.S.
- Russia sells Alaska to the U.S. for $7,200,000.
- German professor of medicine Carl Wunderlich introduces thermometry to bedside medicine.
- June: The Autenrieth Wagon, adopted by the U.S. Army for the transport of drugs, surgical tools and supplies, is displayed in Paris, France, at the World’s Fair

1868
- Ulysses S. Grant is elected President of the United States.
- The Harvard Medical School catalogue first mentions the stethoscope, 30 years after its invention.
- Led by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the New York Medical College for Women at New York Infirmary is started.
- A bill proposing to appoint dental surgeons to the Army and Navy fails, but dental surgeons were subsequently appointed to West Point Military College and the Naval Academy.
- The first teaching clinics on diseases of the eye were held in Baltimore. They were conducted by Dr. Russell Murdock, considered the first surgeon to perform unassisted surgical cataract removal. Dr. Murdock was also known for inventing new surgical instruments for eye surgery.

1869
- General Ulysses S. Grant is inaugurated as 18th President of the United States.
- The first state board of health established in Massachusetts.
- The Harvard Medical School catalogue first mentions the microscope, two centuries after its invention.
- First transcontinental railway is completed in America.
- The body of President Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was exhumed from a temporary grave under the floor of a warehouse at the Washington Arsenal. Undertaker John H. Weaver staged an informal inquest with Booth’s family and friends. An effort was made to identify the body through its dental work, although the results were inconclusive.

1870
- Four medical colleges for women now exist in America.
- At a meeting of the Aid Society in Berlin, the use of American ambulance trains is described as a model for European armies.

1871
- Former U.S. Surgeon General William Hammond publishes Treatise on Diseases of the Nervous System, the first textbook on nerve diseases to be published in the U.S.
- G.A. Hansen discovers the leprosy bacillus.
- The Baltimore Eye and Ear Hospital is founded by Dr. Julian J. Chisolm.
- Population figures in millions:
German 41
U.S. 39
France 36
Japan 33
Great Britain 26
Ireland 5.4
Italy 26.8

1872
- Grant is re-elected President of the U.S.
- U.S. General Amnesty Act pardons most ex-Confederates.
- Billroth makes the first surgical resection of the esophagus.
- Brooklyn Bridge opens in New York.
- The first nursing school in the United States is established at Bellevue Hospital. Louisa Lee Schuyler, a passionate war volunteer from New York society, was instrumental in starting the school.

1874
- Billroth discovers streptococci and staphylococci.
- A.T. Still founds osteopathy in Kansas.

1875
- The London School of Medicine for Women is founded.
- American artist Thomas Eakins paints The Gross Clinic, portraying famous surgeon Dr. Samuel Gross.
- A Marine Hospital is built in San Francisco’s Presidio area.

1876
- Robert Koch discovers the anthrax bacillus.
- Philadelphia hosts an International Congress of Medicine. Reports were given on the state of American medicine. Foreign physicians praised the publications of the Surgeon General’s office and pointed out that France and Prussia had already adopted the “American ambulance” system.
- German medical journal Berliner Klinische Wochenschrift publishes a paper suggesting that salsalate could help control blood sugar in diabetics. The accuracy of the studies were confirmed by Harvard researchers in the 1990s.
- Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone.
- Colorado becomes a state of the U.S.

1877
- Rutherford B. Hayes inaugurated as 19th President of the U.S.
- Robert Koch develops a technique that allows bacteria to be stained and identified.
- J. Friedrich A. von Esmarch introduces the antiseptic bandage.
- The Presbyterian Charity Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital in Baltimore is founded by Dr. Julian J. Chisolm.

1878
- First use of iodoform as an antiseptic.
- Researchers noted that “the most frequent cause of the opium-eating habit in females is the taking of opiates to relieve painful menstruation and diseases of female organs of generation.”
- Mannlicher produces a repeater rifle.
- An Act of Congress on March 15 restores William A. Hammond, as Brigadier General on the retired list, without pay or allowances.

1879
- William A. Hammond, M.D. is restored as Brigadier General on the retired list, without pay or allowances, by an Act of Congress in March 1878.
- Pheobe Yates Pember publishes A Southern Woman’s Story: Life in Confederate Richmond, detailing much of her work at Chimborazo Hospital.
- Louis Pasteur’s studies of cholera bacteria in chickens paves the way for the development of vaccines against many diseases.
- Thomas Edison invents the electric lightbulb.

1880
- Thomas Alva Edison and J.W. Swan independently devise the first practical electric lights.
- French army surgeon Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran identifies parasites in the blood of a malaria patient.
- Typhoid bacillus is discovered.
- Pasteur discovers a chicken cholera vaccine.
- New York streets are first lit by electricity.
- Railroad mileage in operation:
U.S. 87,800
Great Britain 17,900
France 16,400
Russia 12,200

1881
- Relief worker Clara Barton succeeds in her efforts to establish the American Red Cross and begins her service as its first president.
- Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch prove the germ theory of disease.
- The first vaccine for anthrax is created by Louis Pasteur.
- City population in millions:
London 3.3
Paris 2.2
New York 1.2
Berlin 1.1
Tokyo 0.8
St. Petersburg 0.6

1882
- The first organized veterinary group in Pennsylvania, the Keystone Veterinary Medical Association, is formed.
- The first vaccine for rabies is created by Louis Pasteur.
- Viennese physician Joseph Breuer uses hypnosis to treat hysteria.
- Thomas Edison designs the first hydroelectric plant in Appleton, Wisconsin.
- English engineer Hiram S. Maxim patents the recoil-operated machine gun.

1883
- The first skyscraper—10 stories—is built in Chicago.
- August 22: A group of twenty-two veterinarians formed the Pennsylvania Veterinary Medical Association. Their meeting focused on continuing education and the legislative actions of veterinary associations that had been successful in other states.

1884
- Grover Cleveland is elected U.S. President.
- German physician Arthur Nicolaier discovers the tetanus bacillus.
- Sir Charles Parson invents the first practical steam turbine engine.

1885
- Grover Cleveland is inaugurated as 22nd U.S. President.
- Louis Pasteur devises a successful rabies vaccine. Due to his vaccine, the death rate from rabies dropped to almost zero in three years.
- Sir Francis Galton proves the individuality of fingerprints.
- Dr. George E. Holtzapple of Pennsylvania treats a pneumonia patient with pure oxygen. Oxygen therapy became the only effective treatment for pneumonia until antibiotics became available in the 1940s.

1886
- Opium demand in the U.S. peaks, during a period from 1880 to 1889, when demand and import increased nine-fold.
- Ernst von Bergmann uses steam to sterilize surgical instruments.

1887
- Dr. William Williams Keen is the first surgeon in the Americas to successfully remove a benign brain tumor.
- The analgesic drug Phenacetin is discovered.

1888
- An English pediatrician identifies a gastrointestinal disorder, later known as celiac disease.

1889
- North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Washington become states of the U.S.
- Oklahoma is opened to non-Indian settlement.
- Benjamin Harrison inaugurated as 23d President of the U.S.
- Frederick Abel invents cordite.
- Von Mahring and Minkowski prove that the pancreas secretes insulin to prevent diabetes.

1890
- Idaho and Wyoming become states of the U.S.
- Rubber gloves are used for the first time in surgery by surgeon William Halsted at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD.
- Emil von Behring announces the discovery of antitoxins and uses them to develop vaccines for tetanus and diptheria.
- Global influenza epidemics.

1893
- African-American surgeon Daniel Williams performs the first open-heart surgery on a patient in Chicago.

1894
- Yersin and Kitasato independently discover the plague bacillus.

1895
- November 8: German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen discovers X-rays and finds that they pass through matter. This property leads immediately to their use in diagnostic medicine.
- Marconi invents wireless telegraphy.

1896
- Johannes von Mikulisz-Radecki invents the gauze mask to be worn by surgeons when performing surgery.
- Michael I. Pupin of Columbia University takes the first diagnostic X-ray photograph in the U.S. to set a broken arm.
- The first vaccine for typhoid fever is developed.
- Utah becomes a state of the U.S.
- Niagara Falls hydroelectric plant opens.
- French physicist A.H. Becquerel discovers radioactivity.
- First modern Olympics held in Athens.

1897
- William McKinley is inaugurated as 25th President of the U.S.
- Ronald Ross discovers the malaria bacillus.
- Aspirin is invented in Germany.

1898
- Pierre and Marie Curie discover radium and polonium.
- Japanese bacteriologist Shiga discovers the dysentery bacillus.
- Bayer chemist Heinrich Dreser prepares diacetylmorphine and names it “heroin”. It was intended as a faster-acting and shorter-lasting pain reliever than morphine, producing less nausea and vomiting.
- A British officer in the Indian Medical Service, Ronald Ross, demonstrates that malaria parasites are transmitted via mosquitoes.

1898
- The mineral Thorium is found to be radioactive. It had been used by dentists to fill teeth for almost 60 years.

1899
- First Peace Conference held at The Hague.
- The cause of “progressive pernicious anemia”, common in the southern United States, is identified by Dr. Charles Wardell Stiles, a zoologist from Hartford, Connecticut. Dr. Stiles proved that a hookworm species, not a germ, was responsible for the condition.
- The Bayer company registers “Aspirin” as a trademark.
- Rutherford discovers alpha and beta rays in radioactive atoms.
- First magnetic recording of sound.

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