History of Disease – chronological highlights

Ancient Civilizations — Medicine – 4000 – 1000 BCE
– Illness and death attributed to punishment from gods
-Magic and spells used for treatment
-opium, herbal remedies, acupuncture

3000 BCE
writing develops, wheel used for chariots


420 BCE
–Hippocrates – “Father of Medicine”  — Greek
-teaches importance of observation and diagnosis over magic in medicine
-treat with rest, diet, massage, fresh air, bath

400-1400 – The Dark Ages
-Myth and Magic, and divine wrath
–1300’s – Bubonic Plague “Black Death”
-starts in China and spreads to Europe
-killed 3 out of 10 Europeans
-accepted as divine retribution for the sin of humanity

1400’s – 1700’s
-The Renaissance (1450 – 1600)
-transition from medieval unquestioned faith and mysticism to age of
scientific inquiry 
–Fracastoro (1500’s)
–disease was spread by invisible particle (seminaria)
-postulated transmission of disease
1. direct contact with person
2. contact with contaminated object (fomite)
3. air

-Age of Enlightenment (1600 – 1700’s – scientific age)

—Leeuwenhoek
–1st to see microbes; existence of germs
-“animicules”
—Jenner
–first step to vaccines
-he noticed that people who had cowpox were immune to smallpox
-he inoculated a boy with cowpox (a milder disease) — waited several
weeks for a boy to recover then inoculated with smallpox — no illness occurred




mid 1800’s (1840)
– Semmelweis – recognizes importance of hand washing
– many still believed that disease was caused by mysterious vapors -toads and mice born of moist soil
-maggots arose from decaying corpes
-flies arose form manure

1857 – 1910 – Golden Age of Microbiology
–Pasteur
– disproved spontaneous generation
-swan neck experiment
–pasteurization
-rabies vaccine
–Lister -treatment with phenol (1st disinfectant)
–Koch’s postulates
-sick cattle with anthrax; he inoculated mice with the blood of cattle, isolated
organism in sick mice and reinfected other mice
-The germ theory of disease —
–microbes caused disease
-dispelled the belief that disease was caused by gods or punishments of
crime etc
-causative agents ID for specific diseases

–colds and flu
–Leprosy, Marlaria, TB,
– Bubonic Plague
-1894 causative agent discovered for Plague
–rat flea infected with bacteria (Yersinia pestis);  as rats died fleas moved to humans

1858 – Darwin
–Origin of Species

1870’s – Edison – lightbulb and phonograph
-Bell – telephone




early 1900’s – Ehrlich
–magic bullet 
-arsenic compound —- syphilis

1928 — Fleming
–discovered penicillin