Blood and Guts: A History of Surgery

TIMELINE

10,000 BC

Evidence that trepanning was in widespread use.

1500 BC

First recorded plastic surgery (nasal reconstruction).

c. AD 157

Galen appointed as surgeon to the gladiators at Pergamum in western Turkey.

1536

Vesalius acquires a skeleton and begins to unravel human anatomy.

1545

Ambroise Paré publishes his first Treatise on Gunshot Wounds.

1597

Gaspare Tagliacozzi publishes the first-ever book on reconstructive surgery.

1765

Tooth transplants from living donors are popular.

1834

Robert Liston is appointed professor of clinical surgery at University College Hospital, London.

1846

The first operation is carried out with ether anaesthetic.

1847

Ignaz Semmelweis successfully combats puerperal fever.

1847

James Simpson develops the chloroform anaesthetic.

1848

The first death from chloroform is recorded.

1848

Phineas Gage survives having an iron rod fired through his head.

1857

Louis Pasteur discovers that germs cause living matter to decay.

1865

Joseph Lister treats a patient using 'antiseptic' techniques.

1884

Rickman Godlee and A. Hughes Bennett perform 'successful' brain surgery.

1894

Assassination of French president Sadi Carnot and start of Alexis Carrel's career.

1902

Luther Hill conducts successful heart surgery.

1903

Gladys Deacon has paraffin wax injection.

1912

Alexis Carrel wins Nobel prize.

1917

Harold Gillies performs facial reconstruction operations and develops tube pedicle.

1931

Harvey Cushing conducts his two thousandth brain tumour operation.

1935

Carrel publishes his book on the future of humanity, Man, the Unknown.

1935

Egas Moniz performs first 'leucotomy' operation.

1936

Walter Freeman and James Watts carry out first lobotomy operation.

1939

Archibald McIndoe begins treating Allied casualties.

1943

Willem Kolff invents a successful dialysis machine.

1944

Dwight Harken cuts into a beating human heart.

1944

Death of Alexis Carrel.

1946

First female to male sex change operation.

1946

Walter Freeman performs the first transorbital lobotomy.

1951

Paris surgeons attempt kidney transplant with organs from executed criminals.

1952

F. John Lewis carries out the first successful open-heart surgery.

1953

John Gibbon performs successful operation using heartlung machine.

1954

Walter Lillehei conducts first cross-circulation operation.

1954

First successful kidney transplant (between two identical twins).

1955

Lillehei and Dick DeWall invent a reliable heart-lung machine.

1955

Denis Melrose develops a method of stopping and starting the heart during surgery.

1957

Surgeons in Boston use radiation to destroy the immune system in transplant patients with limited success.

1958

Denis Melrose performs open-heart surgery on live television.

1960

Howard Dully is lobotomized by Walter Freeman.

1964

José Delgado stops a rampaging bull by remote control.

1967

World's first heart transplant performed by Christiaan Barnard.

1967

Freeman performs his last lobotomy.

1970

Frank Ervin and Vernon Mark propose using brain implants to suppress violent tendencies in black rioters.

1976

Roy Calne begins experiments on cyclosporine.

1978

First successful transplants using cyclosporine.

1998

Clint Hallam receives the world's first hand transplant.

2001

Clint Hallam's hand is amputated.

2005

First successful (partial) face transplant.



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