First English translation of Celsus De medicina. That it was translated into English for the first time in the mid-eighteenth century is a reflection of the use of Latin as the international language of medicine and science well through the end of the 18th century. Digital facsimile from The Medical Heritage Library, Internet Archive, at this link.

ß-oxidation theory.

Drechsel discovered that the protein molecule contains both mono and di-amino acids.

Soemmerring is best remembered for his fine anatomical illustrations, of which those devoted to the human eye are a good example. In 1791 he made important observations on the macula lutea: "De foramine centrali limbo luteo cincto retinae humanae," Comment. Soc. reg. Sci. Gotting., 1795-98 (1799), 13, 3-13; on p. 4 he states that he made these observations on January 27, 1791. French translation in Demours, No. 5842.1.

Achondroplasia is first described on page 30 and pictured on plate 11. English translation in No. 2241.

Most of the plates demonstrate a progressive series of specimens with duplication anomalies of the face and head, from midfacial cleft to complete dicephalus. This arrangement of malformations into a continuous series with definable steps anticipated the taxonomic approach of the Geoffroy Saint-Hilaires.

“Dupuytren’s abscess” of the right iliac fossa.

Antonio Benivieni's The hidden causes of diseases was the first book on pathological anatomy, presenting the first reports of autopsies made specifically to determine the cause of death. The work records twenty post-mortem examinations performed by Benivieni or his colleagues, in which he observed gallstones, urinary calculi, scirrhous cancer of the stomach, fibrous cardiac tumor and peritonitis from intestinal perforation. Benivieni was the first physician known to have requested permission from his patients’ relatives to perform necropsies in uncertain cases. He was also one of the first physicians to study syphilis and opened his work with an account of that disease, noting its superficial manifestations (including syphlitic periostitis), and transmission of the disease to the fetus. Benivieni died before he could complete this work or arrange for its publication. His text was edited and revised from Benivieni’s manuscript by his brother Girolamo, a Florentine poet and musician, with the aid of physician Giovanni Rosati. Facsimile reproduction and English translation, 1954. Digital facsimile of the 1507 edition from the Medical Heritage Library, Internet Archive, at this link.

Ladd pioneered the development of pediatric surgery in the United States. Robert E. Gross, his chief resident, succeeded to his position at Boston Children’s Hospital.

English translation, 1905.

Gleichen was probably the first to attempt to stain bacteria; he used carmine and indigo.

This work was edited by order of Catherine II of Russia, to whom von Mohrenheim was accoucheur. Its importance lies mainly in its splendid engravings, some of which were taken from Smellie (see No. 6154.1). It includes a brief literary history of obstetrics.

Girtanner’s important textbook on the venereal diseases contains some history.

Skoda classified the various sounds obtained on percussion according to their musical pitch and tone. “Skoda’s resonance” is an important diagnostic sign in pneumonia and pericardial effusion. Following Skoda’s work, percussion at last gained general acceptance as a diagnostic procedure. Digital facsimile of the 1842 second edition from the Internet Archive at this link. English translation, 1853.

A student of Johann Gottlob Krüger (No. 1987.2), Kratzenstein was apparently the first to publish a treatise on electrotherapy, although he may have been publishing experiments devised by Krüger. Second edition, Halle, C.H. Hemmerde,1745. English translation in E. Snorrason, C.G. Kratzenstein and his studies on electricity during the eighteenth century, Odense, 1974.

Richter, lecturer on surgery at Göttingen, in his classic treatise on hernia, first described partial enterocele, or “Richter’s hernia” (Chap. 24).

The first important German manual of dentistry. Pfaff, dentist to Frederick the Great, was the first to describe the taking of dental impressions and the casting of models for false teeth. This book ranks in importance with the work of Fauchard and Hunter. Reprinted Hildesheim, G. Olms, 1966.

Böer, a pioneer of “natural childbirth”, was the founder of the Viennese school of obstetrics.

Rathke’s most notable discovery was of structures homologous with gill slits in bird and mammalian embryos. He discredited the vertebral theory of the skull.

Péan’s method of morcellement of the uterus for the removal of tumors.

Revised second edition, same publisher, 2006.

Illustrated with some engraved plates printed in two colors, some in three colors, and some also hand-colored--an early example of color-printing in a medical book. After ten years as a midwife in Paris, Madame du Coudray was hired by King Louis XV to travel across France to better train rural midwives.There were political motivations for this; Louis wanted to boost a “declining” population, and more subjects also meant more capable soldiers. Unlike Queen Charlotte of England who chose William Hunter as the royal obstetrician, Louis appointed du Coudray, a woman, to train women. Madame du Coudray became the national midwife in 1759, earning 8,000 livres a year—equal to that of a decorated military general. Her book underwent numerous editions.

Du Courray invented an obstetrical manikin, or obstretrical "machine," a cloth covered fetus qnd female pelvis and womb that she used to demonstrate complicated birthing technics. This was analogous to the "machine" also invented around the same time in Scotland by William Smellie. Digital facsimile of the 1777 edition from the Internet Archive at this link.

This book codified and published the lectures, doctrines and observations of Laurent Biett (1781-1840), the leading clinical teacher in dermatology of the early 19th century, who published very little himself. Cazenave was a master clinician who founded the first scientific periodical devoted exclusively to dermatology. The Abrégé improves upon Bateman, especially in the section on the cutaneous manifestions of syphilis. “Continually revised and translated into all of the important languages of the Western World, the Abrégé becamethe most influential text of the time and remained so for 30 years” (Crissey & Parish). English translations 1829, 1832, 1842.

Laurent Théodore Biett (1781-1840), was a pupil of Alibert, Willan, and Bateman. His classic description of lupus erythematoides migrans (“Biett’s disease”) occurs on pp. 11 and 415 of the above work.

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

See No. 3305.

Lateral ventricles of the brain first opened for the treatment of cerebral abscess.

Diagnostic liver puncture.

CO₂ dissociation curves. These workers discovered that hemoglobin indirectly greatly assists the transport of CO₂ by the blood.

The first application of radioactive tracers in biological studies. Digital facsimile from PubMedCentral at this link. Hevesy received the 1943 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his work on the use of isotopes as tracers in the study of chemical processes."

Independently of Hirst, McClelland and Hare discovered virus hemagglutination.

See No. 1065. With C. Fischmann, R. G. C. Jenkins, and T. A. Webster.

Battle’s operation for femoral hernia.

Records discovery of bacteria in the mouth, with the first illustrations of the basic types – what were much later called cocci (round or oval), bacilli (rod-shaped) and spiriillum (spiral) forms. Although Leeuwenhoek had observed bacteria earlier, calling them animalcules, this paper is usually considered the first memoir on what were later called bacteria. At this early date the concept of microbiome did not yet exist; however, this paper also marks the beginning of our understanding of how parts of the human body are normally populated by bacteria. Digital facsimile from the Royal Society at this link.

The first census of England, Scotland and Wales. The study of population was one of the major concerns of political economy at this time and the first census came at a crucial point in the debate. When Malthus published his Essay on Population in 1798 demographic knowledge was necessarily limited. Rickman, a British government official and statistician, drafted the bill that became the 1800 Census Act, establishing for the first time a national decennial census of Britain’s general population.  After the Census Bill passed Rickman helped to carry out the first four British censuses, which included not only a population count, but also the collection and analysis of parish register returns. Once the first census results were known Malthus extensively revised and expanded his Essay, incorporating insights gained from the census and other sources, and published it virtually as new work in 1803. Digital facsimile of the first census reports from the Hathi Trust at this link.

Douglass at first opposed inoculation for smallpox, but by 1730 he had changed his views and had become an advocate of inoculation.

First description of acanthosis nigricans.

Betatron.

Continued as Kerst, "The acceleration of elecrons by magnetic induction," Phys. Rev., 60 (1941) 47-52. Digital facsimile of the 1941 paper at this link.

McClung showed that the accessory chromosomes are the determinants of sex.

Reich was the first to obtain cholangiograms.

Reverdin produced myxedema by removal of the thyroid as a whole or in part. This confirmed the earlier work of Schiff, of which Reverdin had probably not heard. See also No. 3836.

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Prosser gave the prescription of a powder containing calcined sponge, to be taken for the cure of goitre. This is probably the first recorded use of an iodine preparation in England.

In 1823 Macgill successfully ligated in continuity both primitive carotid arteries in the same subject within a month. He was the first American to do so.

First recorded excision of the head of the humerus.

Valentine Mott was an outstanding figure in American surgery during the first half of the 19th century. A pupil of Astley Cooper, he particularly distinguished himself in vascular surgery and in operations involving the bones and joints.See No. 4463.

The original account of the first major operation performed in England using hypnosis as a form of anesthesia. The amputation was performed by Ward. Topham, a lawyer interested in mesmerism, performed the hypnosis. The controversy caused by this operation led to Elliotson’s book (No. 5650.2). Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

First modern account of the occurrence of parotitis and orchitis complicating it. Hamilton’s paper, read in 1773, by its fullness and clarity made the disease more generally known, so that within a few years many text books included descriptions of it.

Houstoun was the first to treat ovarian edema by tapping the cyst, 1701. For biographical note, see J. Obst. Gynaec. Brit. Comw., 1973, 80, 193-200.

“Jacob’s membrane”, the layer of the retina containing the rods and cones.

Marsh method for the detection of arsenic.

White’s method of reducing shoulder dislocations by means of suspending the patient from the affected arm. This method either reduced the dislocation entirely, or moved the head of the humerus into a position where it could be reduced by traditional methods such as applying the surgeon’s heel to the axilla.

This was originally a letter to Pott. Park became famous for his operation of excision and arthrodesis as a treatment for destructive joint disease. The title page is misprinted “MDCCXXXIII”; the letter is dated 1783. The second edition of this work, Glasgow, 1806, contains the English translation of No. 4440.

Physick was the first, in 1805, to use a stomach tube for gastric lavage in a case of poisoning. He acknowledged the priority of Monro secundus in the invention of a similar instrument in 1767. For history of the stomach tube, see R. H. Major, Ann. med. Hist., 1934, n.s. 6, 500-09.

Matthew Baillie’s notable anatomico-pathological studies on dermoid cysts of the ovary. Also published in Lond. med. J., 1789, 10, 322-32.

Account of nine cases of rheumatic endocarditis.

Baillie recorded a case of congenital dextrocardia with complete situs inversus viscerum. Reprinted in Willius & Keys, Cardiac classics, 1941, pp. 257-62.

Bayford reported a a fatal case of "obstructed deglutition" caused by compression of the oesophagus by an aberrant right subclavian artery. This he called Dysphagia lusoria. See the account by N. Asherson in Ann. roy. Coll. Surg. Eng., 1979, 6l, 63-67.

Alkaptonuria described.

By his advocacy of absolute rest in the horizontal position without the aid of caustics and setons, Baynton can be said to have introduced the modern treatment of spinal caries in England. The book is dedicated to Edward Jenner.

The first femoral ligation reported in America, and the first paper on a surgical topic to be published in an American medical periodical.

By blowing air from a bellows over the exposed lungs of a dog, Hooke proved that respiratory motion is not necessary to maintain life, but that the essential feature of respiration lies in certain blood changes in the lungs. Reprinted in J. F. Fulton’s Selected readings in the history of physiology, 2nded., 1966, pp. 121-23.

The early history of scleroderma is confused with that of leprosy, ichthyosis, and keloid. Crusio appears to be the first to differentiate it. Gintrac in 1847 coined the term “scleroderma”. It is now included among the connective tissue diseases. Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Otto recognized and adequately described hemophilia, noting that females are not affected but may transmit the disease. His paper is one of the first great contributions to medicine in North America. Reproduced in Major, Classic descriptions of disease, 3rd ed., 1945, p. 522.

Cogswell ligated the primitive carotid on Nov. 4, 1803.

Keill applied measurement and mathematics in his researches, claiming the "first calculations of the absolute velocity at which blood travels through the aorta and smaller vessels; he also recognized that the blood's velocity must decrease the number of arterial branches increases. Keill would also appear to have been one of the first to study the ratio of the bluid to the solid portions of the body, partly through experiments involving tissue desiccation" (DSB, 7, 274).

Digital facsimile from the Hathi Trust at this link.

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

One of the best early descriptions of the blood platelets was given by Osler. He noticed that white thrombi were almost entirely composed of them.

Frere described the discovery of several flint artifacts, which he believed to be “weapons of war,” associated with “some extraordinary bones, particularly a jaw-bone of enormous size of some unknown animal” (p. 204). The flints, which included handaxes, were excavated at a brick-field in Hoxne, from a layer of gravelly soil about 12 feet beneath the surface. Frere speculated that the flints were possibly of great antiquity: “The situation in which these weapons were found may tempt us to refer them to a very remote period indeed; even beyond that of the present world . . . the manner in which they lie would lead to the persuasion that it was a place of their manufacture and not of their accidental deposit” (p. 205). 

First attempt at a description of Indian serpents and serpent venoms. Includes the original description of Russell’s viper, Daboia russellii. Digital facsimile from the Linda Hall LIbrary at this link.

First description of John Hunter’s method of treating popliteal aneurysm. This consisted in a single ligature of the artery at a distance high in the healthy tissues. Recorded by his brother-in law. See also Trans. Soc. Improve. med. Knowl.,1793, 1,138. Reprinted in Medical Classics, 1940, 4,449-57.

An early description of a case of subacute bacterial endocarditis is reported on pp. 227-32 (Case 8).

First reliable record of color blindness. Written in the form of a letter to Joseph Priestley, who communicated it to the Royal Society. Huddart was a British hydrographer, engineer and inventor.

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

The versatile Cheselden made an artificial pupil in an eye in which the products of inflammation had closed or obscured the natural pupil. This iridotomy operation was, next to Daviel’s cataract operation, the most important contribution to ophthalmology during the 18th century.

One of the first important accounts of dengue (“breakbone fever”). Rush described the Philadelphia outbreak of 1780.

Benjamin Rush was the most eminent figure in Philadelphia medicine in his day. His description of the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 is classic. He did magnificent work in treating the sick during the epidemic and in proposing measures to prevent a recurrence. Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Belchier fed animals with madder, noting that new bone formed subsequent to its ingestion was stained red. This was the earliest attempt at vital staining, and is also important as making possible the study of osteogenesis.

First description of melioidosis. Together with C.S. Krishnaswami, Whitmore identified Burkholderia pseudomallei, the causative agent of melioidosis (also known as "Whitmore's disease") in opium addicts in Rangoon in 1911. He differentiated it from Burkholderia mallei, the causative agent of glanders, by clinical and microbiological features.The organism isolated was subsequently named Pfeifferella whitmori by Stanton and Fletcher.

This is an enlarged and more important (third) edition of his An essay on the diseases most fatal to infants (1767) No. 6324. Page 49: Important description of congenital hypertrophic pyloric stenosis.

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Donald Monro was the second son of Alexander Monro (primus). Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

First description of congenital hypertrophic pyloric stenosis. Reprinted in Mark M. Ravitch, "The story of pyloric stenosis," Surgery, 48 (1960) 1117-1143.

Home records (p. 162) that John Hunter suggested artificial insemination. The actual insemination was performed by the patient’s husband with a syringe.

First transfusion of blood performed on a human in England, Nov. 23, 1667.

See No. 2929.

There is no doubt that Long was the first successfully to use ether vapor as an anesthetic. This was on 30 March 1842, at Jefferson, Georgia. Unfortunately he did not publish his results until others, notably Morton, had independently introduced it. See also the biography of Long by Frances Long Taylor, New York, 1928.

This work consists of a reproduction of Withering's classic text published in 1785, extensively annotated by Aronson, followed by Aronson's history of "the use of the digitalis glycosides and related compounds over the past 200 years."

Before  publication of Withering's book digitalis was a widely used folk remedy, occasionally mentioned in the literature. Withering established the correct dosages, and the action of digitalis in edema and on the heart became generally recognized. Withering did not know of the distinction between renal and cardiac edema. Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link The copy reproduced does not appear to contain the engraving of the purple foxglove.

Nephew of Galvani (see No. 593), Aldini developed and promoted animal electricity. His sensational experiments on the body of a criminal executed at Newgate, conducted with Carpue (No. 1989) were significant for the prehistory of the later development of cardiac electrostimulation. He also was among the first to treat melancholy (schizophrenia) with electricity, precursing modern shock therapy.

Mather republished reports of earlier writers on inoculation. He persuaded Boylston to adopt the practice in June 1721, and he supported Boylston during a period of great opposition to inoculation.

In his travels in Africa, Winterbottom, physician to the Colony of Sierra Leone (now Republic of Sierra Leone) on the west coast of Africa, saw sleeping sickness, which he described in vol. 2, pp. 29-31, as a species of lethargy. He also noticed that slave-dealers would not buy slaves whose neck glands showed signs of enlargement. Digital facsimile of vol. 1 from the Internet Archive at this link;  digital facsimile of vol. 2 from the Hathi Trust at this link.;

Cockburn studied medicine at Leiden; he became famous on account of his secret remedy for dysentery. The book is a record of two years spent as a ship’s doctor.

Martine was the first to perform tracheotomy for diphtheria.

Vetch described trachoma.

Following on his work for the improvement of the conditions in prisons, Howard travelled extensively in Europe, carrying out an elaborate investigation into the conditions of hospitals. Digital facsimile of the second edition (1791) from the Hathi Trust at this link.

Withering, best remembered for his book on the foxglove, described the epidemics of scarlet fever which occurred in England in 1771 and 1778.

Falconbridge was a surgeon in the slave trade before becoming an abolitionist. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

First authoritative account of both diphtheria and scarlatinal angina, although failing to differentiate between the two conditions. Reprinted in Med. Classics, 1940, 5, 58-99.

Stone, a vicar from Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, discovered that the bark of the willow tree (active ingredient: salicylic acid) was effective in reducing a fever. This was the first report in the scientific literature of a traditional remedy known since antiquity, and an ethnobotanical remedy widely used by native Americans, and perhaps other native peoples. Remarkably the remedy seems to have been forgotten or unknown to the scientific establishment until Stone published. Digital facsimile from the Royal Society at this link.

Dupuytren successfully ligated the subclavian artery on March 7, 1819.

Originally published in the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1751-54.

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Rollo reported the success of a meat diet in the treatment of diabetes. He was the first to take Matthew Dobson's discovery of glycosuria in diabetes mellitus and apply it to managing metabolism.^[He was a pioneer in the systematic treatment of diabetes by restricted diet. Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Cowper’s description of the glands which bear his name. He was forestalled in their discovery by Jean Méry.

Carpue revived the Hindu method of rhinoplasty (see No. 5735.1), and reported two successful cases. Facsimile edition, with biography of Carpue by Frank C. McDowell and bibliography of his writings, Birmingham, Classics of Medicine Library, 1981. German translation by C.F. von Graefe, Berlin, Realschulbuchhandlung, 1817.

Probably the earliest comprehensive clinical and pathological account of emphysema.

A letter dated December, 1713 from Timoni of Constantinople to John Woodward, and read to the Royal Society in May, 1714, described the practice in that city of inoculation against smallpox. The letter aroused interest in inoculation in England. A fellow of the Royal Society since 1703, Timoni was the first to write on this subject for Western physicians, although Pylarini’s researches had commenced in 1701.

The first use of ergot in the induction of labor in America. Reprinted in H. Thoms: Classic Contributions to Obstetrics and Gynecology, 1935, pp. 21-23.

Saucerotte described before the Académie de Chirurgie in 1772 a case of what is now known to have been acromegaly. This is the first known clinical description of the disease, and is one of the five cases included in Pierre Marie’s classic account (No. 3884). Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

The acetonitril test was introduced by Hunt in 1905 (J. biol. Chem., 1, 33) and later modified by him. It shows the activity of thyroid preparations to be proportional to their iodine content.

Isolation of acetylcholine in ergot.

Tendo Achilles bursitis, “Albert’s disease”.

Achrestic anemia described.

Transmission of leprosy to animals. See also J. exp. Med., 1960, 112, 445.

The modern impedance test was developed by Metz.

An extensive analytical tabulation of acromegaly; 1,319 cases are reported.

Mark, a medical practitioner, suffered from acromegaly from the age of 24. The condition was obvious to his friends, but Mark was 50 before he realized the cause of the symptoms of which he had kept a record for many years. He left an interesting account of his personal experience and also drew attention to several sculptural and pictorial representations of acromegalics.

“Thévenard’s disease” – hereditary sensory neuropathy, earlier reported by Auguste Nélaton: Affection singulière des os du pied. Gaz. Hôp. Paris, 1852, 4, 13.

Monographic series.

Discovery of the actinobacillus.

Digital facsimile from Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

Wever and Bray discovered the electrical activity of the inner ear−then called the coclear microphonic−which enabled the development of the physiology of the ear.

Simultaneously with Loeb (No. 1138.1) Aron demonstrated the thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) in the anterior pituitary.

De Meyer was apparently the first to suggest the name “insuline” for the substance then believed to be secreted by the pancreas.

Mulder gave the name protéine (protein) to a substance which he believed to be the essential constituent of all organized bodies. Later, with Liebig, he found there was no such definite compound, but the work remained to designate the nitrogenous products of which it was a mixture.

Demonstration of the existence of a pituitary lactogenic hormone (prolactin).

Introduction of phenylindanedione.

Antibodies discovered in human convalescentserum. See also No. 4670.3.

Gaddum produced concentration-effect curves of antagonistic drugs, showing the dose-ratio linearly related to antagonistic concentration. See also No. 1925.1

Demonstration of the inhibitory action of acetylcholine on the heart. Dale shared the Nobel Prize with Loewi (No. 1343) in 1936 for their work on the chemical mediation of nervous impulses.

Oxytocic action of posterior pituitary injection.

Halothane (“fluothane”) a non-inflammable and non-irritant anesthetic, was synthesized by C. W. Suckling at the I.C.I. Laboratories in Manchester.

 On the electrical discharges from the vertebrate optic nerve.

Ott founded experimental pharmacology in America; his book was the first written by an American on the action of medicines.

Magnus and Starling reported that pituitary extracts caused expansion of the kidney and a marked and often prolonged diuresis. This was the first indication that the neurohypophysis plays a part in the regulation of urine secretion.

G. A. H. Buttle, T. Dewing, G. E. Foster, W. H. Gray, S. Smith, and D. Stephenson discovered the potency of dapsone (DDS).

Ribonudease.

Hodgkin and Huxley were the first to succeed in inserting electrodes into a living giant nerve fiber and to measure directly the action potential within it. They shared the Nobel Prize with Sir John Eccles in 1963 “for their discoveries concerning the ionic mechanisms involved in the excitation and inhibition in the peripheral and central portions of the nerve cell membrane”.

First description of structure and action of an antihistamine.

Order of authorship in the original publication: Wilson, Naccache, Samayoa...Chiu. This research demonstrated the value of "next-generation-sequencing" in the diagnosis of a specific meningoencephalitis, a disease which can be caused by more than 100 different infectious agents.

"Summary: A 14-year-old boy with severe combined immunodeficiency presented three times to a medical facility over a period of 4 months with fever and headache that progressed to hydrocephalus and status epilepticus necessitating a medically induced coma. Diagnostic workup including brain biopsy was unrevealing. Unbiased next-generation sequencing of the cerebrospinal fluid identified 475 of 3,063,784 sequence reads (0.016%) corresponding to leptospira infection. Clinical assays for leptospirosis were negative. Targeted antimicrobial agents were administered, and the patient was discharged home 32 days later with a status close to his premorbid condition. Polymerase-chain-reaction (PCR) and serologic testing at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) subsequently confirmed evidence of Leptospira santarosai infection."

Digital facsimile from nejm.org at this link.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Republished in book form, Baltimore, 1927.

Isolation of ergotoxine. With F. H. Carr.

With A. Zingher and M. H. Serota. Park was an early advocate of diphtheria immunization with toxin-antitoxin. A second paper is in the same journal, 1915, 65, 2216-20.

Isolation of vasopressin and oxytocin. With T. B. Aldrich, I. W. Grote, L. W. Rowe, and E. P. Bugbee.

The Tréfouëls and colleagues assumed that the sulfonamide group was responsible for the results obtained with Domagk’s Prontosil. Their work led them to introduce sulfanilamide.

First demonstration of the effectiveness of vitamin B12 in pernicious anemia.

Barraquer’s method of corneal graft fixation by minute direct interrupted stitches.

The 5th and 6th books of Actuarius's De methodo medendi, concerning materia medica. Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Eve’s method of artificial respiration.

In 1858 Simpson described a new method of controlling blood loss during surgical operations – acupressure, not to be confused with the traditional Chinese medical technique similarly named. Simpson's technique, though developed further and found successful, failed to gain Simpson the recognition he was expecting. Simpson succeeded in creating a vogue for acupressure that lasted at least thirty years, though it did not lessen the mortality rates in British hospitals.

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Herpesvirus simiae (B virus) infection; isolation of the virus.

Atypical pneumonia.

“Brill’s disease” – recrudescent typhus; first description.

O’Sullivan’s method of replacement by intravaginal hydraulic pressure.

Fitz described three forms of acute pancreatitis, and made the earliest suggestion that disseminated fat necrosis is the result of a pathologic process in the pancreas.

“Farmer’s lung”.

Reproduced in Bibliotheca Medica Americana, Baltimore, 1937, Vol. 3.

Introduction of the photometric spectacle lens.

Published during WWII, Cott's book was the first major work on camouflage in zoology, appreciated by zoologists for its scientific information and carried by many allied soldiers during the war for survival purposes. The Wikipedia analysis of this book is especially valuable. Digital facsimile of the 1957 slightly corrected reprint from the Internet Archive at this link.

An encyclopedia with the addition of the texts of numerous primary source documents.

On p. 36 of this paper Manson first described nocturnal periodicity in Filaria Bancrofti, an adaptation to the nocturnal biting habits of their mosquito vector. 

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

“Russell’s bodies.”

The Tait–Porro operation, by which Tait performed Caesarean section in cases of placenta previa.

The petition to the Massachusetts legislature to legalize "the procuring of subjects for anatomical dissections" (from George Hayward's printed notice on the verso of the title page). Nine members of the Massachusetts Medical Society signed their names in type to this petition, including John Collins Warren, who was largely responsible for the passage of the Massachusetts Anatomy Act of 1831. (No. 11759). Digital facsimile from the U.S. National Library of Medicine at this link.

Description of the “canal of Nuck”.

Wharton described the duct of the submaxillary salivary gland (“Wharton’s duct”). He described the thyroid more accurately than his predecessors, naming it. He also described “Wharton’s jelly” of the umbilical cord (pp.243-44). Wharton explained the role of saliva in mastication and digestion, but provided erroneous explanations for the functions of the adrenals and thyroid. Adenographia gave the first thorough account of the glands of the human body, which Wharton classified as excretory, reductive, and nutrient. He differentiated the viscera from the glands and explained their relationship. Wharton was one of the few physicians to remain in London during the plague of 1666.

The Aderlasskalender for the year 1457, also known as the Laxierkalender, was issued in Mainz, printed in the type of the 36-line Bible, presumably in 1456. It survives in only one incomplete copy in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (ISTC No. ia00051700). This is the earliest surviving printed medical or scientific work. 

"Bleeding- and purgation-calendars, which gave details of the lucky and unlucky days on which to bleed or take medicine in a given year, were popular in the Middle Ages. They maintained their popularity with the coming of the printed book. According to Osler, 'forty-six of these bleeding-and purgation-calendars were printed before 1480; one hundred of them before 1501 have been collected. . . .' The Mainz Kalendar for 1457 is much more a purgation-than a bleeding-calendar" (Berry & Poole, Annals of Printing [1966] 13).

Order of authorship in the original publication: Yarchoan, Weinhold, Lyerly. The first antiviral AIDS drug, later named "Retrovir"/ Zidovudine/AZT.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Digital facsimile of the 1847 edition from dspace.ut.ee at this link. Szymanoski's dissertation was translated into German as "Zur plastischen Chirurgie," Vierteljahrschrift für die praktische Heilkunde, 60 (1858) 127-159. Blair O. Rogers, "J. von Szymanowski, His Life and Contribution to Plastic Surgery," Plast. & Reconstr. Surg,. 64, 465-78.

Prochaska introduced the idea of a “sensorium commune” in the central nervous system, a consistent and comprehensive theory of reflex action. English translation, London, Sydenham Society, 1851.

The appendices contain the early histories of inoculation, a list of German doctoral dissertations on inoculation 1720-52, and a bibliography.

Includes the demonstration, by Vines, of virilism with the aid of a new stain; cortical cells of the adrenals removed at operation stained an abnormal (red) color – the so-called Ponceau fuchsin stain.

The cortical hormone prepared by Swingle and Pfiffner (“eschatin”) was found to be very effective in the treatment of Addison’s disease. Their first paper on the subject appeared in Science, 1930, 71, 321.

Choh Hao Li and colleagues Isolated pure adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) from sheep pituitary glands. 

Isolation of an impure “adrenotropic hormone” containing adrenocorticotropic principle. With E. M. Anderson and D. L. Thomson.

Demonstration that somatic and germinal nuclei are genetically equivalent. Using somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT),  Gurdon (Nobel Prize 2012) transplanted cell nuclei from mature intestinal tadpole cells into enucleated eggs, which developed into normal tadpoles. This contradicted the textbook dogma that adult cells are irrevocably assigned to their specific functions and cannot assume new ones. The egg was able to reprogram the introduced nucleus and direct its genes to switch from the duties of an intestinal cell to those appropriate to a developing egg.

When I created this entry in February 2017 there was, inexplicably, no digital facsimile of this rare periodical on the web; however, there was an exceptionally excellent and most comprehensive finding aid available from the University of Pennsylvania PACSCL website at this link, the narrative from which I quote:

Biography/History

"The Adult began in June, 1897 as the “organ of the Legitimation League,” a London organization initially dedicated to securing the legal rights of illegitimate children. The Adult ran for twenty monthly issues, surviving a prosecution for obscenity and undergoing a significant change of editorship in the wake of that scandal. Its editor, the Legitimation League’s Honorable Secretary George Bedborough, wrote in the first issue that the journal’s pages would “be open for the discussion of important phases of sex questions which are almost universally ignored elsewhere.”

The Legitimation League was founded in 1893 by Oswald Dawson to advocate for and legally register illegitimate children, who were often unrecognized by their families and had few legal rights. As a legal campaign, the League was closely tied to the larger Personal Rights movement and was easily backed by the late Victorian era’s steadily growing Secularist establishment. Under Dawson’s influence, the League voted in 1895 to expand its agenda to include the promotion of free unions—cohabitation without marriage—and by 1897 it was openly advocating for free love. While free unions and free love were clearly antithetical to conventional Victorian morality, they were also, perhaps less obviously, outside the scope of common Secularist morality. Many freethinkers considered the League’s new positions extreme and rescinded their support of the organization (Royle 253).

The Adult was created in 1897 to serve the Legitimation League’s updated agenda. The first issue of the journal carried the subtitle “A Journal for the Advancement of Freedom in Sexual Relationships;” the second, “A Crusade Against Sex-Enslavement;” and the third, “A Journal for the Free Discussion of Tabooed Topics.” Starting with the fourth issue, the journal’s regular subtitle became “The Journal of Sex.” The shifting subtitles reflect both the kinds of topics covered by the publication and the nature of its content. The journal, and the Legitimation League in general, did indeed promote freedom in sexual relationships and crusade against what they perceived as the sexual enslavement of men and women according to the strict moral codes of the late Victorian period, especially the code attached to marriage. In the eyes of the League's members, the strict control of marriage by the Church and the gender roles assigned to each sex in Victorian marriages kept both men and women from realizing their full potential as human beings and members of society. It also resulted in unhappy families: when parents were unhappily married, their children were also likely to be miserable.

From the beginning, the journal was a forum for the discussion of topics related to sex. The Adult covered subjects ranging from the benefits of legalizing prostitution to the relationship between music, religion and sex. Controversial articles were often answered in subsequent issues by letters to the editor or counter-articles: for example, Victor Martell’s article about the Contagious Diseases Acts in the first issue was answered from a woman’s perspective in the following issue by E. Wardlaw Best. The overall project of  The Adult was to give legitimacy to a radical way of thinking about sex: though its varied contributors rarely held a single opinion regarding any issue discussed in its pages, each author sought to demostrate that his position was moral, logical, and supported by scientific evidence. Producing a journal also allowed the Legitimation League to position itself as part of Britain's larger reformist community, which was busy producing circulating literature: between 1890 and 1910, more than 800 labour and sociaist papers were founded there.

About a year into Bedborough’s editorship of The Adult, an undercover detective named John Sweeney entered Bedborough’s office to buy a copy of Dr. Havelock Ellis’s  Sexual Inversion. Ellis’s book, the first in his six-volume series The Psychology of Sex, was the first scientific study of homosexuality printed in English. Bedborough was subsequently arrested for selling what the police considered obscene material. He was prosecuted on eleven charges: one for selling Sexual Inversion, another for selling Orford Northcote’s pamphlet “The Outcome of Legitimation,” and nine related to material published in The Adult (Humpherys 69). Members of the Legitimation League and their friends quickly formed the Free Press Defence Committee to advocate for Bedborough. The Committee “rallied all sorts of radicals, socialists, freethinkers and progressive intellectuals [including G.B. Shaw and Grant Allen], and united the generations in protest” (Royle 277). Much to their chagrin, Bedborough pleaded guilty to the first two charges and one relating to The Adult (essentially admitting guilt for the other eight), and was released on the condition that he would have nothing more to do with the League or The Adult. He wrote in its pages: “I adhere to my resolution not to excuse myself. I am a coward… I thank Henry Seymour, Mr. Foote, and others with all my heart and soul for their work, which I have requited illy indeed” (December 1898, pp. 331).

Havelock Ellis thought that Bedborough had been targeted as a threat to him and his work, but Ellis was never prosecuted, nor were his publishers. Bedborough's prosecution was instead aimed at the Legitimation League. Before he was arrested, an investigation into The Adult by the Public Prosecutor had found that the content of the magazine was “within the law” and that “there was never any suggestion of indecorous behavior at League meetings.” Even so, police worried that the success of  The Adult and the Legitimation League gave “support and meeting venues for political groups more active and dangerous” and so targeted Bedborough (Humpherys 70).

Upon Bedborough’s incarceration, Henry Seymour, editor of the journal The Anarchist, took control of The Adult. During Bedborough’s prosecution, the journal became a source for news about the trial and a vehicle for the Free Press Defence Commission, and Seymour emblazoned the cover with the headline “Prosecuted for Obscenity!!” in bold type. After Bedborough pleaded guilty, The Adult published his apology to the League, and his former supporters lamented his lack of courage in its pages (December 1898).

After the ordeal was over, Seymour, who was a “free thinker, anarchist and socialist” but not the advocate of sexual freedom that Bedborough was, softened the content of the journal (Royle 254). He changed The Adult’s subtitle to the less controversial “An Unconventional Journal” and filled the issues with “inoffensive” articles and his own fiction (Humpherys 70). He even went so far as to say in the January 1899 issue that the journal had once been “nominally” connected to the Legitimation League but that it had “no connection under the present editorship” (24). The journal only lasted nine months under Seymour’s editorship. In Ann Humphery’s words,"  The Adult floundered for want of a clear and separate identity but mainly lack of funds” (Seymour repeatedly requested financial help from readers in the final issues). Without the Legitimation League and without Bedborough,  The Adult served little purpose and received little support. Though the front cover of the journal proudly announced its prosecution for obscenity during Bedborough's trial, no headline announced  The Adult’s end. The final issue includes no elegy, nor even an announcement that the current issue is the last.

Scope and Contents

The Adult ran for twenty monthly issues: the first appeared in June 1897 and publication became monthly that September....

The Adult’s purpose was to freely discuss “tabooed topics,” mostly related to “sex questions.” The Legitimation League, the organization which founded the journal, promoted free unions (cohabitation outside legal marriage) and free love. In  The Adult, freethinkers discussed the codes of morality and behavior related to sex and marriage that went largely undiscussed in Victorian society and made arguments for the morality of freethinking about sexual relationships. Editor George Bedborough published a range of opinions on varied topics in the journal, from Orford Northcote’s semi-scientific articles about sexual practices to a discussion of the differing effects of sexual liberation on men and women to reviews of the London theatre.

The Adult's content mostly consisted of short articles and letters written to the journal. Bedborough opened each issue with an editorial, usually introducing its contents. Bedborough mainly relied on a regular group of authors, including Orford Northcote, Victor Martell, William Platt, and “Sagittarius,” to contribute the material for the journal. Articles were never illustrated, though Bedborough occasionally published portraits of important members of the Legitimation League. Most issues had a small number of advertisements, either in the front cover, back cover, or both: advertisements were mostly for publications of likely interest to readers, but Bedborough also published a small number of personal advertisements for those interested in the kind of unions promoted by the Legitimation League. For example, from the October 1897 issue: “A middle aged gentleman wishes to correspond with a lady aged 25 to 30 with a view to a permanent union on Ruedebusch’s principles.” Until Bedborough’s trial, many issues of  The Adult updated readers on the Legitimation League’s activity, including a full issue reporting the proceedings of the Legitimation League’s annual meeting (January 1898).

As discussed in the Historical Note above, Bedborough promoted a discursive atmosphere in The Adult’s pages, often publishing replies or counter-articles to pieces that had previously appeared in the journal. He also published the opinion of multiple authors on a single topic as multi-issue series, as in the case of “The Question of Children: A Symposium” (a discussion of what should happen to children who are the product of the free love advocated in The Adult). The series began in July, 1898 with an article by R.B. Kerr and another by Henry Seymour (who would go on to edit  The Adult), and continued with an article from a different author in almost every issue until that November.

After George Bedborough was prosecuted, Henry Seymour became The Adult’s editor. Seymour retained the look of the journal but shifted its content. Rather than writing an editorial article at the front of the journal as Bedborough had, Seymour included several pages of editorial “Memoranda:” short, unrelated paragraphs on current events, the contents of other magazines, and various social and political topics he considered pertinent to readers. Seymour continued to publish articles related to “sex questions,” such as Abdullah Quilliam’s two-part article “Polygamy Considered from a Muslim Standpoint,” but also included poetry and serialized fiction (his own). Seymour filled out  The Adult’s pages with anecdotes, jokes, quotations, and short news items; these are not listed individually in the finding aid. An example from the September 1898 issue: “‘Darling,’ he cried, in tender tones, ‘I never loved but thee!’ ‘Then we must part,’ the maid replied; ‘no amateurs for me!’” The Adult continued to advertise for publications of interest to its readers (including Seymour’s own work), as well as services they might use: Sophie Lepper, “Unitist Free Lover” regularly advertised her services under Seymour’s editorship. Unlike Bedborough, however, Seymour refused to publish personal ads" (http://dla.library.upenn.edu/dla/pacscl/ead.html?q=the%20adult&id=PACSCL_RBCat_RBCatEP85Ad937897a&, accessed 02-2017).

Originally published in French, 1948.

https://ahp.apps01.yorku.ca/

"Advances in the History of Psychology is a news and notes aggregator pertaining to the history of the discipline.

"AHP  notifies readers of resources, publications, conferences, and other events or issues of interest to researchers and students of the history of psychology. We make a particular effort to draw attention to content that is “off the beaten track” — i.e., that is in journals or sponsored by scholarly societies beyond those with which most members of the discipline are already familiar. In addition, there’s occasional commentary on topics that are pertinent to the community, as well as series of guest posts. Readers are encouraged to engage with the materials and submit their own comments" (https://ahp.apps01.yorku.ca/?page_id=17, accessed 03-2018).

This is an unusually active blog with many posts.

This work made possible the storage of whole blood for up to three weeks.

Shipway apparatus.

Published in the US as Adventures in the Orgasmatron: How the sexual revolution came to America. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.

The first pictorial history of neuroanatomy, which contains some of the very first color engravings of the brain. The three colored copperplates were by “a certain Robert", a pupil of Le Blon, the inventor of three-color printing. The plates in this volume were printed in red and black, using only two plates. The book provides a chronological survey of ideas about the nervous system from Magnus Hundt (1501) to Tarin and his contemporaries, including Willis and Vieussens. Many parts of the brain are described, some for the first time (the fascia dentata Tarini and Tarin’s pons—the dentate gyrus, Huxley’s term, and posterior perforated space or region of the interpeduncular nucleus, respectively). (communication from Larry W. Swanson). Digital facsimile from the Hathi Trust at this link.

The first modern critical edition of the text, which collated medieval manuscripts against the previous printed editions. Digital facsimile of the 1832 edition from the Internet Archive at this link

First description of the structure and function of the sinus nerve and the reflex character of carotid pressure.

A compilation of 19 addresses given by Osler in various settings. These include many of Osler's most famous essays concerning the philosophical and moral foundations of medicine. Osler wrote, "we are here not to get all we can out of life for ourselves, but to try to make the lives of others happier... The practice of medicine is an art, not a trade; a calling, not a business; a calling in which your heart will be exercised equally with your head. Often the best part of your work will have nothing to do with potions and powders, but with the exercise of and influence of the strong upon the weak, of the righteous upon the wicked, of the wise upon the foolish."

To the second edition of 1906 Osler added three valedictory addresses that he delivered before his departure from America to assume the Regius Professorship of Medicine at Oxford, bringing the total number of essays in the volume to 22. One of the added essays is Osler's controversial "Fixed Period" address that elicited much criticism in response to his comments on "chloroform at 60." 

Between 1932 and 1953 the Eli Lilly Pharmaceutical Company distributed some 150,000 copies of the third edition of this work  to graduating medical students, increasing significantly the long term impact of Osler's philosophical and moral writings.

Digital facsimile of the third impression (1914) from the Internet Archive at this link.

Discovery of nitrogen.

An outline of the medical topography of England.

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

After the fall of Corinth (146 BCE), Greek physicians migrated to Rome. There, before the advent of Asclepiades, Greek physicians were despised and distrusted. Asclepiades may be said to have established Greek medicine in Rome on a respectable footing. His remedies included change of diet, bathing, and exercise. Gumpert preserved what is left of his writings in the above Greek edition. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

First application of ether anesthesia for plastic operations. Dieffenbach made his first use of the anesthetic in reconstructing a nose. He modified Morton’s inhaler. Dieffenbach’s work helped bring about the early acceptance of anesthesia in Germany.

J. B. Montanus and Janus Cornarius prepared the first edition of Aetius's collected works in Latin translation. That edition was the first to include Aetius's writings on obstetrics, which epitomized all previous knowledge of the subject. J. V. Ricci prepared an annotated translation of Aetius's obstetrical writings from the improved Latin edition of Basel, 1542, and published it in Philadelphia, 1950. 

Kartulis discovered amoebae in liver abscess. It was principally through the work of Kartulis that amoebae came to be considered the cause of dysentery in man.

Transmission of infective hepatitis agent.

Wichmann definitely established the parasitic aetiology of scabies.

In 1876 Koch first obtained pure cultures of B. anthracis and described its complete life history. With Davaine (Nos. 5165-66) he did much to prove that infectious diseases are caused by living reproductive microorganisms. The paper also marks the beginning of exact knowledge of bacterial infectious diseases. It is reproduced with translation in Med. Classics, 1938, 2, 745-820. See also Nos. 2331 and 2536.

“Koebner phenomenon” – appearance at points of injury of any skin lesion that is not an ordinary manifestation or complication of the injury.

Discovery of Burkholderia mallei, causative organism of glanders. Preliminary notice in Dtsch. med. Wschr., 1882, 8, 707.

Ogata isolated the causal agent of tsutsugamushi disease, Orientia Tsutsugamushi,  in 1927.

Discovery of the tubercle bacillus announced March 24, 1882. This paper also contains a statement of “Koch’s postulates”. See also Nos. 2536 and 5167. Koch published a fuller account as "Die Aetiologie der Tuberkulose," Mitt. k. Gesundh. Amte,  2 (1884) 1-88, in which he reported how he had succeeded in producing experimental tuberculosis in animals after cultivating the bacillus. Historian of bacteriology Thomas Brock stated that the 1884 paper "announced what became known as Koch's postulates." Reprinted with translation in Med. Classics, 1938, 2, 821-80. Koch received the Nobel Prize in 1905.

In 2019 Juan Weiss pointed out that on p. 225 Koch published the first reference to the discovery of Agar, without crediting its discoverer, Walther Hesse, an assistant who worked in Koch's laboratory at the time.

Gaffky was the first to grow pure cultures of Salmonella typhi; he showed it to be the true activator of the disease. English translation, New Sydenham Society, 1886. Digital facsimile of the 1884 printing from Google Books at this link.

Rickettsia prowazeki, cause of epidemic typhus, was first isolated by the Brazilian microbiologist Henrique da Rocha-Lima, who named it after Ricketts and Prowazek, both of whom died of the disease.

Discovery of Brucella abortus.

Semmelweis, who earlier had shown puerperal fever to be a septicemia, strove to improve conditions in the lying-in wards of Vienna and Budapest. Misunderstood and maligned by many, he eventually published this book in support of his views on the etiology of puerperal sepsis. He had no literary style and his book is difficult reading; it had an overwhelming mass of badly-presented statistics. Sir W. J. Sinclair, his biographer, said of him that “if he could have written like Oliver Wendell Holmes, his ‘Aetiology’ would have conquered Europe in 12 months”. Semmelweis died in an asylum on 13 August 1865. An English translation of the book, by F. P. Murphy, is in Med. Classics, 1941, 5, 350-773. This translation was reprinted with translations of Semmelweis’s other works by Ferenc Gyorgyey, Birmingham, Classics of Medicine Library, 1980. Original edition reprinted, Budapest, 1970. New English translation, somewhat abridged, Madison, Wisc., 1983. Digital facsimile from deutschestextarchiv.de at this link.

English translation, 1900.

First description of Schistosoma japonicum. Translation in Kean (No. 2368.1), p. 518.

Gye advanced the theory that an ultramicroscopic virus combined with an intrinsic chemical factor were concerned in the production of the Rous sarcoma.

First anatomical illustrations of frozen sections. De Riemer appears to have been the first to freeze tissues in order to permit fine sectioning for the purposes of diagnosing diseased tissue. Digital facsimile from UniversitatsBibliothek Heidelberg at this link.

First description of acute superior hemorrhagic polioencephalitis. Called also “Wernicke’s encephalopathy”, following the latter’s description in his Lehrbuch der Gehirnkrankheiten, Kassel, 1881, 2, 229-42.

The first book on heart disease. "The recognition of heart disease as of clinical interest and importance was exceedingly slow. In 1618, one hundred and eleven years after the pioneer publication of Benivieni of the postmortems in 111 postmortem examinations, including several of cardiovascular interest, and ten years before Harvey's De motu cordis there appeared a volume...written by Albertini.... Here at last with its imposing title, Albertini's book seemed to give promise in 1618 of something more.... Albertini did, to be sure, recognize the very fast pulse, the very slow pulse...and arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation although that designation was not, of course, used. Like others, he ascribed palpitation, faintness, and syncope to the heart and recognized reflex effects on the heart's action" (Paul Dudley White, Heart disease, 4th ed., p. 3). Digital facsimile from Google books at this link.

Fournier, great French venereologist, introduced the concept of “parasyphilis”. He showed statistically the causal relationship of syphilis to paresis and tabes.

In this treatise on hysteria and hypochondria, Willis showed that hysteria was a nervous disease and not a uterine disorder as had been traditionally believed. He compared hysteria in women to hypochondria in men. He considered the key feature of hysteria to be the “fit” or episodic disturbance of sensation short of “universal convulsions” and classified it under convulsive diseases. This caused hysteria to be linked with epilepsy as in Charcot’s hybrid, “hystero-epilepsy”.

This paper opened up a new field in the study of the sensory functions of the skin, and the theories put forward in it dominated neurological thought until 1940. 

Noble introduced a flap operation for atresia of the vagina.

Concerns the role of African American nurses, doctors and surgeons during the American Civil War.

Digital text from the U.S. Army Medical Department Office of Medical History at this link. (This study does not seem to have been formally published; WorldCat is uncertain of its publication date.)

Translated into English by Aileen Porter as African ethnobotany: Poisons and drugs. Chemistry - Pharmacology - Toxicology (Chapman & Hall, 1996).

First report.

Introduction of radiocarbon dating for dating organic materials, including fossils (maximum 50,000 to 60,000 years old). With J. R. Arnold.

Introduction of the potassium-argon dating method to paleoanthropology, showing that lava at the base of the site of Olduvai Gorge was about 1.8 million years old, and proving that fossils, Australopithecus (Zinjanthropus) boisei, found in Olduvai Bed 1 dated from this time. With J.F. Evernden and G.H. Curtis.

To identify an uncultured and unidentified pathogen that was often visualized in tissue sections of lesions of bacillary angiomatosis with Warthin-Starry staining, the authors utilized two different techniques that were innovative at the time: 16S ribosomal RNA analysis and PCR. This was seen as a milestone in the molecular identification of pathogens that could be "seen" but not cultured. The authors indicated in their abstract that "this bacillus may also cause cat scratch disease." They concluded that "The cause of bacillary angiomatosis is a previously uncharacterized rickettsia-like organism, closedly related to R. quintana. This method for the identification of an cultured pathogen may be applicable to other infectious diseases of unknown cause." Digital facsimile from nejm.org at this link.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Recognition of the Rh antigen

Discovery of virus hemagglutination. Between 1941 and 1942 Hirst developed the hemagglutination assay for quantifying the relative concentration of viruses, bacteria or antibodies.

First printed edition of an encyclopedic dictionary of medicine, containing a large number of medical recipes based upon Greek and Arabic sources. Dondi completed the work in 1355. Manuscripts of his text are preserved in the Vatican (Vat. lat. 2462, 14th century), the Collegio di Spagna, Bologna (MS 153, dated 1425) and the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Lat. 6973 and 6974). ISTC No. id00358000. Digital facsimile from the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek at this link.

Includes bibliographies of classic works, of the history of geriatrics, and of periodicals devoted to the subject.

Proof that the tubules of the kidney of a vertebrate could secrete foreign substances.

First description of agoraphobia

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

https://www.library.ucsf.edu/archives/aids/

"In 1987, the Archives & Special Collections initiated, in collaboration with the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society (GLBHT HS) and University of California, Berkeley, the AIDS History Project. The purpose of this initiative was to actively collect and organize papers and records of healthcare practitioners, activists, organizations, and agencies, and to promote the preservation of historically significant resources related to the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. Recognizing the need for a broader initiative, the collaborators organized a national conference in March 1989. This conference addressed the need to forge relationships between historians and the AIDS community throughout the country in order to document and preserve the lessons and experiences of the AIDS epidemic.

In 1991, an NHPRC grant funded the AIDS History Project Records Survey, in which archivists surveyed more than fifty agencies, identified records to target for permanent preservation, and developed an acquisition plan. A second NHPRC grant in 1993 funded the records acquisition and processing phase. In 2004, NHPRC supported the AIDS Epidemic Historical Records Project, a collaboration of A&SC and GLBT HS that resulted in processing of 18 existing and newly acquired collections. In 2016, NHPRC funded an expansion of the AIDS History Project and supported the creation of detailed finding aids for seven recently acquired collections. In 2017, UCSF Archives, in collaboration with SFPL and GLBT HS, was awarded an implementation grant from NEH to digitize material related to the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the San Francisco Bay Area."

Rauwolf provided the first modern descriptions of the flora of the area east of the Levantine coast. He was also the first to describe the riparian flora of the Euphrates, and the first European to publish an account of the preparation and drinking of coffee. Charles Plumier named the tropical plant genus Rauwolfia in his honor. A member of this genus Rauvolfia serpentina s. lat. (East Indian snake root) contains alkaloids including reserpine, used in the treatment of hypertension and schizophrenia.  

The first edition of Rauwolf's book contained three books and was unillustrated except for three woodcut vignettes showing Rauwolf in different stages of his journey. For the third edition of 1583 Rauwolf added a fourth book containing 42 woodcut illustrations of plants. Digital facsimile of the 1582 edition from Google Books at this link.

In this work on the industrial causes of pollution Smith coined the term acid rain. 

"The corrosive effect of polluted, acidic city air on limestone and marble was noted in the 17th century by John Evelyn, who remarked upon the poor condition of the Arundel marbles.^[2] Since the Industrial Revolution, emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides into the atmosphere have increased.^[3][4] In 1852, Robert Angus Smith was the first to show the relationship between acid rain and atmospheric pollution in Manchester, England.^[5]

"Though acidic rain was discovered in 1853, it was not until the late 1960s that scientists began widely observing and studying the phenomenon.^[6] The term "acid rain" was coined in 1872 by Robert Angus Smith.^{[7]"  (Wikipedia).} 

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Luckett’s finding of air in the ventricles gave Dandy (No. 4602) the idea for ventriculography.

The first U. S. work dedicated to the medical aspects of military pilot selection. According to the National Museum of Health and Medicine, this manual was written by William Holland Wilmer, then director of the Medical Research Laboratory at Mineola, Long Island (1917). This placed Wilmer at the forefront of training for flight surgeons and in the classification of pilot candidates as they used novel devices and instruments to simulate high-altitude conditions. He pioneered efforts to produce oxygen delivery systems to pilots.  CHAPTER I: Aviation and its medical problems. CHAPTER 2: The selection of the flier. CHAPTER 3: The classification of the flier. CHAPTER 4: The maintenance of the efficiency of the flier. Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Kolle introduced the killed cholera vaccine.

First description of “Voltolini’s disease” – an acute painful inflammation of the internal ear, followed by fever, delirium, and loss of consciousness. Voltolini was the founder of the Monatsschrift.

Sobernheim first used the term “myocarditis.”

One of the few texts on pediatrics that circulated during the Middle Ages, this short Latin tretise is the translation of a lost Arabic original attributed--perhaps mistakenly--to Rhazes.

This collection of biographical essays includes most of Osler's famous writings in this category, with the exception of his essay on Michael Servetus. (Copies were also issued with a New York and a Toronto imprint.) Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~albertus/

"Albertus Magnus (ca. 1200 – 1280) is one of the most important medieval philosophers and theologians, and one of the very few to have been recognized as an auctoritas in his lifetime. Despite this fact, his ideas remain relatively understudied. There are a number of philosophical and historical reasons for this, but problems such as scarce or incomplete modern editions, as well as the sheer number and volume of his works, play a part.

The aim of the Alberti Magni e-corpus project is to support research on Albert the Great by providing scholars the possibility : 1) to download image files of Albert’s works that can be found in editions no longer covered by copyright laws; 2) more importantly, to search 40 of those works electronically, using a Boolean search engine which gives access to a corpus of approximately 14,700 pages in print or 6.3 million words.

The free, searchable corpus should prove useful to scholars both with and without an access to the commercial online database of Aschendorff Verlag. The majority of the works included in the Alberti Magni e-corpus have not yet been edited by the Albertus-Magnus-Institut, whose critically-edited texts constitute the corpus of Aschendorff Verlag." 

One of the best works on natural history produced during the Middle Ages, and, like most of Albertus's works, influential throughout the medieval period, though it does not appear to have been published in print until 1867. It was written about 1250, and is based on Albertus's own accurate botanical observations, also containing some therapeutic material. See Karen Reeds, "Alberto e la philosophia naturale della vita della plante," IN: Weisheipl (ed.) Albertus Magnus and the Sciences (1994) 367-380. Digital facsimile from the Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

Greek texts of the fragments and testimonia with commentary in Latin. Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

"Describes how to recover from alcoholism, primarily written by William G. "Bill W." Wilson, one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). It is the originator of the seminal "twelve-step method" widely used to treat many addictions, from alcoholism, heroin addiction and marijuana addiction to overeating, sex addiction and gambling addiction, with a strong spiritual and social emphasis.

"It is one of the best-selling books of all time, having sold 30 million copies.^[1][2] In 2011, Time magazine placed the book on its list of the 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923, the year in which the magazine was first published.^[3] In 2012, the Library of Congress designated it as one of 88 'Books that Shaped America.'^[4]" (Wikipedia article on The Big Book (Alcoholics Anonymous) accessed 04-2018).

First use of convalescent serum in prophylaxis against measles.

“Letterer–Siwe disease”; see also No. 6373.

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

"Galen's impact on Islamic civilization, mainly on medicine but also on physics and philosophy, was enormous. His most important books were mediated through "summaries" which not only shortened, but in some cases also revised Galenic teachings. Several versions of these summaries exist, and their appreciation is critical for a proper understanding of the development of medieval science. This book presents the first editions, translations, and studies of the remaining summaries to On Critical Days. In Galenic theory, fevers develop towards a crisis which will determine the fate of a patient" (publisher).