The Old Schoolhouse Magazine

Following is a general timeline of scientists and physicians who made important contributions and discoveries to medicine throughout the ages.

General Timeline of First
Physicians

• 460 B.C.–370 B.C. Hippocrates— Greek physician who brought medicine out of darkness and superstition and explained the world, for the first time, in terms of nature, making man responsible for his own welfare instead of attributing his outcomes to the gods. He is known as The Father of Medicine, and many of the principles he taught are well known today. One of his most famous writings is the “Hippocratic Oath,” which graduating medical students still recite today.

• 129 A.D.–200/217 A.D. Galen— Roman (of Greek descent) who was a physician and philosopher. His theories about the nervous and circulatory systems dominated and influenced Western medical science for nearly two millennia as medical students studied Galen’s writings well into the nineteenth century. His anatomical reports (based on dissection of monkeys and pigs) were uncontested until the 1500s. Galen was the personal physician to several emperors.

• 1510–1590 Ambroise Pare—French barber surgeon who is considered one of the Fathers of Surgery, especially in battlefield medicine.

•1511–1553 Michael Servetus— Spanish theologian and physician and the first European to understand and correctly describe pulmonary circulation. Servetus participated in the Protestant Reformation, but his unorthodox views were condemned by Catholics and Protestants alike. He was brought to trial in Protestant Geneva on the charges of heresy and burned at the stake by order of the Protestant Geneva governing council.

• 1514–1564 A.D. Andreas Vesalius—
Flemish anatomist/physician and
author of one of the most influential
books on human anatomy: De Humani
Corporis Fabrica/The Structure of the
Human Body. Vesalius is often referred
to as the Founder of Modern Human
Anatomy. He stole a skeleton hanging
from the gallows in France and also il-
legally conducted human dissections
on dead bodies in order to properly
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understand the anatomy of the hu-
man body, thus denying many of Ga-
len’s theories. Though many physicians
throughout Europe enthusiastically
received the corrected findings that he
published and taught, Vesalius’s work
was seen as sacrilege by followers of
Galen and Vesalius was therefore vio-
lently opposed and denounced.

•;1578–1657;William;Harvey—English physician who was the first to prove and describe that blood circulates in a closed path caused by the beating of the heart. Harvey dared to question the thoughts of old physicians such as Galen.

• 1632–1723 Antoni van Leeuwen-
hoek—Dutch drapery maker and a sci-
entist and is considered to be the first
microbiologist
• 1749–1823 Edward Jenner—English
physician and scientist who was the
pioneer of the smallpox vaccine