A TIMELINE OF SURGERY
By Tim Lambert
6,500 BC Skulls are trepanned
c 1,500 BC The Ancient Egyptians have some knowledge of anatomy from mummification. They use clamps, saws, forcepts, scalpels and scissors. Egyptians use honey as an antiseptic.
c 300 BC The Ancient Greeks bathe wounds with wine to prevent them becoming infected
c 130-210 AD The Roman surgeon Galen lives. Many of his ideas are wrong but they dominate surgery for centuries.
476 AD The fall of the Roman Empire in the West. Afterwards many skills are lost in Europe but are kept alive in the Byzantine Empire and are later practised by the Arabs.
13th Century In Europe surgery revives. In towns skilled craftsmen called barber-surgeons practice. They carry out amputations and set broken bones. However barber-surgeons are lower in status than university educated doctors.
Mid-14th Century The Church allows some dissections of human bodies at medical schools but the ideas of Galen continue to dominate
1452-1519 Leonardo Da Vinci lives. He dissects some human bodies and makes accurate drawings of them
1536 Ambrose Pare treats wounds with a mixture of egg yolk, rose oil and turpentine rather than hot oil
1543 Andreas Veasalius publishes The Fabric of the Human Body, which contains accurate diagrams of the human body. Vesalius bases his ideas on observation not the authority of people like Galen.
1728-1793 John Hunter, known as the Father of Modern Surgery lives
1792 Doninique-Jean Larrey creates the first ambulance service for wounded men
1847 James Simpson begins using chloroform during operations
1865 Joseph Lister discovers antiseptic surgery
1883 Robert lawson Tait removes the fallopian tube of a woman suffering an ectopic pregnancy
1885 The first appendectomy is performed
1890 Rubber gloves are first used in surgery
1895 Wilhelm Roentgen discovers x-rays
1905 Novocain is used as a local anaesthetic
1914 The first non-direct blood transfusion is carried out
1958 The first pacemaker is installed
1960 The first hip replacement surgery is performed
1962 The first successful reattatchment surgery is performed
1964 Lasers are first used for eye surgery
1967 The first heart transplant is carried out
1987 The first heart and lung transplant is carried out
2005 The first face transplant surgery is performed
2008 A laser is used in keyhole surgery to treat brain cancer