Health & Medicine in the 17th century

77 sourced entries, 1603 CE to 1698 CE, oldest first. Also see Health & Medicine across every century or everything else in the 17th century.

• 1603Japanese female entertainer Izumo no Okuni originates kabuki dance drama in Kyoto.source
• 1604March 15 – More than seven months after their July 25, 1603 coronation, King James I and Anne, Queen consort make the traditional Royal Entry to London. The ceremonies have been postponed from 1603 because of the ongoing plague.source
• 1605December 6 – In England, Thomas Bonham petitions to become a member of the College of Physicians in order for his practice to be legal, and is rejected. Dr. Bonham continues to practice, and is eventually imprisoned on November 13, 1606, leading to the landmark decision in Dr. Bonham's Case in 1610.source
• 1605Central Mexico's Amerindian population reaches one million.source
• 1608December – Jamestown supply missions: Christopher Newport returns to England from Jamestown carrying cargo with "tryals of Pitch, Tarre, Glasse, Frankincense, Sope Ashes ..."source
• 1608The Uniform Land-Tax Law is imposed in Korea.source
• 1609April 4 – King Philip III of Spain signs an edict for the expulsion of the Moriscos from his country with effect from September 11.source
• 1609August 11 – Four ships arrive at the colony of Jamestown, Virginia, with almost 300 men, women and children, to bring supplies for the starving English colonists. They are followed days later by the other three ships remaining from the London Company. Most of the supplies, however, are spoiled by rain and seawater, and many of the passengers are ill with the bubonic plague.source
• 1612April 11 – In Lichfield, Edward Wightman, a radical Anabaptist, becomes the last person to be burned at the stake in England as punishment for heresy.source
• 1613A locust swarm destroys La Camarque, France.source
• 1614February 1 – In Japan, the practice of Christianity is banned, and an edict is issued for the expulsion of all foreign missionaries.source
• 1616A slave ship carries smallpox from the Kingdom of Kongo to Salvador, Brazil.source
• 1616Physician Aleixo de Abreu is granted a pension of 16,000 reis, for services to the crown in Angola and Brazil, by Philip III of Spain, who also appoints him physician of his chamber.source
• 1616The New England Indian smallpox or leptospirosis epidemic of 1616–19 begins to depopulate the region, killing an estimated 90% of the coastal native peoples.source
• 1616In England, louse-borne epidemic typhus ravages the poor and crowded.source
• 1616Isaac Beeckman, Dutch intellectual and future friend of René Descartes, leaves his candle factory in Zierikzee, to return to Middelburg to study medicine.source
• 1616In Sardinia, the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of the University of Sassari is founded.source
• 1623March 5 – The first American temperance law is enacted, in Virginia.source
• 1623Erotomania, a delusional disorder, is first mentioned, in a psychiatric treatise.source
• 1623The 1623 Malta plague outbreak is contained after killing around 40 people on the island of Malta.source
• 16261626 influenza pandemic begins in Asia, then spreads into Europe, Africa, North America, and South America.source
• 1627April 17 – The States of Friesland agree on the 28-point Appeal about Abuses after allowing the citizens to voice their complaints.source
• 1628February 10 – King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden issues an order bringing an end to the "foolishness and insanity" ("dårskap och galenskap") of religious visionary Margareta i Kumla, prohibiting Swedes from making pilgrimages to see her on pain of imprisonment, and threatening her with incarceration if she continues to preach about her visions from the angels.source
• 1629September 20 – 1629–1631 Italian plague: the plague arrives in the nation-state of Milan as German soldiers are granted a stay at the Forte di Fuentes.source
• 1629Actresses are banned in Japan.source
• 1630January 2 – A shoemaker in Turin is found to have the first case of bubonic plague there as the plague of 1630 begins spreading through Italy.source
• 1630May 17 – The first case of plague is reported in Milan. By the end of 1631, the city of 250,000 suffers 186,000 deaths, losing almost three-quarters of its population to plague.source
• 1630July – The Italian plague of 1629–31 reaches Venice.source
• 1631November 21 – In Venice, a special mass celebrates the end of the two years of bubonic plague that had killed thousands of people.source
• 1632January 31 – The dissection of a body for the benefit of medical students is carried out by Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, the anatomist for the city of Amsterdam, and will be immortalized in Rembrandt's painting The Anatomy Lesson.source
• 1633January 20 – Galileo Galilei, having been summoned to Rome on orders of Pope Urban VIII, leaves for Florence for his journey. His carriage is halted at Ponte a Centino at the border of Tuscany, where he is quarantined for 22 days because of an outbreak of the plague.source
• 1633Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu of Japan issues the Sakoku Edict of 1635 outlawing Christianity, enforcing a policy of extreme isolationism (sakoku) until 1853.source
• 1635In Edo period Japan, the Sakoku Edict of 1635 enforces isolationism. Japanese are forbidden to travel abroad and unauthorised Europeans forbidden to enter under penalty of death. Christianity (Catholicism) is absolutely prohibited. Foreign merchants – Chinese and those of the Dutch East India Company – are restricted to enclaves in Nagasaki and access by the Portuguese is completely forbidden: an imperial memorandum decrees, "Hereafter entry by the Portuguese galeota is forbidden. If they insist on coming, the ships must be destroyed and anyone aboard those ships must be beheaded."source
• 1638March 22 – Anne Hutchinson is banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for heresy and goes to Rhode Island.source
• 1641A massive epidemic breaks out in northern and central China, just three years before the fall of the Ming dynasty. It races south down along the Grand Canal of China and the densely populated settlements there, from the northern terminus at Beijing, to the fertile Jiangnan region. In some local areas and towns it wipes out 90% of the local populace.source
• 1642April – Hannibal Sehested is appointed Governor-General of Norway.source
• 1644December – Bubonic plague breaks out in Edinburgh (Scotland).source
• 1645March 31 – Fearing the spread of the Black Death (plague), Edinburgh Town Council prohibits all gatherings except weddings and funerals.source
• 1645April 10 – Because of the plague, the Edinburgh town council orders that the college graduation ceremony should be moved forward, so that students can leave the city (on November 19, teaching resumes in Linlithgow).source
• 1645July 21 – Qing dynasty regent Dorgon issues a queue order ordering all Han Chinese men to shave their forehead, and braid the rest of their hair into a queue, identical to those of the Manchus.source
• 1645October 8 – Jeanne Mance founds the Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal, the first hospital in North America.source
• 1649August 8 – Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh completes Book VIII of Leabhar na nGenealach, in Galway, within days of an outbreak of the plague.source
• 1650February 26 – Jacob van Kittensteyn succeeds Joan Maetsuycker as the Dutch Governor of Zeylan (now the nation of Sri Lanka).source
• 1650Ethiopia deports Portuguese diplomats and missionaries.source
• 1651April 7 – Shunzhi, Emperor of China, announces in an imperial edict that he will purge corruption from government.source
• 1651October 14 – Laws are passed in Massachusetts, forbidding poor people from adopting excessive styles of dress.source
• 1653May 31 – Ferdinand IV, already the King of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia, is elected King of the Romans by his fellow German monarchs, making him eligible to succeed his father Ferdinand III as Holy Roman Emperor. Ferdinand IV will not live to become Holy Roman Emperor, instead dying from smallpox 14 months after his designation.source
• 1653Marcello Malpighi, an Italian pioneer of microscopical anatomy becomes a doctor of medicine.source
• 16551655 Malta plague outbreak kills 20 people.source
• 1656January 24 – The first Jewish doctor in the Thirteen Colonies of America, Jacob Lumbrozo, arrives in Maryland.source
• 1657September – Shah Jahan becomes ill, allowing his son to take control of the Mughal Empire.source
• 1661Great Clearance in China: evacuation of Guangdong is required.source
• 1662May 16 – The hearth tax is introduced in England and Wales.source
• 1664November 6 – The oldest hospital in India, the Government General Hospital, is opened at Madras by the English East India Company for the treatment of ill soldiers.source
• 1665April 12 – The burial of Margaret Porteous is recorded; hers is the first known death during the Great Plague of London. This last major outbreak of Bubonic plague in the British Isles has possibly been introduced from the Netherlands. Two-thirds of Londoners leave the city, but over 68,000 die. The plague spreads to Derbyshire.source
• 1665July 7 – King Charles II of England leaves London with his entourage, fleeing the Great Plague. He moves his court to Salisbury, then Oxford.source
• 1665August 8 – The Great Plague forces the closure of the University of Cambridge, where Isaac Newton is a student. Newton retires to his home in Lincolnshire for safety, and stays there for two years. During this time alone, Newton will make groundbreaking discoveries in mathematics, calculus, mechanics and optics, and lay the foundations for his books Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica and Optiks.source
• 1666February 1 – The joint English and Scottish royal court returns to London as the Great Plague of London subsides.source
• 1667Robert Hooke demonstrates that the alteration of the blood in the lungs is essential for respiration.source
• 1669The Chinese herbal medicine company Tong Ren Tang (同仁堂) is established in Beijing.source
• 1670November 24 – Louis XIV inaugurates the construction of Les Invalides, a veterans' hospital in Paris.source
• 1672September 10 – William III of Orange, Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, dismisses nine of the regenten who lead cities in the Netherlands, after being granted authority by the States-General.source
• 1673November 9 – King Charles II of England removes Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, from his position as Lord Chancellor.source
• 1673Chelsea Physic Garden, the second oldest botanic garden in England, is founded by the Society of Apothecaries, for the study of medicinal and other plants.source
• 1674April 10 – In the Ahom kingdom in what is now the northeastern Indian state of Assam, Chamaguriya Khamjang Konwar is installed by the Chief Minister, the Borbarua Debera, as the figurehead King of Ahom. He takes the regnal name Suhung and makes plans to have Debera killed. On April 30, Debera, having learned of the King's intentions, succeeds in having the royal physician poison Suhung's medicine, and installs another ruler.source
• 1675December 24 – 1675–1676 Malta plague epidemic begins.source
• 1677January 21 – The first medical publication in America (a pamphlet on smallpox) is produced in Boston.source
• 1677The population of Paris first exceeds 500,000.source
• 1680August 10 – A Pueblo medicine man named Popé begins an attack by the Puebloans and their Apache allies on Spanish outposts throughout what is the modern-day U.S. state of New Mexico, choosing the campaign to begin before a supply caravan can reach the Spaniards.source
• 1681December 22 – King Charles II of England signs a warrant for the building of the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London for wounded and retired soldiers.source
• 1682March 11 – Work begins on construction of the Royal Hospital Chelsea for old soldiers in London, England.source
• 1688October 26 – King James II of England dismisses his minister Robert Spencer, 2nd Earl of Sunderland.source
• 1689Boston suffers a smallpox epidemic.source
• 1694October 25 – Queen Mary II of England founds the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich.source
• 1695September 24 – All but eight of the remaining 305 crew of the Royal Navy ship are killed when the ship founders in the Florida Keys. According to the ship's logbook, an epidemic of yellow fever began on August 1 and had killed 45 people before the hurricane struck, and left all but seven crew members too ill to walk.source
• 1695A £2 fine is imposed for swearing in England.source
• 1698September 5 – In an effort to move his people away from Asiatic customs, Tsar Peter I of Russia imposes a beard tax.source