Health & Medicine in the 18th century

97 sourced entries, 1703 CE to 1798 CE, oldest first. Also see Health & Medicine across every century or everything else in the 18th century.

• 1703March 15 – The landmark English court case of Rose v Royal College of Physicians is decided by the Court of Queen's Bench, beginning the end of the monopoly that the Royal College of Physicians has over the practice of medicine.source
• 1703Between 1702 and 1703 – An epidemic of smallpox breaks out in Quebec, in which 2,000-3,000 people die (300-400 in Quebec City).source
• 1706August 18 – King Louis XIV of France makes his last visit to Paris, and gets an update on the construction of the veterans' hospital at the Dome des Invalides, which he had commissioned more than 35 years earlier.source
• 1710Alexis Littré, in his treatise Diverses observations anatomiques, is the first physician to suggest the possibility of performing a lumbar colostomy for an obstruction of the colon.source
• 1711May 25 – In Denmark, Helsingør is put under military blockade to prevent an outbreak of plague from spreading to Copenhagen; this year about one third of Helsingør's population is killed by the disease.source
• 1711October 14 – Yostos kills Tewoflos, becoming Emperor of Ethiopia.source
• 1712March 30 – Anne, Queen of Great Britain administers the Royal touch (a ritual with the intent to cure illness) for the last time; 300 scrofulous people are touched, the last of whom is Samuel Johnson.source
• 1714February 28 – (February 17 old style) Russia's Tsar Peter the Great issues a decree requiring compulsory education in mathematics for children of government officials and nobility, applying to children between the ages of 10 and 15 years old.source
• 1714May 19 – Anne, Queen of Great Britain, refuses to allow members of the House of Hanover to settle in Britain during her lifetime.source
• 1716May 28 – John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, suffers a paralytic stroke.source
• 1716Tsar Peter the Great of Russia studies with the physician Herman Boerhaave, at Leiden University.source
• 1717October 9 – King Philip V of Spain orders the closure of all universities in Catalonia, including the historic Estudi General de Lleida.source
• 1717Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the British ambassador to Istanbul, has her son inoculated.source
• 1718March 18 – Edward Wortley Montagu, the four-year-old son of the British Ambassador to Turkey, becomes the first British person to be inoculated with the smallpox vaccine, administered by Dr. Charles Maitland at the request of Edward's mother, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.source
• 1719Europe's first systematic population census is taken in the Kingdom of Prussia's Margraviate of Brandenburg.source
• 1720May – Great Plague of Marseille begins. The last major outbreak of bubonic plague in western Europe, the disease kill over 100,000 people in the city and surrounding area of France.source
• 1720The Guild Regulation of 1720 is introduced in Sweden.source
• 1721April 21 – The deadliest outbreak of smallpox in the history of Boston begins when the British ship HMS Sea Horse arrives in Boston Harbor with a crew of sailors who had survived a smallpox epidemic. One of the Seahorse crew who had cleared quarantine develops symptoms the next day and infects other people in a lodging house. Over the next 10 months, 5,759 cases of smallpox are recorded in Boston and 844 people die of the disease.source
• 1721June 26 – Dr. Zabdiel Boylston of the Harvard University School of Medicine begins the first public inoculation campaign in order to slow the smallpox epidemic in Boston, giving a vaccine to his own son, and then to his slave and the slave's infant son.source
• 1725January – In Japan, the policy of the Gonin Gumi organizing groups of every five households in a town into units collectively responsible for the good behavior of everyone in the unit, goes into effect as the register of units is completed by the Tokugawa shogunate.source
• 1725February 20 – The first reported case of white men scalping Native Americans takes place in New Hampshire colony.source
• 1727January 9 – The world-famous Charité Hospital is established in Berlin, to be used for research and to help the poor. Prussia's King Frederick William I had ordered the conversion of a 16-year old institution, originally built in anticipation of an epidemic of the bubonic plague.source
• 1727September 8 – A barn fire during a puppet show in the village of Burwell, Cambridgeshire, England, kills 78 people, many of them children. Another report says that all but six of the 160 persons assembled were killed in the accidental fire.source
• 1729June 8 – The Botanic Gardens of Pamplemousses, one of the most popular tourist attractions on the island republic of Mauritius, are started by Pierre Barmond, who sets aside thousands of acres for the purpose of preservation of the islands flora. The gardens come to occupy 97 square miles or 251 square kilometers.source
• 1730June 19 – At the urging of Sir William Gooch, the Virginia House of Burgesses passes the Virginia Tobacco Inspection Act to regulate the quality of tobacco in Virginia, 46 to 5.source
• 1731September – The first successful appendectomy is performed by English surgeon William Cookesley.source
• 1731December 29 – Jacques Grimaldi, the husband of the reigning monarch of Monaco, Louise Hippolyte, succeeds to the throne after Louise's death from smallpox. Jacques I rules until his own death in 1751.source
• 1731Laura Bassi becomes the first official female university teacher, on being appointed professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna, at the age of 21.source
• 1733December 25 – The Molasses Act goes into full effect.source
• 1735November 30 – The Netherlands becomes the first government to announce a prohibition against citizens joining the Freemasons.source
• 1735December 6 – The second successful appendectomy is performed by naturalised British surgeon Claudius Aymand at St George's Hospital in London (the first was in 1731).source
• 1736March 31 – Bellevue Hospital is founded in New York.source
• 1736September 29 – The Gin Act 1736 goes into effect, placing a steep tax on the sale of gin and license requirements for its sale, with the intent of reducing consumption of the liquor in Britain. Widely ignored, the Act is repealed in 1743.source
• 1736The Haidamakas raid the shtetl of Pavoloch, killing 35.source
• 1737June 21 – In Britain, the Theatrical Licensing Act requires plays to be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain for censorship.source
• 1738August 10 – Russo-Turkish War (1735–1739): The Russian army begins its attempt to cross the Dniester River and fails after three weeks; it is later decimated by plague.source
• 1739July 9 – The first group purporting to represent an all-England cricket team, consisting of 11 players from various parts of England, comes to Kent and loses to the renowned Kent team, led by Lord John Sackville.source
• 1739October 17 – The Foundling Hospital is created in London by royal charter.source
• 1742August 17 – Irish author and poet Dean Jonathan Swift is declared by a court to be "of unsound mind and memory" and confined to home treatment for the remaining three years of his life.source
• 1742September 16 – Construction starts on the Foundling Hospital in London.source
• 1746August 1 – The wearing of the kilt is banned in Scotland by the Dress Act, which comes into force one year later, on August 1, 1747.source
• 1747January 31 – The first venereal diseases clinic opens at London Lock Hospital.source
• 1747James Lind's experiment begins to prove that citrus fruits prevent scurvy.source
• 1749April 27 – The first official performance of Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks in London finishes early, due to the outbreak of fire. The piece had been composed by Handel to commemorate the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, which ended the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748.source
• 1749November 24 – The Province of South Carolina House of Assembly votes to free African-American slave Caesar Norman, and to grant him a lifetime pension of 100 British pounds per year, in return for Caesar's agreement to share the secret of his antidote for poisonous snake venom. Caesar then makes public his herbal cure of juice from Plantago major (the common plantain) and Marrubium vulgare (horehound), combined with "a leaf of good tobacco moistened with rum".source
• 1750March 5 – The Murray-Kean Company, a troupe of actors from Philadelphia, gives the first performance of a play announced in advance in a newspaper, presenting Richard III at New York City's Nassau Street Theatre.source
• 1751May 11 – The Pennsylvania Hospital, first hospital in the American colonies, is chartered in Philadelphia by the Pennsylvania legislature, which grants the right to Benjamin Franklin and to Dr. Thomas Bond.source
• 1751November 17 – Future United States President George Washington becomes seriously ill with smallpox while he and his older brother Lawrence are visiting the island of Barbados during an epidemic Washington, 19 years old, survives the virus but is bedridden for almost a month.source
• 1751The Medical School is founded.source
• 1752February 10 – Pennsylvania Hospital, the first hospital in the United States, and the first to offer medical treatment to the mentally ill, admits its first patients at a temporary location in Philadelphia.source
• 1753November 12 – Spain's King Fernando VI issues a set of 25 regulations and restrictions for theatrical performances, including a requirement that the directors of the acting troupes "take the greatest care that the necessary modesty is preserved" and that the actors should be reminded that chastity requires that "indecent and provocative" dances should be avoided.source
• 1757March 30 – The Rigshospitalet, national hospital of Denmark, is founded at Copenhagen.source
• 1759June 15 – The first vascular surgery in history is performed by a Dr. Hallowell (whose first name has been lost) at Newcastle upon Tyne in England, who uses suture repair rather than a tying off with a ligature to repair an aneurysm on a patient's brachial artery. The case is reported in 1761 by Dr. Richard Lambert in the paper "A new technique of treating an aneurysm", published in the journal Medical Observations and Inquiries. The new procedure of reconstructing a damaged artery replaces the practice of ligation that had risked the amputation of a limb or organ failure.source
• 1760April 30 – Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli presents a paper at the French Academy of Sciences in Paris in which "a mathematical model was used for the first time to study the population dynamics of infectious disease."source
• 1761April 4 – A severe epidemic of influenza breaks out in London and "practically the entire population of the city" is afflicted; particularly contagious to pregnant women, the disease causes an unusual number of miscarriages and premature births.source
• 1761April 14 – Thomas Boone is transferred south to become the Royal Governor of South Carolina after proving to be unable to work with the local assembly as the Royal Governor of New Jersey.source
• 1761October 5 – William Pitt is dismissed from his position as Secretary of State for the Southern Department after having been a powerful part of a coalition government with the Prime Minister, the Duke of Newcastle.source
• 1763The Prussian education system is instituted as a compulsory system for boys and girls from age 5 to 13–14 by the Generallandschulreglement (General School Regulation), a decree of Frederick the Great authored by Johann Julius Hecker.source
• 1764January 19 – John Wilkes is expelled from the House of Commons of Great Britain, for seditious libel.source
• 1764April 5 – The Sugar Act is passed in Great Britain.source
• 1765October 17 – The Pennsylvania Gazette reports that a Mr. McCullough, the Distributor of Stamps for the Royal Colony of North Carolina, has resigned his post in protest at the Stamp Act. A Dr. Huston is appointed to the position.source
• 1765December 12 – The Pennsylvania Gazette reports that Dr. Huston, the recently instated Distributor of Stamps for the Royal Colony of North Carolina, has resigned his post in protest at the Stamp Act.source
• 1766April 17 – King Carlos III of Spain issues a royal cédula from Aranjuez to round up all ethnic Chinese in the Philippines and to move them to ghettoes in various provinces.source
• 1767October 12 – At the Foundling Hospital in London, Dr. William Watson becomes the first physician to conduct a controlled clinical trial, selecting 32 boys and girls of similar age who have not yet had smallpox. He divides them into three groups in order to test treatments before inoculation for smallpox, with one group receiving a mixture of mercury and jalap, another senna glycoside, and the third getting no pre-treatment at all.source
• 1767November 9 – At the new King's College medical school in New York City (later the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons), Dr. John Jones gives the first lecture by a surgical professor in North America.source
• 1768March 1 – King Louis XV decrees that all cities and towns in France will be required to post house numbering on all residential buildings, primarily to facilitate the forced quartering of troops in citizens' homes.source
• 1771April 4 – The first quarantines are started in Moscow and Saint Petersburg to fight the bubonic plague epidemic. Over the next 12 months, more than 52,000 people die from the plague in Moscow alone.source
• 1771September 15–17 – The Moscow plague riot results from an outbreak of bubonic plague, which kills 57,000.source
• 1772December 14 – Russian government offices reopen at Moscow and Saint Petersburg after being closed for 15 months because of an epidemic of bubonic plague.source
• 1773September 11 – The Public Advertiser publishes a satirical essay titled Rules By Which A Great Empire May Be Reduced To A Small One, written by Benjamin Franklin.source
• 1773October 12 – America's first insane asylum opens for Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds in Williamsburg, Virginia.source
• 1775A smallpox epidemic begins in New England.source
• 1778October 12 – The Continental Congress advises the 13 member states to suppress "theatrical entertainments, horse-racing, gaming, and such other diversions as are productive of idleness, dissipation, and general depravity of principles and manners."source
• 1780June 2 – An Anti-Catholic mob led by Lord George Gordon marches on the Parliament of Great Britain, leading to the outbreak of the Gordon Riots in London.source
• 1780The Kingdom of Great Britain reaches c.9 million population.source
• 1782Saint Petersburg, Russia has 300,000 inhabitants.source
• 1784Madame du Coudray, pioneer of modern midwifery, retires.source
• 1784A huge locust swarm hits South Africa.source
• 1785Louis XVI signs a law that a handkerchief must be square.source
• 1786June 2 – The Tignon law is enacted by Spanish Governor of Louisiana Esteban Rodríguez Miró, to force black women to wear a tignon headscarf.source
• 1788October – King George III of the United Kingdom becomes deranged; the Regency Crisis of 1788 starts.source
• 1788November 20 – In the United Kingdom, the Houses of Parliament are given the first formal report by Prime Minister Pitt of the mental illness of King George III. Parliament adjourns for two weeks, to await the results of examinations by royal physicians.source
• 1788December – Robert Burns writes his version of the Scots poem Auld Lang Syne.source
• 1789July 11 – Louis XVI of France dismisses popular Chief Minister Jacques Necker.source
• 1789October 10 – Physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposes to the French National Assembly the adoption of more humane and egalitarian forms of capital punishment, including use of the guillotine.source
• 1789December 23 – A leaflet circulated in France accuses the Marquis de Favras of plotting to rescue the royal family.source
• 1789Influenced by Benjamin Rush's argument against the excessive use of alcohol, about 200 farmers in a Connecticut community form a temperance movement in the United States.source
• 1793February – In Manchester, Vermont, the wife of a captain falls ill, probably with tuberculosis. Some locals believe that the cause of her illness is that a demon vampire is sucking her blood. As a cure, Timothy Mead burns the heart of a deceased person in front of a crowd of a few hundred people.source
• 1793April 9 – Edmond-Charles Genêt, France's new Minister to the United States, arrives at Charleston, South Carolina.source
• 1793August 1–November 9 – The yellow fever epidemic of 1793 hits Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; 5,000 die.source
• 1793August 23 – French Revolution: The following universal conscription decree is enacted in France: "The young men shall go to battle and the married men shall forge arms. The women shall make tents and clothes and shall serve in the hospitals; children shall tear rags into lint. The old men will be guided to the public places of the cities to kindle the courage of the young warriors and to preach the unity of the Republic and the hatred of kings."source
• 1795The British Royal Navy makes the use of lemon juice mandatory, to prevent scurvy.source
• 1796May 14 – Edward Jenner administers the first smallpox vaccination, in England.source
• 1798July 16 – The Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen Act is signed into law, creating the Marine Hospital Service, the forerunner to the current United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.source
• 1798September 5 – Conscription is made mandatory in France by the Jourdan Law.source
• 1798The first census in Brazil counts 2 million blacks in a total population of 3.25 million.source
• 1798Edward Jenner publishes An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolæ Vaccinæ, describing the smallpox vaccine, in London.source