Health & Medicine in the 19th century

154 sourced entries, 1800 CE to 1899 CE, oldest first. Also see Health & Medicine across every century or everything else in the 19th century.

• 1800June 2 – The first smallpox vaccination is made in North America, at Trinity, Newfoundland.source
• 1801March 10 – The first census is held in Great Britain. The population of England and Wales is determined to be 8.9 million, with London revealed to have 860,035 residents. 1.5 million people live in cities of 20,000 or more in England and Wales, accounting for 17% of the total English population.source
• 1801Philippe Pinel publishes Traité médico-philosophique sur l'aliénation mentale; ou la manie, presenting his enlightened humane psychological approach to the management of psychiatric hospitals. Translated into English by D. D. Davis as Treatise on Insanity in 1806, it is influential on both sides of the Atlantic during the nineteenth century.source
• 1802April 12 — Beethoven leaves Vienna for a small nearby Austrian village named Heiligenstadt where he would cope with his declining mental and physical health including his growing deafness. He would stay until October and there he would write an unsent letter to his brothers called the Heiligenstadt Testament. In the letter, Beethoven contemplates suicide but it was his passion for the art of music that prevented him so.source
• 1802December 2 – The Health and Morals of Apprentices Act in the United Kingdom comes into effect, regulating conditions for child labour in factories. Although poorly enforced, it pioneers a series of Factory Acts.source
• 1803March–April – The franc germinal is introduced in France.source
• 1803November 30 – The Balmis Expedition starts in Spain, with the aim of vaccinating millions against smallpox in Spanish America and the Philippines.source
• 1804World population reaches 1 billion people.source
• 1804Morphine is first isolated from the opium poppy by the German pharmacist, Friedrich Sertürner.source
• 1805April 29 – Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck is appointed as Grand Pensionary of the Batavian Republic by Napoleon.source
• 1805Napoleon orders his soldiers to be vaccinated.source
• 1809December 25 – American physician Ephraim McDowell performs the first ovariotomy, removing a 22-pound tumor.source
• 1809December 30 – Wearing masks at balls is forbidden in Boston, Massachusetts.source
• 1809William Combe begins publication of the verse Tour of Dr. Syntax in search of the Picturesque in Ackermann's Political Magazine (London), illustrated with cartoons by Thomas Rowlandson, depicting comic and ridiculous scenes involving a hapless country physician, and coming to represent British Regency humour.source
• 1810October – King George III of the United Kingdom is deemed permanently insane.source
• 1811October 23 – José Gervasio Artigas and 16,000 orientales leave the Banda Oriental del Uruguay, to go into exile.source
• 1813March 28 – 1813–1814 Malta plague epidemic spreads from Egypt.source
• 1816René Laennec invents the stethoscope.source
• 1817June 12 – Tradesman Jeffery Sedwards establishes the Skibbereen Abstinence Society in Ireland, considered the first organisation devoted to teetotalism in Europe.source
• 1817The first cholera pandemic originates in Bengal, reaching Calcutta by September.source
• 1817A typhus epidemic occurs in Edinburgh and Glasgow.source
• 1821January 26 – Congress of Laibach convenes to deal with outstanding international issues, particularly the outbreak of a revolution in southern Italy.source
• 1822June 6 – Alexis St. Martin is accidentally shot in the stomach, which leads the way to William Beaumont's studies on digestion.source
• 1822July 31 – The last public whipping is carried out in Edinburgh.source
• 1827March 11 – The predecessor of Qasr El Eyni Hospital and Cairo University School of Medicine is established in Egypt under the direction of Antoine Clot as the first medical school in the region.source
• 1828February 19 – The Boston Society for Medical Improvement is established in the United States.source
• 1828December 20 – The U.S. State of Georgia legislature charters the Medical Academy of Georgia, which becomes the Medical College of Georgia, and authorizes it to award a Bachelor of Medicine degree, making it the 13th oldest U.S. medical school and the sixth public medical school to be established.source
• 1832February 12 – A cholera epidemic in London claims at least 3,000 lives; the contagion spreads to France and North America later this year.source
• 1834December 3 – The Zollverein institutes the first regular census in Germany. The population is 23,478,120.source
• 1834The Romanian language is banned in the schools and government facilities of the Russian Empire's Bessarabia Governorate.source
• 1836October 13 – Theodor Fliedner, a Lutheran minister, and Friederike, his wife, open the Deaconess Home and Hospital at Kaiserswerth, Germany, as an institute to train women in nursing.source
• 1838October 27 – Lilburn Boggs, Governor of Missouri, by Missouri Executive Order 44, declares Mormons to be enemies of the state, and encourages the extermination or exile of the religious minority, forcing nearly 10,000 Mormons out of the state. It was later rescinded in 1976.source
• 1839June 3 – Destruction of opium at Humen begins, casus belli for Britain to open the 3-year First Opium War against Qing dynasty China. A rapid rise in the sale of opium in China to over 40,000 chests (~56,000 kg per annum) has caused the Chinese government to dispatch scholar-official Lin Zexu to Guangzhou to deal with the growing problem of opium addiction.source
• 1840April 15 – King's College Hospital opens in London.source
• 1841January 26 – Britain occupies Hong Kong. Later in the year, the first census of the island records a population of about 7,500.source
• 1841November 13 – Scottish surgeon James Braid first sees a demonstration of animal magnetism by Charles Lafontaine in Manchester, which leads to his study of the phenomenon that he (Braid) eventually calls hypnotism.source
• 1842March 30 – American physician and pharmacist Crawford Long administers an inhaled anesthetic (diethyl ether) to facilitate a surgical procedure, performing the removal of a neck tumor.source
• 1842Beecham's Pills (a laxative) is first marketed in Lancashire, England, by Thomas Beecham, forming the basis of the Beecham Group and GSK plc pharmaceutical companies.source
• 1845December 27 – Anesthesia is used for childbirth for the first time, by Dr. Crawford Long in Jefferson, Georgia.source
• 1846October 16 – At Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. William T. G. Morton, a dentist, gives the first successful public demonstration of ether anesthesia.source
• 18461846–1860 cholera pandemic breaks out in south Asia; in the United Kingdom, Parliament passes The Nuisances Removal and Diseases Prevention Act.source
• 1847February 5 – A rescue effort, called the First Relief, leaves Johnson's Ranch to save the ill-fated Donner Party of California-bound migrants who became snowbound in the Sierra Nevada earlier this winter. Some have resorted to survival by cannibalism.source
• 1847November 4–8 – James Young Simpson discovers the anesthetic properties of chloroform and first uses it, successfully, on a patient, in an obstetric case in Edinburgh.source
• 1847Welfare in Sweden takes its first step with the introduction of the 1847 års fattigvårdförordning.source
• 1848July – The Public Health Act establishes Boards of Health across England and Wales, the nation's first public health law, giving cities broad authority to build modern sanitary systems.source
• 1848November 1 – In Boston, Massachusetts, the first medical school for women, the Boston Female Medical School (which later merges with Boston University School of Medicine), opens.source
• 1849January 23 – Elizabeth Blackwell is awarded her M.D. by the Medical Institute of Geneva, New York, thus becoming the United States' first woman doctor.source
• 1849A cholera epidemic in New York kills 5,000.source
• 1849Global healthcare and pharmaceutical company Pfizer founded in New York, United States.source
• 1850June 1 – The 1850 United States census shows that 11.2% of the population classed as "Negro" are of mixed race.source
• 1850The city of Manchester, England, reaches 400,000 inhabitants.source
• 1851April 25 – Placer County, California, is formed from parts of Sutter and Yuba Counties with Auburn as the county seat.source
• 1851June 2 – Maine passes the Maine Liquor Law, the first state-wide prohibition in the United States.source
• 1852January 15 – Nine men representing various Jewish charitable organizations come together to form what will become Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.source
• 1852February 14 – The Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, London, admits its first patient.source
• 1853April 7 – Prince Leopold, the youngest son and the eighth child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, is born in Buckingham Palace; he has inherited haemophilia. During the labour, Victoria chooses to use chloroform, thereby encouraging the use of anesthesia in childbirth.source
• 1853Charles Pravaz and Alexander Wood independently invent a practical hypodermic syringe.source
• 1853An outbreak of yellow fever kills 7,790 people in New Orleans.source
• 1854April 1 – Hard Times begins serialisation in Charles Dickens' magazine, Household Words.source
• 1854August 31–September 8 – An epidemic of cholera in London kills over 10,000. Dr John Snow traces the source of one outbreak (that killed 500) to a single water pump, validating his theory that cholera is water-borne, and forming the starting point for epidemiology.source
• 1855May 17 – Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, is dedicated (originally named as the Jews' Hospital) in New York City; it opens to patients on June 5.source
• 1855The third plague pandemic breaks out in Yunnan, China. This bubonic plague pandemic eventually spreads to all inhabited continents, and ultimately leads to more than 12 million deaths in India and China (estimated 15 million worldwide) making it one of the deadliest pandemics in history. The pandemic is considered active until 1960.source
• 1856May 22 – Caning of Charles Sumner: United States Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina beats Senator Charles Sumner with a cane in the hall of the United States Senate for a speech Sumner had made attacking pro-slavery Southerners, especially elderly South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, a relative of Brooks. Sumner is unable to return to duty for three years while he recovers; Brooks becomes a hero across the South.source
• 1856The British Guiana 1c magenta postage stamp is issued in British Guiana in limited numbers; the one surviving specimen will become regarded as the world's rarest stamp.source
• 1857March 12 – Elizabeth Blackwell opens a hospital, the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children.source
• 1857U.S. politician William Daniel proposes the Local Option for Prohibition.source
• 1857Liberia annexes the Republic of Maryland as native groups (notably Grebo people and Kru people) continually attack and kill settlers in Cape Palmas.source
• 1858April 16 – The Wernerian Natural History Society, a former Scottish learned society, is wound up.source
• 1858August 2 – A bill is passed to create a modern sewage system in London as a result of the Great Stink, when the heat of the summer made the smell from sewage in the Thames unbearable.source
• 1858Prince Wilhelm of Prussia becomes regent for his brother, King Frederick William IV, who has suffered a stroke. After Prince William's term acting as a regent for the King had been extended three times, the ailing Frederick William signed a regency charter for him on 7 October 1858, based on an expert opinion from the royal personal physicians.source
• 1858Squibb Pharmacy, as predecessor of Bristol Myers Squibb, a worldwide pharmaceutical brand, is founded in New York, United States.source
• 1859District nursing begins in Liverpool, England, when philanthropist William Rathbone employs Mary Robinson to nurse the sick poor in their own homes.source
• 1860October 6 – Section 377 of the British Indian penal code was enacted in British India.source
• 1861April 7 – A population census is taken in the United Kingdom. The population is more than double that of 1801 and those living in urban areas are in a majority.source
• 1862March 13 – A smallpox epidemic in San Francisco spreads to British Columbia.source
• 1862December 2 – The first United States Navy hospital ships enter service.source
• 1863The first outbreak of phylloxera on the European mainland is observed, in the vineyards of the southern Rhône region of France.source
• 1863The recipe for the herbal liqueur Bénédictine is devised by Alexandre Le Grand in Fécamp, France.source
• 1864June – The United States Sanitary Commission's Sanitary Fair in Philadelphia takes place.source
• 1867March 16 – An article by Joseph Lister outlining his use of antiseptic surgery is first published in The Lancet.source
• 1867July – The Reverend Thomas Baker, a Wesleyan Methodist missionary (born in Playden, East Sussex, England) is cooked and eaten by Navatusila tribespeople at Nabutautau, Fiji, together with eight of his local followers, the only missionary in that country to suffer cannibalism.source
• 1867The Prohibition National Committee is formed in the United States.source
• 1867Yellow fever kills 3,093 in New Orleans.source
• 1867The board game Parcheesi is introduced in the United States.source
• 1868October 6 – The City of New York grants Mount Sinai Hospital a 99-year lease for a property on Lexington Avenue and 66th Street, for the sum of $1.00.source
• 1868The population of Japan reaches c. 30 million.source
• 1869March 1 – The North German Confederation issues 10gr and 30gr value stamps, printed on goldbeater's skin.source
• 1869July 20 – Children's Hospital Boston is founded by Dr. Francis Henry Brown and other Harvard Medical School graduates, as a 20-bed facility in the South End of Boston, Massachusetts.source
• 1869October 11 – Gamma Sigma becomes the first high school fraternity in North America at Brockport Normal School, Brockport, New York.source
• 1869October – The 'Edinburgh Seven', led by Sophia Jex-Blake, start to attend lectures at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, the first women in the United Kingdom to do so (although they will not be allowed to take degrees).source
• 1869James Gordon Bennett Jr. of the New York Herald asks Henry Morton Stanley to find Dr. David Livingstone.source
• 1871March 29 – The first Surgeon General of the United States (John Maynard Woodworth) is appointed.source
• 1871August 29 – The abolition of the han system is carried out in Japan.source
• 1872February 22 – The Prohibition Party holds its first national convention in Columbus, Ohio, nominating James Black as its presidential nominee.source
• 1872July 4 – The Society of Jesus is pronounced illegal in the German Empire.source
• 1872October 1 – The Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College begins its first academic session (the university is later renamed Virginia Tech). The first case is reported in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, of the Great Epizootic of 1872 (equine influenza, or the "horse flu") which will substantially disrupt life in North America by mid-December.source
• 1872A conscription law, modeled on the French version, is issued.source
• 1872Universal public schools are called for.source
• 1873February 20 – The University of California opens its first medical school in San Francisco.source
• 1873March 3 – Censorship: The United States Congress enacts the Comstock Law, making it illegal to send any "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" books through the mail.source
• 1874June 22 – Andrew Taylor Still starts the movement for osteopathic medicine in the United States at Kirksville, Missouri.source
• 1874English chemist C. R. Alder Wright synthesizes heroin for the first time.source
• 1875April – 'Albert's swarm' of Rocky Mountain locusts begins to devastate the western United States.source
• 1875Convent Scandal: During the winter in Montreal, typhoid fever strikes at a convent school. The corpses of the victims are filched by body-snatchers before relatives arrive from America, causing much furor. Eventually the Anatomy Act of Quebec is changed over it.source
• 1876Samurai are banned from carrying swords in Japan, and their stipends are replaced by a one-time grant of income-bearing bonds.source
• 1876Heinz Tomato Ketchup is introduced in the United States.source
• 1878Yellow fever in the Mississippi Valley kills over 13,000.source
• 1881February 18 – Carlos Finlay introduces his discovery of the transmission of Yellow Fever by mosquitoes Aedes aegypti, in the Fifth International Sanitary Conference held in Washington, D.C.source
• 1881February 19 – Kansas becomes the first U.S. state to prohibit all alcoholic beverages.source
• 1882March 22 – Polygamy is made a felony by the Edmunds Act, passed by the United States Congress.source
• 1882March 24 – Robert Koch announces the discovery of the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis (Mycobacterium tuberculosis).source
• 1882May 6 – The Chinese Exclusion Act, prohibiting the immigration of Chinese laborers, is the first law which restricts immigration into the United States.source
• 1883May 31 – Otto von Bismarck pushes the first social security law through the Reichstag. It establishes a system of Publicly funded health care, one of the first worldwide. It is signed into law on June 15.source
• 1883June 16 – Victoria Hall disaster: A rush for treats results in 183 children being asphyxiated in a concert hall in Sunderland, England.source
• 1883Bernard Kroger establishes the first Kroger grocery store, in Cincinnati, Ohio.source
• 1884January 7 – German microbiologist Robert Koch isolates Vibrio cholerae, the cholera bacillus, working in India.source
• 1884September 15 – The invention of local anesthesia by ophthalmologist Karl Koller is made public at a medical congress in Heidelberg, Germany.source
• 1884The water hyacinth is introduced in the United States, and quickly becomes an invasive species.source
• 1885July 6 – Louis Pasteur and Émile Roux successfully test their rabies vaccine. The patient is Joseph Meister, a boy who was bitten by a rabid dog.source
• 1886March 11 - Anandi Gopal Joshi becomes the first Indian-born woman to graduate from medical school.source
• 1887January 11 – Louis Pasteur's anti-rabies treatment is defended in the Académie Nationale de Médecine, by Dr. Joseph Grancher.source
• 1887August – The earliest constituent of the U.S. National Institutes of Health is established at the Marine Hospital, Staten Island, as the Laboratory of Hygiene.source
• 1888December 23 – During a bout of mental illness (and having quarreled with his friend Paul Gauguin), Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh infamously cuts off the lower part of his own left ear, taking it to a brothel, and is removed to the local hospital in Arles in the south of France.source
• 1888Abbott Laboratories as Abbott Alkaloidal by Dr. Wallace C. Abbott in Illinois.source
• 1889January 1 – Paiute spiritual leader Wovoka experiences a vision, leading to the start of the Ghost Dance movement in the Dakotas.source
• 1889January 4 – An Act to Regulate Appointments in the Marine Hospital Service of the United States is signed by President Grover Cleveland. It establishes a Commissioned Corps of officers, as a predecessor to the modern-day U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.source
• 1889January 15 – The Coca-Cola Company is originally incorporated as the Pemberton Medicine Company in Atlanta, Georgia.source
• 1889May – The first case of the 1889–1890 pandemic of is reported in the city of Bukhara in the Central Asian part of the Russian Empire.source
• 1890March 27 – March 1890 middle Mississippi Valley tornado outbreak: 24 significant tornadoes are spawned by one system, including one that kills 76 people in Louisville, Kentucky.source
• 1890June 1 – The United States Census Bureau begins using Herman Hollerith's tabulating machine to tabulate census returns using punched card input, a landmark in the history of computing hardware. Hollerith's company eventually becomes IBM. The 1890 United States census determines the US population to be 62,979,766, an increase of 25.5 percent relative to the 1880 census.source
• 1890August 28 – The strongest storm in Finnish history kills at least three people.source
• 1890Wilhelm II, German Emperor opposes Bismarck's attempt to renew the law outlawing the Social Democratic Party.source
• 1891January 19 – General Miles officially announces the end of the native outbreak and congratulates his troops.source
• 1891April 5 – Census in the United Kingdom: 15.6 million people live in cities of 20,000 or more in England and Wales, and cities of 20,000 or more account for 54% of the total English population.source
• 1891July 30 – The Springboks rugby union team of South Africa play their first international test match against the Lions team of the British Isles, and lose by 4–0.source
• 1892A cholera outbreak occurs in Hamburg, Germany.source
• 1893American pharmacist Caleb Bradham invents the recipe for what later becomes Pepsi. He originally sells it as 'Brad's Drink' at his pharmacy in New Bern, North Carolina.source
• 1894May – Third plague pandemic: Bubonic plague breaks out in the Tai Ping Shan area of Hong Kong (by the end of the year, the death toll is 2,552 people); it also breaks out this year in Canton.source
• 1894September 1 – Great Hinckley Fire: A forest fire in Hinckley, Minnesota, kills more than 450 people.source
• 1895September 18 – Daniel David Palmer performs the first chiropractic spinal adjustment, on Harvey Lillard, whose complaint was partial deafness after an injury.source
• 1896August – The 1896 Eastern North America heat wave kills 1,500 people from Chicago, Illinois to Boston, Massachusetts.source
• 1896The pharmaceutical and healthcare company Hoffmann-La Roche in Switzerland comes wholly under the control of Fritz Hoffmann-La Roche.source
• 1897August 10 – At the Bayer pharmaceutical company, pharmacist Felix Hoffmann successfully synthesizes acetylsalicylic acid, after isolating a compound from a plant of the Spiraea family; the company markets it under the brand name "Aspirin".source
• 1898August 28 – American pharmacist Caleb Bradham names his soft drink Pepsi-Cola.source
• 1898September 21 – Geert Adriaans Boomgaard of Groningen in the Netherlands becomes the world's first validated supercentenarian.source
• 1898November 24 – Italy sends an ultimatum to the Sultan of Morocco concerning treatment of Italian residents.source
• 1898December 1 – The French government decrees a ban on imports of fruit and plants from the United States.source
• 1899January 1 – In Samoa, followers of Mataafa, claimant to the rule of the island's subjects, burn the town of Upolu in an ambush of followers of other claimants, Malietoa Tanus and Tamasese, who are evacuated by the British warship HMS Porpoise.source
• 1899January 23 – Because of illness, King Oscar of Sweden and Norway entrusts the government to Crown Prince Gustav.source
• 1899February 1 – Ranavalona III, who had been the Queen of Madagascar until being deposed on February 28, 1897, is sent into exile by English colonial authorities, along with the rest of the royal family.source
• 1899March 19 – A tornado outbreak in the southern U.S. kills multiple people.source
• 1899March 21 – A report documented that bubonic plague reached Medina and another report noted that at least 21 cases of the plague.source
• 1899August 12 – South African Republic General Jan Smuts makes a final initiative to avert the outbreak of what will become the Second Boer War, meeting in Pretoria with the British chargé d'affaires, Conyngham Greene.source
• 1899The 1899–1923 cholera pandemic begins, spreading to Europe, Asia and Africa.source