Medicine Atlas
Claims this atlas currently marks as unsettled or as tested and found false. A debated fact is one scholars hold competing positions on; a debunked one has been checked against the record and found not to hold. Both are kept in view rather than quietly smoothed over, with the reasoning that put each one where it stands.
57 statements marked Debated.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Origin Year1987
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Treatments
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1987
Steven C. Hayes began developing the approach around 1982, first calling it comprehensive distancing. This fact records 1987, when its foundational concepts were formally introduced in his own article in Behavior Therapy, its first appearance in the academic literature. The name Acceptance and Commitment Therapy did not appear in print until the early 1990s, and the first dedicated book followed in 1999.
Source Wikipedia, Wikipedia contributors
ACE Inhibitor Therapy, Origin Year1981
ACE Inhibitor Therapy, Treatments
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1981
Captopril, the first orally active ACE inhibitor, was synthesized in 1975. This fact records 1981, the year the United States Food and Drug Administration approved captopril, the point ACE inhibitor therapy became clinically available rather than an experimental compound.
Source Wikipedia, Wikipedia contributors
Analgesic Therapy, Origin Year1804
Analgesic Therapy, Treatments
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1804
1804 marks the first isolation of a pure pharmacological analgesic, morphine, from opium; folk and herbal analgesic use such as willow bark and opium poppy preparations is far older but lacks a precisely datable origin.
Source Morphine (Wikipedia)
Anesthesia, Discovery Year1846
Anesthesia, Discoveries
Standing
Concerns Discovery Year
Currently States 1846
1846 marks William Mortons public Massachusetts General Hospital ether demonstration, the most widely credited moment, but Crawford Long had used ether surgically in 1842 without publishing, and Horace Wells had demonstrated nitrous oxide in 1845 to a skeptical audience.
Source The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity, Roy Porter
Anesthesia, DiscovererWilliam Morton is most commonly credited for his 1846 public demonstration, but the priority claim is genuinely contested: Crawford Long used ether surgically in 1842 without publishing, and Horace Wells had already attempted a public nitrous oxide demonstration in 1845.
Anesthesia, Discoveries
Standing
Concerns Discoverer
Currently States William Morton is most commonly credited for his 1846 public demonstration, but the priority claim is genuinely contested: Crawford Long used ether surgically in 1842 without publishing, and Horace Wells had already attempted a public nitrous oxide demonstration in 1845.
Priority among Morton, Long and Wells was disputed in their own lifetimes and remains a genuinely debated question among historians of medicine, not a settled attribution.
Source A History of Medicine, Lois N. Magner
Anesthesia, Origin Year1846
Anesthesia, Treatments
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1846
Anesthesia's origin year as a TREATMENT is dated here, as it commonly is, to William Morton's 1846 public ether demonstration, the moment the practice began to spread; the underlying priority dispute over who first achieved surgical anesthesia (Morton, Crawford Long in 1842, or Horace Wells in 1844-45) is carried on the Anesthesia discovery entity, since it concerns credit for the discovery rather than the date the treatment took hold.
Source The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity, Roy Porter
Antibiotics, Origin Year1941
Antibiotics, Treatments
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1941
Penicillin was discovered in 1928, but antibiotics only became an available treatment class once Florey and Chains team achieved purification and clinical testing in the early 1940s, with 1941 marking the first documented clinical use.
Source The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity, Roy Porter
Antidepressant Therapy, Origin Year1951
Antidepressant Therapy, Treatments
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1951
Marks the 1951 Selikoff and Robitzek isoniazid trials where antidepressant-like effects were first observed; imipramine, the first drug developed specifically as an antidepressant, followed in 1955-56.
Source Wikipedia, Wikipedia contributors
Antihypertensive Therapy, Origin Year1947
Antihypertensive Therapy, Treatments
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1947
Source names this the first known instance of an effective antihypertensive treatment; earlier or rival claims are not ruled out.
Source Wikipedia, Wikipedia contributors
Antiretroviral Therapy, Origin Year1987
Antiretroviral Therapy, Treatments
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1987
AZT was approved as the first antiretroviral drug in 1987, but single-drug treatment alone did not durably control the virus; the therapy's more meaningful origin as an effective, chronic treatment is often dated instead to 1996, when combination therapy was shown to suppress HIV long-term.
Source Wikipedia, Wikipedia contributors
Ayurveda, Origin PeriodThe Charaka Samhita and Sushruta Samhita were compiled and redacted over many centuries by multiple authors rather than at a single date by a single author; historians place the Charaka Samhita's core content anywhere from the seventh century BCE to the early centuries CE, with a major redaction around 400 CE.
Ayurveda, Medical Specialties
Standing
Concerns Origin Period
Currently States The Charaka Samhita and Sushruta Samhita were compiled and redacted over many centuries by multiple authors rather than at a single date by a single author; historians place the Charaka Samhita's core content anywhere from the seventh century BCE to the early centuries CE, with a major redaction around 400 CE.
Some scholars place the Charaka Samhita's core content as early as the seventh century BCE, others argue its named author cannot have lived later than roughly 100 BCE to 200 CE, and the redactor Dridhabala filled in an estimated twenty percent of missing verses around 400 CE. Several historical figures used the name Sushruta, complicating attribution of the Sushruta Samhita as well.
Source A glimpse of Ayurveda (PMC)
Blain (Animal Disease), Communicable or Non-communicableCommunicable
Blistering Therapy, Origin Year400 BCE
Blistering Therapy, Treatments
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 400 BCE
Marks the Hippocratic humoral tradition blistering therapy draws on; the source dates Hippocrates himself (460-370 BC), not a specific first use of blistering.
Source Wikipedia, Wikipedia contributors
Blood Transfusion, Origin Year1901
Blood Transfusion, Treatments
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1901
Dated here to Landsteiner's 1901 discovery of blood groups, which made transfusion reliably safe; the practice of transfusion itself is far older, tracing to Jean-Baptiste Denys's documented but often fatal animal-to-human attempts beginning in 1667, so the origin year depends on whether the treatment is dated to first attempt or to first reliably safe practice.
Source Wikipedia, Wikipedia contributors
CAR T-Cell Therapy, Origin Year2017
CAR T-Cell Therapy, Treatments
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 2017
The chimeric receptor concept was described in 1987 and first entered clinical trial in the mid-1990s; this fact records 2017, the year the FDA granted the first two CAR T-cell therapy approvals (tisagenlecleucel and axicabtagene ciloleucel), the point the treatment became a real available therapy rather than an experimental construct.
Source Wikipedia, Wikipedia contributors
Cataracts, First Described (Era)Scholars dispute which culture first described or performed cataract surgery. A Sanskrit account attributed to the physician Sushruta describes the couching technique, but neither the authorship nor the exact date of the underlying Sushruta Samhita can be established with certainty. The Greek philosopher Chrysippus of Soli (circa 279 to 206 BCE) left an early explicit written account of couching in Greek sources. A modern historical review concludes it is impossible to say which nation, or which individual, first performed a cataract operation.
Cataracts, Conditions
Standing
Concerns First Described (Era)
Currently States Scholars dispute which culture first described or performed cataract surgery. A Sanskrit account attributed to the physician Sushruta describes the couching technique, but neither the authorship nor the exact date of the underlying Sushruta Samhita can be established with certainty. The Greek philosopher Chrysippus of Soli (circa 279 to 206 BCE) left an early explicit written account of couching in Greek sources. A modern historical review concludes it is impossible to say which nation, or which individual, first performed a cataract operation.
Genuinely disputed which culture first described or performed cataract surgery; see the linked open question.
Source Annals of Translational Medicine: The History of Cataract Surgery
Chemoprophylaxis, Origin Year1717
Chemoprophylaxis, Treatments
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1717
Marks the earliest documented case of drug-based malaria chemoprophylaxis found by the cited historical review: cinchona bark used to suppress malaria in soldiers during the Siege of Belgrade in 1717. Not a claim about when the term chemoprophylaxis itself was coined, only the earliest attested practice of this kind.
Source Historical Review: Problematic Malaria Prophylaxis with Quinine, G. Dennis Shanks
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Prevalence0.89% globally under the 1994 CDC criteria; 0.17% under stricter criteria
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Conditions
Standing
Concerns Prevalence
Currently States 0.89% globally under the 1994 CDC criteria; 0.17% under stricter criteria
Source Wikipedia: Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Origin Year1967
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Treatments
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1967
Beck developed cognitive therapy through the 1950s and 1960s; this fact records 1967, the year he first published the methodology, since sources differ on the exact founding year within that span.
Source Wikipedia, Wikipedia contributors
Craniotomy, Origin Year1884
Craniotomy, Treatments
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1884
Marks the 1884 brain tumor removal credited to Rickman Godlee, described by the cited source as founding modern brain surgery; distinct from the far older practice of trepanation, which this atlas dates separately and much earlier.
Source Wikipedia: Rickman Godlee