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.
Discovery of Streptomycin, DiscovererOfficially credited to Selman Waksman; Albert Schatz, the graduate student who performed the isolation, later won legal recognition as co-discoverer.
Discovery of Streptomycin, Discoveries
Standing
Concerns Discoverer
Currently States Officially credited to Selman Waksman; Albert Schatz, the graduate student who performed the isolation, later won legal recognition as co-discoverer.
Waksman received sole Nobel credit in 1952; a 1950 lawsuit established Schatz as legal co-discoverer with a share of royalties. See the linked dissent on this fact.
Source Wikipedia: Streptomycin
Diuretic Therapy, Origin Year1497
Diuretic Therapy, Treatments
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1497
Source dates proposed mercurial-compound diuretic use to at least the 16th century, shortly after the 1497 syphilis epidemic in Europe; this is the earliest datable pharmacological diuretic use, not a confirmed first use.
Source Mercurial Diuretic (Wikipedia)
Fresh Frozen Plasma Transfusion, Origin Year1940
Fresh Frozen Plasma Transfusion, Treatments
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1940
The cited source states only that plasma first came into medical use during the Second World War (1939-1945); 1940 marks the early-war period rather than a precisely pinned date.
Source Wikipedia: Fresh Frozen Plasma
Galen, Death Year216
Galen, Healers
Standing
Concerns Death Year
Currently States 216
The eleventh-century Suda lexicon places his death around 199 AD, but a passage in Galen's own treatises refers to events of 204 AD, and Arabic sources suggest he lived into the early third century; modern scholars including Vivian Nutton and Veronique Boudon-Millot favor a date around 216 AD.
Source Wikipedia, Wikipedia contributors
Germ Theory of Disease, Discovery Year1861
Germ Theory of Disease, Discoveries
Standing
Concerns Discovery Year
Currently States 1861
No single year settles the theory. 1861 marks Pasteurs experiments refuting spontaneous generation; Robert Kochs 1876 to 1884 work isolating the anthrax, tuberculosis and cholera bacilli is equally credited with establishing germ causation on a rigorous experimental footing.
Source The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity, Roy Porter
Germ Theory of Disease, DiscovererCredited jointly to Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch, whose complementary work over the 1860s to 1880s together established the theory; earlier contributors including Ignaz Semmelweis and Joseph Lister are also credited with anticipating or applying its logic.
Germ Theory of Disease, Discoveries
Standing
Concerns Discoverer
Currently States Credited jointly to Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch, whose complementary work over the 1860s to 1880s together established the theory; earlier contributors including Ignaz Semmelweis and Joseph Lister are also credited with anticipating or applying its logic.
Historians credit Pasteur and Koch jointly rather than a single discoverer; Semmelweis and Lister are recognized forerunners whose own work preceded formal acceptance of the theory.
Source A History of Medicine, Lois N. Magner
Hippocrates, Birth Year-460
Hippocrates, Healers
Standing
Concerns Birth Year
Currently States -460
Traditionally dated to about 460 BC, but ancient biographical sources disagree and no contemporary record fixes the year precisely.
Source The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity, Roy Porter
Hippocrates, Death Year-370
Hippocrates, Healers
Standing
Concerns Death Year
Currently States -370
Traditionally dated to about 370 BC, on the same uncertain ancient biographical basis as his birth year.
Source The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity, Roy Porter
Hirudotherapy, Origin Year-1500
Hirudotherapy, Treatments
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States -1500
Source states first recorded use was 3,500 years ago in Ancient Egypt; taken as approximately 1500 BCE, not an exact year.
Source Wikipedia, Wikipedia contributors
Home Hemodialysis, Origin Year1962
Home Hemodialysis, Treatments
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1962
Multiple groups (Boston, London, Seattle, Hokkaido) claimed to pioneer home hemodialysis in the early 1960s; who started it and the exact year is in dispute. This source places the Hokkaido group slightly ahead via Nose's 1962 PhD thesis.
Source Home Hemodialysis (Wikipedia)
Hotel-Dieu de Paris, Founding Year829
Hotel-Dieu de Paris, Medical Institutions
Standing
Concerns Founding Year
Currently States 829
829 is the earliest solid documentary evidence, recording the hospital as a dependency of the Notre-Dame cathedral chapter. Popular later tradition instead credits Bishop Landry with founding it around AD 651, a claim historians treat as legend rather than documentary record.
Source Hotel-Dieu de Paris
Immunology, Origin Period1796 cowpox inoculation credited to Edward Jenner; predated by centuries of documented variolation practice in China and elsewhere
Immunology, Medical Specialties
Standing
Concerns Origin Period
Currently States 1796 cowpox inoculation credited to Edward Jenner; predated by centuries of documented variolation practice in China and elsewhere
The 1796 cowpox trial by Edward Jenner is the credited founding act of vaccination in the clinical record, but variolation, deliberate infection with smallpox scab material, was already documented practice in China by around 1000 CE and was used across parts of Asia and the Ottoman Empire before reaching Britain. Medical historians genuinely debate how much credit belongs to the earlier, less formally documented tradition versus the 1796 experiment that established a scientific method.
Source History of Vaccines: Edward Jenner Overview
Immunosuppressive Therapy, Origin Year1949
Immunosuppressive Therapy, Treatments
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1949
Marks Hench's 1949 introduction of therapeutic corticosteroid dosing (cortisone), the earliest deliberate pharmacological immunosuppression on record; transplant-specific immunosuppression followed in the 1960s.
Source Wikipedia, Wikipedia contributors
Insulin Therapy, Origin Year1921
Insulin Therapy, Treatments
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1921
Insulin was isolated in 1921, but Best and Collip's biochemical extraction method, developed within days of each other in early 1922, was what made a purified, clinically usable insulin possible; historians still debate how credit for the discovery should be divided among the four researchers, and 1922 is used by some accounts as the true origin year of insulin as a usable treatment.
Source Wikipedia, Wikipedia contributors
Intrauterine Insemination, Origin Year1793
Intrauterine Insemination, Treatments
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1793
John Hunter's 1793 London case is the earliest reported successful human use; the source itself notes earlier successful attempts likely occurred but were not recorded.
Source Embryo Project Encyclopedia: Intrauterine Insemination
Isolation of Insulin, DiscovererFrederick Banting and Charles Best, University of Toronto, with James Collip and J.J.R. Macleod; credit is genuinely contested.
Isolation of Insulin, Discoveries
Standing
Concerns Discoverer
Currently States Frederick Banting and Charles Best, University of Toronto, with James Collip and J.J.R. Macleod; credit is genuinely contested.
Credited principally to Frederick Banting and his assistant Charles Best, who first isolated a pancreatic extract that lowered blood sugar in diabetic dogs in the summer of 1921; biochemist James Collip then purified the extract to make it safe for human use, and physiology professor J.J.R. Macleod supplied the laboratory the work was carried out in and oversaw it. The 1923 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Banting and Macleod alone, a decision Banting protested publicly by sharing his prize money with Best, prompting Macleod to share his in turn with Collip; who most deserves credit for the isolation remains a genuine, sourced dispute rather than a settled attribution.
Source The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity, Roy Porter
Laparoscopic Surgery, Origin Year1901
Laparoscopic Surgery, Treatments
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1901
Kelling performed the first laparoscopic procedure on a dog in 1901; Jacobaeus performed the first human laparoscopic operation in 1910. This fact records the 1901 animal-model origin; the 1910 human milestone is a separate, later date.
Source Wikipedia, Wikipedia contributors
Lumpectomy, Origin Year1981
Lumpectomy, Treatments
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1981
Partial removal of a breast lump predates formal validation, but 1981 marks the Veronesi randomized trial establishing breast-conserving surgery (quadrantectomy), the basis of the modern lumpectomy, as an accepted alternative to radical mastectomy.
Source Wikipedia: Breast-conserving Surgery
Mercurial Therapy, Origin Year1496
Mercurial Therapy, Treatments
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1496
Sommariva is often credited as first to use mercury for syphilis, though the source notes he may not have been a physician.
Source Wikipedia, Wikipedia contributors
Moxibustion, Origin Year500 BCE
Moxibustion, Treatments
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 500 BCE
Source describes Bian Que as a semi-legendary figure; the year marks the earliest specialist practice on record, not a certain founding date.
Source Wikipedia, Wikipedia contributors