Timeline of Medicine/Advances in Medicine:

1820: American physician Hans Gram claimed that the body sought equilibrium without needing help from physicians. Balancing the four humors, phlegm, blood, yellow bile and black bile, was normal and the body regulated them itself. He believed that if a person was bleeding, the body was trying to get rid of excess blood. 1846: Ether began to be used as an anesthetic. 1860: John Griscom's ideas took hold in NY after a cholera break out. Interests in sanitary conditions were rekindled. 1862: Louis Pasteur determined that bacteria caused fermentation. 1865: Hospitals began spray operating rooms with an antiseptic mist. 1866: New York City created a metropolitan board of health. 1869: Massachusetts created a metropolitan board of health. 1876: Robert Koch demonstrated that pathogens caused disease. 1877: Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch develop the Germ Theory of Disease. 1879: First vaccination for cholera. 1881: Louis Pasteur develops an anthrax vaccine. 1882: Louis Pasteur develops a rabies vaccine. 1895: German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen discovered that cathode rays produced a type of radiation that penetrated the body. 1928: Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin.