1600-1754: Science and Medicine: Chronology

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1600-1754: Science and Medicine: Chronology

IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1600-1754

1602

Sebastian Vizcaino sails from New Spain and explores the California coast as far north as Cape Mendocino.
Englishman Bartholomew Gosnold explores the coast of New England from Maine to southern Massachusetts.

1603

Samuel de Champlain arrives in New France (Canada) and explores the Saint Lawrence River valley.
Englishman Martin Pring explores Cape Cod.

1604

Edward Grimston’s translation of José de Acosta’s The Naturall and Morall Historie of the East and West Indies, a description of Central and South America, is published in England.
Juan de Oñate leads a military expedition from New Spain and explores the Colorado River.
Samuel de Champlain explores the northeast coast from Nova Scotia to Cape Cod.

1605

George Weymouth of England explores the coast of Maine and Saint Georges Bay, Newfoundland.

1608

John Smith explores the Chesapeake Bay.

1609

Henry Hudson explores the Hudson River.
Samuel de Champlain discovers Lake Champlain.

1610

Dr. Lawrence Bohun of Virginia sets up the first botanical garden in the British colonies.
Henry Hudson sails into Hudson Bay.
The viceroy of Mexico, Luis de Velasco, Marqués de Salinas, draws a map of the North American Atlantic coast.

1612

The first hospital in the British colonies is established at the James River.
John Smith’s A Map of Virginia is published in England.
William Strachey pens The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia, an account of the natural history of Virginia.
Marc Lescarbot’s History of New France, a description of the Saint Lawrence River Valley, is published in Paris.

1614

Apr.–July John Smith explores the coast, observes the natural features, and studies the Algonquin tribes of New England.

1615

Samuel de Champlain explores the region of Lake Huron and Lake Ontario.

1616

English explorer William Baffin explores Baffin Bay in search of the Northwest Passage.

1619

Ironworks are built at Falling Creek, Virginia.

1621

The first gristmill is built at Jamestown, Virginia.

1622

The population of Virginia is fifteen hundred.

1624

John Smith’s The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles is published in England.

1625

The Brigg’s Map shows California as an island detached from the continent.
Of the six thousand immigrants who have arrived in Virginia since 1607, only twelve hundred are still living.

1628

The first gristmill is built in Massachusetts.

1634

William Wood’s New England’s Prospect, an account of the topography and natural history of the region, is published in England.
Frenchman Jean Nicolet explores Lake Michigan.
Dutch explorer Härmen Van den Bogaert explores the Oneida country of upstate New York.

1636

Harvard College opens.

1638

The first American printing press begins operations in Boston, Massachusetts.
June The first recorded earthquake occurs in New England.

1642

Darby Field and two Native American companions make the first ascent of Mount Washington, New Hampshire, the tallest peak in New England (6,288 feet).

1648

Ironworks are built at Saugus, Massachusetts.

1651

John Farrer publishes his Maff of Virginia, which erroneously shows the Pacific Ocean just west of the Appalachian Mountains.

1652

John Sherman and Jonathan Ince explore the Merrimack River and discover Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire.

1658

A hospital for Dutch soldiers is established at New Amsterdam.

1659

The first argument in the British colonies for Nicolaus Copernicus’s heliocentric theory is published by Zechariah Brigden in his almanac.

1660

Frenchmen Pierre Radisson and Chouart des Groseilliers explore Lake Superior.

1662

The Royal Society of London for the Promotion of Natural Knowledge is founded.

1663

John Winthrop Jr. becomes the first American elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London.
Naturalist John Josselyn climbs Mount Washington, New Hampshire.

1669

Joseph West establishes an experimental garden in South Carolina on the Ashley River.

1670

John Lederer reaches the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia.

1671

Thomas Batts and Robert Fallam are the first British colonists to explore the Appalachian Mountains.

1672

John Winthrop Jr. presents Harvard College with a three-and-one-half-foot telescope.
French Jesuits Claude Dablon and Claude-Jean Allouez map the Lake Superior region.
John Josselyn publishes New Englands Rarities Discovered.

1673

The French trader Louis Jolliet and the Jesuit priest Jacques Marquette explore the Mississippi River.

1674

John Josselyn publishes An Account of Two Voyages to New-England.

1680

Thomas Brattle uses the Harvard College telescope to study Newton’s Comet.

1682

9 Apr. After voyaging down the Mississippi River, French explorer René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle reaches the Gulf of Mexico.
Sept. Increase Mather and his sons Cotton and Nathaniel use a telescope to analyze Halley’s Comet.

1683

The Boston Philosophical Society is founded.

1685

James Roseboom explores the region of Lake Erie and Lake Michigan.

1687

Charles Morton publishes Compendium of Physics, the standard natural history text used at Harvard College.
18 Jan. The aurora borealis is seen in New England.

1693

Dutch explorer Arnout Viele explores the Ohio River valley.

1697

Louis Hennepin publishes the first engraving of Niagara Falls in his New Discovery of a Very Great Country.

1700

John Lawson explores upper North and South Carolina.
Spanish priest Eusebio Francisco Kino explores the region of the Gila and Colorado Rivers.

1708

The first known copy of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687) arrives in America.

1710

The Pennsylvania rifle is invented by German gunsmiths residing in Pennsylvania.
A packet boat establishes regular communications between England and New York.

1714

French explorer Etienne Veniard de Bourgmont ascends the Missouri River.
English explorer John Lawson publishes A History of Carolina.

1716

Virginia governor Alexander Spotswood journeys up the James River through the Blue Ridge Mountains.

1718

Guillaume Delisle prints a map of the territory of Louisiana.

1719

Frenchman Bénard de La Harpe explores as far westward as Oklahoma.

1720

Cotton Mather publishes The Christian Philosopher.

1721

The first successful smallpox inoculation occurs in Boston.

1727

New Englander Isaac Greenwood gives a series of sixteen public lectures on science.
Earthquakes rattle New England.
Benjamin Franklin’s junto, the forerunner of the American Philosophical Society, is established in Philadelphia.

1728

Danish explorer Vitus Jonassen Bering sails through the Bering Strait, proving that Asia and America are separate land masses.
Cotton Mather dies.

1729

Frenchman Chaussegros de Léry explores the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers.

1730

Philadelphian Thomas Godfrey improves the mariner’s quadrant for determining latitude at sea.

1732

Benjamin Franklin publishes the first Poor Richard’s Almanack.
Englishman Mark Catesby publishes the first edition of Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands.

1733

English agriculturist Jethro Tull publishes Horse-Hoeing Husbandry, advocating the use of the plow to keep fields fertile.
An experimental garden is established near Savannah, Georgia, for testing the horticulture of such items as coffee and tea.

1734

Virginia physician John Tennent publishes the popular medical guide Everyman His Own Doctor: Or, the Poor Planter’s Physician.

1736

The Medical Society of Boston is founded.

1738

The Frenchman Sieur de La Verendrye explores North Dakota.
A smallpox epidemic starts in South Carolina.

1739

Pierre and Paul Mallet reach the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in present-day Colorado and New Mexico.

1742

Benjamin Franklin invents the Franklin stove.

1744

Benjamin Franklin organizes the American Philosophical Society “for promoting useful knowledge.”

1745

Isaac Greenwood, the first Harvard Hollis Professor and a mathematician and physicist of note, dies.

1747

Benjamin Franklin coins the terms positive and negative to refer to electrical charges.
New England physician William Douglass publishes A Summary, Historical and Political, of the... British Settlements in North America.

1748

Peter Kalm arrives in America as the scientific emissary of Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus.

1750

Dr. Timothy Walker crosses the Appalachian Mountains and reaches the Cumberland Gap.
Parliament restricts colonial iron production in the Iron Act.

1751

Christopher Gist of Maryland crosses the Appalachian Mountains into Kentuck.
American naturalist John Bartram publishes his natural history of upstate Pennsylvania and New York.
English patron of science Peter Collinson publishes Benjamin Franklin’s letters to him about electricity as Experiments and Observations on Electricity, Made at Philadelphia in America, by Mr. Benjamin Franklin.
Franklin writes Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind.
Philadelphia scientist and patron of science James Logan dies.

1752

Benjamin Franklin’s kite experiment proves that lightning is electricity.
Franklin proposes the use of the lightning rod on buildings.
The American colonies adopt the New Style, or Gregorian, Calendar, making 1 January the first day of the year; in the Old Style, or Julian, Calendar the year started on 25 March.
William Douglass, Boston physician and participant in the smallpox inoculation controversy, dies.
The Pennsylvania Hospital, the first permanent American hospital, opens its doors at Philadelphia.