The 1900s Medicine and Health: Chronology

1900:      The U.S. Army's Yellow Fever Commission identifies the mosquito as the carrier of the deadly disease.

1900:      Trichinosis, a disease caused by a worm present in undercooked pork, is shown by Dr. George Blumer to be widespread throughout the nation.

1900:     March 6 A Chinese laborer in San Francisco is discovered to have died of bubonic plague. More than one hundred people will die of the disease during the next four years.

1900:      The first caesarean section in Wyoming is performed by Dr. C. Dana Carter.

1901:      Congress grants permanent status to the U.S. Army Nurse Corps.

1901:      Dr. William Herbert Rollins presents research that X rays may be deadly.

1901:      The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research is established.

1902:      Congress passes the Biologics Control Act to regulate vaccines and antibiotics.

1902:      The McCormack Institute for Infectious Diseases is established in Chicago.

1902:      A case of pellagra, an ailment caused by malnutrition, is diagnosed in a poor farmer. The disease will become more common throughout the decade, especially in the South.

1903:      Dr. Arnold Schwyzer performs the first surgery to remove a foreign body from a lung.

1903:      Dr. Frederick George Novy founds the first medical unit to fight rabies in the United States.

1903:      Homer Folks conducts the first survey of tuberculosis in New York City.

1904:      Dr. Hugh Hampton Young performs the first radical operation on a cancerous prostate gland.

1904:      Dr. John LaRue founds People's Hospital, the first general hospital in Nevada.

1904:      Dr. John Erlanger conducts important research on the kidneys.

1905:      New Orleans suffers through the last yellow fever epidemic to hit the United States.

1905:      Dr. Ludvig Hecktoen proves humans can transmit measles to one another.

1905:      Dr. Louis Blanchard Wilson devises a fast, accurate laboratory analysis method for surgical tissue samples.

1905:      The American Medical Association, the Association of American Medical Colleges, and the Southern Medical College lege Association form the Council on Medical Education to reform medical schools throughout the United States.

1906:      A pathologist at the University of Chicago, Dr. Howard Taylor Ricketts, begins research that will later identify ticks as the cause of Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

1906:      The Pure Food and Drug Act becomes law.

1906:      The Meat Inspection Act is passed by Congress after widespread public concern over unsanitary conditions in the meatpacking industry.

1906:      The first biochemical research facility in the nation is founded at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Maryland.

1906:      Dr. James Hall Mason Knox Jr. organizes the Baby's Milk Fund in Baltimore, Maryland, to provide milk to infants in low-income families.

1907:      Dr. James Ewing and others founds the American Association for Cancer Research.

1907:      Dr. Simon Flexner and other researchers develop a serum treatment for epidemic spinal meningitis.

1907:      Drs. C. C. Guthrie and F. H. Pike successfully experiment with using plasma to replace blood during surgery.

1907:      The first successful tissue culture is performed using frog embryos.

1907:      Bernarr MacFadden is arrested for mail distribution of obscene materials: a magazine issue explaining to men how venereal disease is contracted.

1908:      Drs. E. Z. Hawkes and Edward Wharton Sprague perform the first blood transfusion.

1908:      The Connecticut Society for Mental Hygiene, the world's first mental health organization, is established.

1908:      The American Society for Clinical Investigation, the first organization devoted to patient research, is founded.

1909:      The College of Medical Evangelists is founded in Loma Linda, California, by Seventh-Day Adventists.

1909:      Dr. William Snow Miller develops a seminar on medical history that becomes a model for universities across the nation.

1909:      The Committee of One Hundred on National Health recommends a federal health department.

1909:      Philanthropist Nathan Straus founds the first tuberculosis prevention facility for children in New Jersey.