The 1910s Medicine and Health: Chronology

1910:      A report by Abraham Flexner condemns the inadequate standards of many American medical schools, resulting in the closing of several schools and the merging of others.

1910:      The hospital at the Rockefeller Institute opens.

1910:      The National Association for the Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality is organized, leading to the opening of clinics for babies.

1910:      Columbia University offers the first course in optics (science dealing with the origins of light) and optometry (profession of examining the eye for faults that are treatable through corrective lenses) in the United States.

1910:     October 3 The Ohio College of Dental Surgery in Cincinnati offers the first U.S. course for dental assistants and nurses.

1911:      Measles is found to be a viral infection.

1912:      The National Organization for Public Health Nursing is founded.

1912:      Vitamin A is identified.

1912:      The Sherley Amendment to the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act challenges fraudulent claims of the effectiveness of patent medicines (nonprescription drugs protected by trademarks).

1912:      French-born surgeon Alexis Carrel is the first American to win the Nobel Prize in medicine for suturing, or tying together, blood vessels.

1913:      The American Cancer Society is organized.

1913:      Mammography, an X-ray process for detecting breast cancer, is developed.

1913:      Pellagra, a disease that would become associated with a deficiency of niacin and protein in the diet, claims 1,192 victims in Mississippi.

1913:      The United States Children's Bureau publishes a pamphlet on prenatal care.

1913:     November 13 The first annual convention of the American College of Surgeons occurs in Chicago.

1914:      The pasteurization of milk is instituted in large cities.

1914:      The Life Extension Institute, an insurance organization, offers preventive health examinations.

1914:      The Mayo family opens its Mayo Clinic building in Rochester, Minnesota.

1914:     June 22 The American College of Surgeons admits its first female members.

1915:      The United States Public Health Service Division of Industrial Hygiene and Sanitation is organized.

1916:      An epidemic of polio (a viral infection that results in fever, paralysis, and muscle atrophy) breaks out, striking more than twenty-eight thousand victims. Six thousand die, and many more are permanently crippled.

1916:      The practice of refrigerating blood for transfusions is instituted.

1916:      The National Board of Medical Examiners holds its initial examinations in Washington, D.C.

1916:     June 5 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that people who use or sell opium (an addictive narcotic drug made from the juice of the opium poppy) can be prosecuted.

1916:     October 16 Margaret Sanger opens the first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York.

1917:      Vitamin D is isolated from cod-liver oil.

1917:     February 23 The American Society of Orthodontists is incorporated. Its members deal with irregularities of the teeth and treatment through braces.

1917:     June The House of Delegates of the AMA approves a report that endorses health insurance.

1918:      The AMA increases the prerequisite for entrance into a Class A medical school from one to two years of college.

1918:      Congress passes the Chamberlain-Kahn Act for the study and control of venereal disease (a contagious disease contracted through sexual intercourse with an infected person).

1918:      The American College of Surgeons institutes a program to evaluate hospital standards.

1918:     August 27 The "Spanish" flu epidemic begins in the United States with the diagnosis of two sailors in Boston.

1919:      Ohio passes the first law for statewide care of handicapped children.

1919:     February 27 The American Association for the Hard of Hearing, a national social organization for the deaf and hearing-impaired, is formed in New York City.

1919:     December 23 The Relief, the first ambulance ship, is launched as a floating hospital.