Johns Hopkins Scene of Major Advances in Medicine

Here are some medical milestones at Johns Hopkins University and Hospital:

1889--Surgeon William S. Halsted develops the radical mastectomy for breast cancer.

1902--Hugh Hampton Young designs an operation called a perineal prostatectomy to treat bladder problems caused by an enlarged prostate. “Diamond Jim” Brady was so grateful for the surgery that he donated the money to build a urology institute.

1907--Anatomist Ross Harrison creates first culture of living cells outside the body.

1913--First psychiatric clinic in a general teaching hospital founded by steel magnate Henry Phipps.

1913--First renal dialysis developed by pharmacology professor John Jacob Abel. The cylindrical artificial kidney was tested on a rabbit.

1926--Abel crystallizes insulin, proving that it is a protein.

1944--At the suggestion of pediatric cardiologist Helen Taussig, surgeon Alfred Blalock performs the “blue baby” operation to treat a congenital heart defect. The operation helped pave the way for modern heart surgery.

1948--Allergist Leslie Gay finds that Dramamine protects against motion sickness.

1968--Daniel Nathans and Hamilton Smith discover restriction enzymes, which are chemical scissors that cut genetic material in particular places. They shared a 1978 Nobel Prize for their discovery, now widely used in genetic engineering.