Dartmouth Medical Milestones

 
1797   Dartmouth's "Medical Department" founded when founder Nathan Smith delivered first lecture, Nov. 22
1811  Dartmouth opens the nation's first building to use solely for medical education
1820   First US pharmacopeia published to standardize drug therapies, based on chemistry experiments and lectures at Dartmouth
1824 First successful tying of carotid artery
1838 Oliver Wendell Holmes, poet-physician joined faculty and introduced use of stethoscope to US medical curriculum
1839 Dartmouth graduates Samuel Ford McGill, the first black student to graduate from a US medical school.
1846 Anesthesia introduced to Northern New England when used in Hanover
1893 Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital opened and became a Dartmouth teaching hospital
1896 First clinical x-ray in America performed to diagnose a broken arm
1927 The Hitchcock Clinic established
1946 White River Junction VA affiliation initiated
1955 Nation's first MULTISPECIALTY intensive care unit (ICU) established at Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital
1957 Standard technique for total ear reconstruction developed
1961 The Brattleboro rat, a laboratory model for diabetes insipidus, discovered
1972 Norris Cotton Cancer Center opens with a radiation therapy machine model that is one of three worldwide
1973 Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) established
1977 Porous-coated cement-less hip implant developed
1981 First continuous infusion pump to deliver pain management drugs implanted in a patient
1983 Nation's first autologous bone marrow transplant for acute myeloid leukemia performed
1984 Role of glucocorticoids (cortisone-like steroid hormones) in stress determined
1985 Frameless stereotactic brain surgery developed, using computer guided imagery instead of frame attached to the head
1987 Northern New England Cardiovascular Study Group, now a national model for improving cardiovascular disease care, created
1989 First temperature sensitive mutants affecting respiration in any organism isolated, revealing new functions for respiratory genes
1989 Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences (now the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice) founded
1991 Novel immune system communicator molecule, CD154, on helper T cells identified
1993 Nations' first graduate program in evaluative clinical sciences established
1993 Essential regulator of blood cell formation encoded by the most frequently rearranged genes in leukemia purified and cloned.
1994 Key cholesterol metabolism gene (for ACAT enzyme) cloned
1995 Mechanism for how light resets biological clocks discovered
1996 Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care published, the first comprehensive documentation of patterns and variations in US medical practice
1996 Innovative New Hampshire vocational program pioneered by DMS psychiatrists to place those with mental illness in jobs proves successful and becomes national model
2001 Gene family of ultra small, micro RNA molecules discovered
2003 Aspirin shown to reduce the risk of colon cancer precursor
2003 First extensive study of health care disparities found more care is not necessarily better
2004 New vitamin, nicotinamide riboside, discovered in a vital molecular pathway, and in milk
2004 International Dartmouth-led clinical trial demonstrates successful cervical cancer vaccine
2006 Landmark Spine Patient Outcomes Research Trial (SPORT) first determines that patients with severe back pain improve with and without surgery
2007 VA study demonstrates effective therapy for women vets with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
2010 The first Center for Health Care Delivery Science launches
2012 Dartmouth Medical School renamed in honor of Audrey and Theodor Geisel.