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Timeline in Psychiatry

2900 BC – Imhotep (He who comes in peace), vizier to the Pharao, is credited with being the architect of the Sleep Pyramid of Sakkara, but his name is chiefly connected with 'incubation sleep' or 'temple sleep'.1
1100 BC – Recorded history shows that magic and sorcery were practiced in ancient China to treat mental illness. 5
1000 BC – In Homer's hexametric poems, people suffering from Insanity were thought to have offended the gods, who punished them by causing them to behave strangely. 2
700 BC – The Kuan Tzu recorded that "there are institutions where the deaf, blind, dumb, lame, paralysed, deformed and insane are received when they are ill so as to be cared for until they recover". 5
582 BC – Birth year of Pythagoras, who was the first philosopher to claim that the brain was the organ of the human intellect, as well as the source of mental disturbances. 5
500-400 BC – Alcmaeon of Crotona, a disciple of Pythagoras, and Anaxagoras were the first individuals to dissect animals systematically and experiment with the brains. 2
460 BC – Hippocrates, called the Father of Medicine, who was the first to attempt to explain consistently all diseases on the basis of natural causes, was born. 2
335-280 BC – Herophilus, Aristotle's grandson, and Erasistratus (310-250 BC) discovered through actual human dissections important anatomical and physiological facts about brain and other organ systems and have been honoured by the titles, Father of Anatomy and Father of Physiology respectively. 2
47 AD – Largus experimented with Electric Physiotherapy in treating the emperor's headache; that was the first time electricity was used in Medicine. 2
490 – Jerusalem had a hospital solely for the mentally ill. 2
865-925 – Rhazes, the illustrious Arab Physician, used psychotherapy in a primitive but dynamic fashion. He combined psychological methods and physiological explanations in a way reminiscent of the Hippocratics. 2
978-1036 – Avicenna, appointed a court physician at an age of 18, and recognized as the most brilliant of all Arabian physicians, authored Canon of Medicine (The Canon), which was in use as a textbook in Europe and the East till as late as the seventeenth century. This book was a systematic attempt to correlate Aristotelian philosophy, Hippocratic observation and Galenic speculation. 2
1247 – Bethlem Hospital, claimed to be Britain's mental hospital with the longest continuous history, was founded. 1
1409 – The first European hospital devoted entirely to mental patients was built in Valencia, Spain. 2
1484-1558 – Julius Caesar Scaliger discovered the Kinesthetic Sense, the muscular sense that registers the position of the different parts of the body. 2
1543 – Andreas Vesalius, Belgian anatomist, published his De Humani Corporis Fabrica, the enormous work that included all aspects of human anatomy with more than 300 illustrations; the book revolutionized the study of anatomy. 2
1621 – Robert Burton published Anatomy of Melancholy, which Sir William Osler called 'the greatest medical treatise written by a layman'. 1
1667 – Blood Transfusion as a cure for mental illness was first attempted by Richard Lower. 1
1733 – Bethlem Hospital in London, built two separate wings for 100 incurable patients. 1
1757 – St. Patrick's Hospital was opened in Dublin with the money left by Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels, who was a Governor of Bethlem Hospital in 1714. 1
1758 – William Battie, the first physician of St. Luke's Hospital, published his A Treatise on Madness, where he pointed out that there could be spontaneous recovery without treatment and that the vigorous purging and emesis then fashionable could be harmful rather than curative. 1
1761 – Giovanni Battista Morgagni, who had a special interest in Brain Pathology, published his notes on eight hundred autopsies, compiled over half a century, named On the Seats and Causes of Disease Investigated by Anatomy (Transl). 2
1777 – William Cullen published his four-volume major work, First Lines of the Practice of Physick, where he categorized almost all of the then known diseases according to symptoms, methods of diagnosis, and therapy; four books of the second volume were devoted to mental illness. 2
1781 – Montrose Lunatic Hospital, the first mental hospital in Scotland was founded by Mrs. Susan Carnegie It became the Royal Scottish Asylum in 1811. 1
1791 – Luigi Galvani, Professor of Anatomy at Bologna, published his experiments on the electric stimulation of frog's muscles. 1
1793-94 – Vincenzio Chiarugi, an Italian physician, published his three volume work On Insanity, where he argued that asylums were not merely to segregate mental patients, but to heal them. He outlined a scenario for doing this and thus, takes the credit for specifying the basics in running a therapeutic asylum. 3
1795-1860 – James Braid, a Scottish doctor who practiced in Manchester, coined the term 'Hypnotism'. 1
1804 – Aldini, the nephew of Luigi Galvani, claimed to have cured two cases of melancholia by the application of electricity. 1
1808 – The New York Hospital got a separate psychiatric building designated as the 'Lunatic Asylum'. 3
1812 – Benjamin Rush, considered to be the father of American Psychiatry, published his Medical Inquiries and Observations of Diseases of the Mind. 1
1828-1899 – Karl Kahlbaum contributed greatly to psychiatric nosology; he introduced new terms, some of which still persist: "symptom complex", "cyclothymia", and "catatonia". 2
1841 – The First Annual Meeting of the Association of Asylum Superintendents took place in Nottingham; this Association became in 1865 the Medico Psychological Association, in 1926 the Royal Medico Psychological Association and in 1971, the Royal College of Psychiatrists. 1
1845 – Wilhelm Griesinger, a professor at Berlin, asserted in his Pathology and Therapy for Psychiatric Diseases that 'mental illnesses are brain diseases. 4
1846 – James Esdaile, a surgeon in India, who also was another among who brought Mesmerism into prominence, published Mesmerism in India, and its practical application in surgery and medicine. 1
1853 – Walter Cooper Dendy, a surgeon, read a paper to the Medical Society of London entitled 'Psychotherapeia or the remedial influence of mind'. 1
1867 – Henry Maudsley published Physiology and Pathology of the Mind, which was one of the major psychiatric works of the nineteenth century. 1
1871 – Ewald Hecker, a student of Kahlbaum, coined the term "hebephrenia" and described the condition. 2
1875 – Wilhelm Wundt founded the first Psychology Laboratory (Behaviour Therapy) at Leipzig. 1
1876 – Charles Darwin wrote a descriptive treatise, A Biographical Sketch of an Infant that attempted to explain children’s behaviour and psychology. 2
1878-1958 – J. B. Watson changed the focus of psychology from the study of inner sensations to the study of outer behaviour, an approach called 'Behaviourism'. 6
1885 – Sigmund Freud, holding a traveling scholarship, visits the clinic of Jean Martin Charcot in Paris. 1
1885 – A. H. Newth, writing in the Journal of Mental Science, described the continuous current as Sedative and the intermittent current as Stimulating. 1
1891 – New methods of staining cell bodies and the sheaths of fibrils led to the concept of the Neuron, by Heinrich von Waldeyer. 2
1895 – Freud, with Joseph Breuer, published Studies in Hysteria. 1
1896, March 15 – Freud went public with his 'seduction theory' in a lecture in Vienna, on etiology of hysteria. 4
1896 – Lightner Witmer at the University of Pennsylvania, who coined the term Clinical Psychology, opened the first psychological clinic to use remedial educational methods to treat defective children. 2
1896-1980 – Jean Piaget postulated four major stages of intellectual development. 6
1899 – Emil Kraepelin, in the sixth edition of his textbook, classified the Psychoses into two main groups: Manic-Depressive and Dementia Praecox. 1
1904 – Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936) received the Nobel Prize, for his experimental work on digestive glands, leading to the concept of 'conditioned reflex'. 2
1904-1990 – B. F. Skinner formulated the concept of '‘Operant Conditioning' as a kind of conditioning in which reinforces could be used to make a response more probable and frequent. 6
1905 – The development of psychotherapeutic group work began in the United States, when J. H. Pratt held educational meetings aimed at raising the morale of his tuberculous patients at the Boston Dispensary. 2
1907 – Wasserman Test was introduced, thereby helping physicians to identify that GPI or Dementia Paralytica was a Psychosis caused by the syphilitic infection of the brain. 1
1907 – Alfred Adler published his monograph on the Inferiority of Organs, in which he based the origin of the neuroses on the mental influence of physical deficits. 1
1907-1990 – British psychoanalyst, John Bowlby, described the 'Attachment Theory', which proposed that mother-child attachment was an essential medium of human interaction that had important consequences for later development and personality functioning. 6
1908 – McLeod used Bromide Sleep for Opium Addicts. 1
1911 – American Psychoanalytic Association was founded. 1
1911 – Eugen Bleuler introduced the term 'Schizophrenia' for the group of disorders which Kraepelin had called 'Dementia Praecox'. 1
1912 – Hauptmann showed the value of Phenobarbitone in treating Epilepsy. 1
1912 – The Boston Psychopathic Hospital was organized under Elmer E. Southard, who, together with Mary Jarett, was responsible for introducing the psychiatric social worker into the psychiatric child guidance team. Southard's concept of the function of the social worker was to study the child both in school and at home. 2
1919 – Ernest jones, Freud's first British follower and his biographer, founded the British Psychoanalytic Society. 1
1922 – Klasi induced Sleep Narcosis with Barbiturates. 1
1925 – Arnold Gesell of United States published a comprehensive systematic outline of the normal development pattern in children, The Mental Growth of the Pre-School Child: A Psychological Outline of Normal Development from Birth to the Sixth Year, Including a System of Developmental Diagnosis. 5
1926 – Otto Loewi, professor of pharmacology at the University of Graz, isolated the first neurotransmitter, Acetylcholine. 3
1927 – Julius von Wagner-Jauregg, who had noted that there was a remission of symptoms of GPI, when patients with syphilis were suffering from intercurrent infections, began using malarial-fever treatment, for which innovation he received the Nobel Prize that year and was the only Psychiatrist so honoured. 2
1929 – Franz Alexander, in his work The Psychoanalysis of the Total Personality, made the first systematic attempt to apply the structural-dynamic theory of personality to the understanding of neuroses and psychoses. 2
1931 – S. Siddiqui and Rafat Siddiqui from India isolated five alkaloids from Rauwolfia serpentina and two other Indian scientists, Gannath Sen and Kartick Bose, described its use in cases of high blood pressure and also in psychoses. 2
1933 – Manfred Sakel discovered Insulin Coma Therapy. 3
1933 – Thyroxine, the active principle in thyroid extract, was synthesized by Sir Charles Harington at University College, London. 1
1934 – Ladislas von Meduna, a Budapest psychiatrist discovered that camphor-induced convulsion could result in significant improvement in schizophrenic symptoms, thereby beginning the era of true convulsive therapies, where convulsions were not undesired or incidental, as they were with Insulin therapy. 3
1935-36 – Egas Moniz, a Lisbon neurologist, performed for the first time prefrontal lobotomy on 20 patients; but in the absence of statistical and procedural details and follow up study, his claims were not properly recognized by the scientific community. 3
1938, March 15 – Ugo Cerletti, with Lucio Bini reported First Results of ECT. 1
1938 – Merritt and Putnam reported to the meeting of the American Medical Association at San Francisco the anti-convulsant property of Diphenylhydantoin. 1
1939 – WAIS (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale) was originally constructed by David Wechsler. The scale has undergone many revisions since then and the latest revision, WAIS-III, is in use today as the most widely used intelligence test. 6.
1943 – The hallucinogenic quality of Lysergic acid, the active ingredient of Ergot, was accidentally discovered by a Swiss chemist, Dr. A. Hoffman, in the laboratory, when he by chance sniffed a derivative of the rye ergot he was working with. 2
1946 – Washington neurologist Walter Freeman and neurosurgeon James Watts introduced the Transorbital Lobotomy. 3
1948 – The American Psychiatric Association's committee on naming went to work on a single national system of classification. 3
1949 – John Cade, the superintendent of the Repatriation Mental Hospital in Bundoora, Australia, described the beneficial effects of Lithium on 10 manic patients. 3
1950 – Bernie Ludwig, an organic chemist at Carter-Wallace, synthesized Meprobamate, which was later marketed as ''Miltown' in 1955. 3
1952, May – Jean Delay and Pierre Deniker of Ste-Anne mental hospital described for the first time their successful work on Chlorpromazine and are credited for its discovery. 3
1952 – The APA's first independent system of naming was published, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual [of] Mental Disorders, known subsequently as DSM-I. 3
1953 – John Gaddum of Edinburgh, one of the founders of psychopharmacology in Britain, speculated to a small but influential group of researchers, "It is possible that the 5HT (Serotonin) in our brains plays an essential part in keeping us sane", thereby remotely beginning the process of our journey to the phenomenal era of 'Prozac' (Fluoxetine). 3
1955 – Leo Sternbach, one of the Roche's chemists, synthesized Chlodiazepoxide, which was later marketed by Roche under the trade name Librium in February 1960. 3
1957 – Manfred Sakel was honoured, shortly before his death, by University of Vienna, for introducing Insulin Coma Therapy in 1933. 1
1957, September – Ronald Kuhn, a staff psychiatrist at J. R. Geigy Pharmaceutical in Basel, announced his discovery of Imipramine at a meeting of the 2nd International Congress of Psychiatry in Zurich. 3
1959 – Leo Sternbach, Roche's chemist who had synthesized Chlordiazepoxide, came up with the next Benzodiazepine in the series, Diazepam. Roche marketed Diazepam as 'Valium' in 1963. Valium was the single most successful drug in pharmaceutical history, until the introduction of 'Prozac'. 3
1968 – DSM-II was published. 3
1970 – FDA approved Lithium, two decades after its discovery. 3
1976 – Lily tested a Prozac analogue, Nisoxetine, on healthy volunteers, who showed no side effects. 3
1980 – DSM-III came into being. 3
1987 – DSM-III-R was published. 3
1987, December – FDA approved 'Prozac'. 3
1990 – Peter Kramer, psychiatrist at Brown University, coined the phrase "cosmetic psychopharmacology". 3
1994 – DSM-IV saw the light of the day. 3

References:

'Ministering to Minds Diseased' by Wilfrid Llewelyn Jones; William Heinemann Medical Books Ltd, London, 1983
'The History of Psychiatry' by Franz G. Alexander and Sheldon T. Selesnick; JASON ARONSON INC., 1996
'A History of Psychiatry' by Edward Shorter; John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1997
'Madness: A brief history' by Roy Porter; Oxford University Press, 2002
'Masters of the Mind' by Theodore Millon; John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2004
'Kaplan & Sadock's Synopsis of Psychiatry'; Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2007