15 Discoveries in Health and Medicine

The Greatest Milestones since 1840

Presented by the University of Sydney
in association with the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and with the support of the Medical Foundation.

Selecting the 15 greatest

Readers of the BMJ were asked to nominate which of the medical breakthroughs of the past 167 years they considered the most important. “If we could have only one of them, which would it be? Would it be the identification of penicillin; the mass production of aspirin; the discovery of a link between smoking and lung cancer; or the world's first heart transplant?”*

A series of lectures at the University of Sydney

Nominations were submitted by readers worldwide and from this the 15 greatest were selected. Join us now in celebrating the visionary nature of the work of the pioneers behind the breakthroughs, in this series of public lecturers, delivered by the School of Public Health in the Faculty of Medicine.

*Jackson, BMJ; http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/333/7567/0-g?ehom

View these lectures online

10 April 2007

Lectures one and two
Computers: changing the way we learn, live, communicate and treat
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2 May 2007

Lecture One
Tissue Culture: Solving the Mysteries of Viruses and Cancer
Lecture Two
X-Rayted the Story Behind the Film
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30 May 2007

Lecture One
The Pill: Evolution of a Revolution
Lecture Two
Medicines for the Tortured Mind
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27 June 2007

Lecture One
Antibiotics: The epitome of a wonder drug
Lecture Two
Germ theory: invisible killers revealed
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25 July 2007

Lecture One
Smoking and health: Halting the "brown plague"
Lecture Two
Evidence based medicine: Doctors' and patients' sharpest tool
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