1832 — Following fundraising appeals to individuals and various charitable organizations, the Boston Lying-In Hospital, one of the nation’s first maternity hospitals, opens its doors to women unable to afford in-home medical care.
1847 — Anesthesia is administered in childbirth for the first time (Boston Lying-In).
1875 — The Free Hospital for Women is founded "for poor women affected with diseases peculiar to their sex or in need of surgical aid," according to its mission statement. Each of five beds is sponsored by a different charitable group.
1883 — Antiseptic techniques are introduced to ward off infection following childbirth, dramatically reducing the maternal/child death rate (Boston Lying-In).
1911 — The Peter Bent Brigham Hospital is established "for the care of sick persons in indigent circumstances" with a bequest from restauranteur and real estate baron Peter Bent Brigham.
1914 — The Robert Breck Brigham Hospital, founded with a bequest from Peter Bent Brigham’s nephew, opens to serve patients with arthritis and other debilitating joint diseases.
1926 — Drs. William Murphy, George Whipple and George Minot discover that liver extracts cure pernicious anemia. In 1934, they share the Nobel Prize for this work (Peter Bent Brigham Hospital).
1929 — The first polio victim is saved using the newly developed Drinker Respirator (iron lung) at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in collaboration with Children's Hospital Medical Center and the Harvard School of Public Health.
1931 — Harvey Cushing, MD, the father of modern neurosurgery, performs his 2,000th brain surgery while serving as chief of Surgery (Peter Bent Brigham Hospital).
1944 — Researchers fertilize a human ovum in a test tube for the first time (Free Hospital for Women).
1949 — Carl Walter, MD, invents and perfects a way to collect, store and transfuse blood (Peter Bent Brigham Hospital).
1949 — Cortisone, a steroid treatment used throughout medicine, is first administered to patients with rheumatoid arthritis (Robert Breck Brigham Hospital).
1954 — The first successful human organ transplant, a kidney transplanted from one identical twin to another, is accomplished. Joseph Murray, MD, receives the Nobel Prize in 1990 for this work and the subsequent development of immunosuppressive drugs (Peter Bent Brigham Hospital).
1962 — A DC electric current is first used to restore normal rhythm to a heart (Peter Bent Brigham Hospital).
1966 — The Boston Hospital for Women is established through a merger of the Boston Lying-In Hospital and the Free Hospital for Women.
1973 — Non-invasive fetal heart monitoring is developed, enabling clinicians to more safely and accurately detect fetal distress during labor (Boston Hospital for Women).
1976 — BWH researchers launch the Nurses’ Health Study, enrolling 122,000 women in America’s first study of women’s health. Launched to explore the link between birth control pills and cancer, the ongoing NHS is examining associations between lifestyle factors (diet, smoking, exercise) and disease.
1980 — The Brigham and Women’s Hospital opens its doors, welcoming patients to a new, state-of-the-art facility six years after the formal affiliation of three distinguished predecessors, the Boston Hospital for Women, the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and the Robert Breck Brigham Hospital.
1984 — The first heart transplant in New England is performed at BWH.
1984 — BWH researchers launch a series of national clinical studies known as the TIMI trials (Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction), which demonstrate that new "clot busting" (thrombolytic) drugs can save heart muscle and improve patients’ chances of surviving a heart attack. The series of 24 trials, eight which are ongoing, has revolutionized the care of heart-attack patients.
1985 — The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, an organization co-founded by BWH cardiologist Bernard Lown, MD.
1991 — BWH is acknowledged as having received more citations in scientific papers than any other hospital in the world for the period 1986 through 1990.
1992 — BWH performs the first heart-lung transplant in Massachusetts.
1992 — A gene responsible for a severe, early-onset form of hypertension which runs in families is identified at BWH.
1992 — BWH researchers discover that a protein (amyloid beta) thought to be an early, causative feature of Alzheimer’s disease is also present in healthy individuals, and that patients with Alzheimer’s produce too much of this protein or cannot break it down properly.
1993 — BWH is selected by the National Institutes of Health as one of 16 Vanguard Centers nationwide to help lead the Women’s Health Initiative, the largest clinical trial ever undertaken in American women.
1994 — BWH unveils the world’s first Intra-Operative Magnetic Resonance Imaging System. This invention, which enables clinicians to take images of the body’s interior during surgery, makes it possible to cure patients with brain tumors that previously were considered inoperable.
1994 — BWH researchers at the helm of the national Survival and Ventricular Enlargement (SAVE) trial report that ace inhibitors (captopril) significantly reduce heart-attack survivors’ risk of recurrent heart attack and death.
1994 — The 12-story Center for Women and Newborns opens. The facility, which in 1999 is named the Mary Horrigan Connors Center for Women’s Health, sets a new standard in obstetrical and newborn care, featuring home-like birthing suites, private postpartum and antepartum rooms that promote family-focused care, and a 46-bed Newborn Intensive Care Unit with overnight rooms for parents.
1994 — BWH joins with Massachusetts General Hospital to form Partners HealthCare System.
1995 — BWH performs the nation’s first triple organ transplant, removing three organs from a single donor — two lungs and a heart — and transplanting them into three patients, giving each a new lease on life.
1996 — BWH researchers discover that exposure to bright light alone resets the human biological clock and successfully alters by several hours a patient’s "circadian pacemaker," which keeps the body’s internal system in syncrony with the external light-dark cycle.
1996 — BWH becomes one of only 10 hospitals in the country to perform "minimally invasive" aortic valve surgery.
1996 — BWH researchers at the helm of the Cholesterol and Recurrent Events (CARE) trial report that cholesterol-lowering statin drugs (pravastatin) significantly lower heart-attack survivors’ risk of recurrent heart attack and death.
1998 — BWH forges an affiliation with Faulkner Hospital in Jamaica Plain, a highly respected community teaching hospital founded in 1900. At Faulkner, patients receive top-notch, routine primary and adult medical and surgical care, as well as mental health, emergency, ambulatory and diagnostic services. Under the new alliance, these patients also gain easy access to BWH should they ever require advanced specialty care.
1999 — Amid national discourse on the need to reduce errors in medicine, BWH researchers report that the hospital’s own computerized drug-order entry system reduces the incidence of serious medication-related errors by 55 percent, setting a new benchmark for the country.
2000 — In what is believed to be a "first" in organ transplantation, BWH performs a quadruple transplant. Harvesting four organs from a single donor — a kidney, two lungs and a heart — hospital surgeons give new hope to four patients, all of whom weather their surgeries well.
2004 — BWH achieves another transplant "first". Hundreds of BWH staff — including doctors, nurses and intensive care staff — come in on their weekend time off to make possible five lung transplants in 36 hours.
2005 — As a result of BWH research in the PROVE IT-TIMI 22 trial, national standards for cholesterol lowering in coronary heart disease are reset.
2005 —The Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) Biomedical Research Institute (BRI) is established to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery by encouraging interdepartmental and interdisciplinary research among the Hospital's research community. The virtual research institute also serves as an internal and external voice for researchers.
