Menu
Notable Facts
1. Diagnostic tests play a role in more than 70 percent of doctors’ healthcare decisions in the United States.
2. More than 7 billion laboratory tests are performed in the United States each year.
3. There are more than 2,000 different laboratory tests available on blood and body fluids.
4. Pathology and laboratory science are among the fastest-growing professions in the United States.
5. More than 250,000 Americans work in medical laboratory services.
Notable Events
1. The compound microscope was invented around 1590 by Dutch spectacle-maker Zacharias Janssen.
2. William Harvey of England first described the circulation of blood in 1828.
3. Danish scientist Hans Christian Gram developed the method of staining bacteria that bears his name in 1848.
4. Test tubes came into use in the 1850s.
5. The medical hypodermic syringe was developed in 1853 by French surgeon Charles Pravaz and Scottish doctor Alexander Wood.German microbiologist Julius Richard Petri invented the Petri dish in 1887.
6. Polish-French physicist Marie Curie’s groundbreaking work in radiation research in the late 1800s and early 1900s led to the use of X-rays and other advances in medical treatment.
7. Austrian Karl Landsteiner discovered the existence of different human blood types in 1901.
8. The electronic centrifuge was introduced in 1912.
9. British biophysicist Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray photographs of DNA in the early 1950s set the stage for the discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure.
