Philly Over the Microscope: A Timeline

by Jakob Dorof

1751 Broke physician Thomas Bond hits up his rich friend Benjamin Franklin to co-found Pennsylvania Hospital, the first in America. The hospital quickly drew attention for its innovations in maternity care and mental illness — until its mental health department moved to West Philly in 1841, with the founding of the bluntly christened Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane.

1765 Philly botanist John Bartram makes his most famous discovery with the flowering Franklin Tree, a rare genus saved from an 1803 extinction by its popularity in private gardens. His son William gave the tree its famous nickname in his book, Travels through North & South Carolina, Georgia, East & West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws; Containing an Account of the Soil and Natural Productions of Those Regions, Together with Observations on the Manners of the Indians. Embellished with Copper-Plates. Seriously.

1768 David Rittenhouse discovers the atmosphere of Venus, and spends the next year preparing to view its rare transit across the night sky. When the observation finally takes place, he faints from excitement (and later pretends it never happened). Moving to Philadelphia the following year, he now lives immortally as one of the nicest parks in town.

1772 Englishman Joseph Priestly publishes Directions for Impregnating Water with Fixed Air, having discovered that water tastes agreeably sweet when carbonated — birthing an early form of soda pop. Later, on his way to rural Pennsylvania, he made a pit-stop in Philly to help found the First Unitarian Church, thereby giving future generations of young Philly hipsters a second reason to remember his name.

1803 Philly doc Benjamin Rush gives Meriwether Lewis 50 dozen of his "bilious pills," an early form of laxative that he and Clark would somewhat grossly dub "thunderclappers" on their famous expedition. The pills' inordinately high mercury content makes it easy for archaeologists to track the famous explorers' trail (and hygiene) nearly 200 years later.

1808 Philly physician William P.C. Barton legitimizes nitrous oxide experiments as real science with the publication of his UPenn senior thesis, A Dissertation on Chymical Properties and Exhilarating Effects of Nitrous Oxide Gas. The book proves its point with an illustration of a giddy man sucking "laughing gas" out of a sheep's bladder.

1812 Fresh off giving Lewis and Clark a hefty load of shit pills, Founding Father and Philly chemist Ben Rush posits that mental illness is caused by disruptions of blood circulation to the brain, and subsequently attempts to treat crazy people by spinning them around rapidly. He was a bit off the mark, but was years ahead of his time in discovering that alcohol addiction is as much a form of medical disease as it is a choice. He begins weaning boozehounds off the bottle through a series of less potent substances.

1842 Shortly after getting his masters at UPenn, Crawford Long uses anesthesia while removing a tumor from the neck of a patient. Unconscious surgery soon becomes all the rage.

1911 After getting a job as a research assistant at (wait for it) UPenn, Japanese bacteriologist Hideyo Noguchi discovers syphilis — we presume coincidentally.

1942 Philly resident Isaac Asimov thinks ahead and comes up with the Three Laws of Robotics — including a rule that no robot can cause a human being harm — and publishes it as part of his seminal I, Robot science fiction novel. More than 60 years later, Philly's own Will Smith obliterates all three laws with his summer blockbuster of the same title.

1943 The Philadelphia Naval Shipyard's 1,240-ton USS Eldridge allegedly vanishes from sight for a brief period of time as part of what is now known as the Philadelphia Experiment. The unlikely tale spirals into an extended plot involving UFO conspiracy theorists, cryptic packages sent to the government from self-described "Gypsie" believers, Eldridge crew member testimonies and staunch denials from the U.S. Navy.

1953 Philly-born astronomer Joseph Ashbrook hits the archives to do some number-crunching and re-emerges with a highly precise value for the rotation period of Mars — accurate within a few thousandths of a second. For his hard work, Ashbrook was awarded a chair as editor for Sky & Telescope magazine.

1976 Philly resident Baruch S. Blumberg wins the Nobel Prize in Medicine for identifying Hepatitis B — in the following years, he developed a vaccine for it. At 83, he remains one of the most renowned scientists living in Philadelphia to date.