Berlin Charite was established in 1710 as a center for plague patients and 100 years later it grew to house a medical university. From then on, its campus has handled patients as well as research students. More than half of Germany’s Nobel Prize winners for medicine or physiology worked at the hospital.

During the Nazi regime, many physicians from Charite were involved in ethical crimes related to medicine. The Charite hospital was also responsible for autopsies on Jewish suicide victims and the executed resistance fighters of July 20th. After the war, the hospital fell under the jurisdiction of the German Democratic Republic, as it was located in East Berlin.

Berlin Charite became a European care hub during the outbreak of the Ebola virus in Africa in 2015. A South Korean medic, who was working in Sierra Leone and became infected with the virus, was flown to Berlin for treatment. The patient was sent to Berlin at the request of the South Korean government, which said his anonymity would be better kept there.

Charite was the first hospital to detect a locally transmitted coronavirus infection in Germany, back in March. Since then, it has gained prominence as Christian Drosten, director of Charite’s Institute of Virology, has played a public role in policy during the COVID-19 health crisis and been a scientific voice during the pandemic, through his many public appearances and weekly podcast.

The hospital has attracted international attention by offering support to prominent international politicians. In March 2014, Ukrainian opposition politician and presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko was treated at Charite. She suffered a total of three slipped discs, which she had acquired during her two and a half years imprisonment.

In 2018, Pyotr Verzilov, an associate of the Russian punk rock band Pussy Riot and staunch Vladimir Putin critic was flown from Moscow to Berlin, after showing symptoms of poisoning. Charité head doctor Kai-Uwe Eckardt treated the activist. Verzilov's case is said to have set the precedent for Alexei Navalny's supporters to consider Berlin for his treatment.

Vladimir Putin critic and prominent Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was flown to Charite Berlin from a hospital in Omsk, Russia, to be treated for suspected poisoning. The activist traveled on a chartered flight paid for by the NGO Cinema for Peace. Chancellor Angela Merkel was among those who pushed for a speedy transfer for Navalny to Germany.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was rushed to hospital in Siberia after being taken ill on a flight to Moscow. His aides allege he was poisoned in revenge for his campaigns against corruption. The 44-year-old ex-lawyer apparently only drank black tea before taking off from Omsk airport, which his team think was laced with a toxin that put him in a coma.

In 2018, Russian-Canadian activist Pyotr Verzilov was reported to be in a critical condition after allegedly being poisoned in Moscow. It happened shortly after he gave a TV interview criticizing Russia's legal system. Verzilov, the unofficial spokesman for the rock group Pussy Riot, was transferred to a hospital in Berlin where doctors said it was "highly probable" that he had been poisoned.

Sergei Skripal, a 66-year-old former Russian spy, was found unconscious on a bench outside a shopping center in the British city of Salisbury after he was exposed to what was later revealed to be the nerve agent Novichok. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the situation "tragic" but said, "We don't have information about what could be the cause" of the incident.

The estranged half-brother of Kim Jong Un was killed on February 13, 2018 at Kuala Lumpur airport after two women allegedly smeared the chemical nerve agent VX on his face. In February, a Malaysian court heard that Kim Jong Nam had been carrying a dozen vials of antidote for the deadly nerve agent VX in his backpack at the time of the poisoning.

Former Russian spy Litvinenko had worked for the Federal Security Service (FSB) before he defected to Britain, where he became a journalist and wrote two books of accusations against the FSB and Putin. He became ill after meeting with two former KGB officers and died on November 23, 2006. A government inquiry found he was killed by radioactive polonium-210 which it alleged the men put in his tea.

In November 2010, doctors at Berlin's Charité hospital discovered high levels of mercury had been found in a Russian dissident couple working in Berlin. Kalashnikov, a freelance journalist and former KGB colonel, had 3.7 micrograms of mercury per litre of blood, while his wife had 56 micrograms. A safe level is 1-3 micrograms. Viktor reportedly told German magazine Focus that "Moscow poisoned us."

Ukrainian opposition leader Yushchenko became sick in September 2004 and was diagnosed with acute pancreatis caused by a viral infection and chemical substances. The illness resulted in facial disfigurement, with pockmarks, bloating and jaundice. Doctors said the changes to his face were from chloracne, which is a result of dioxin poisoning. Yushchenko claimed government agents poisoned him.

On September 25, 1997, Israel's intelligence agency attempted to assassinate Hamas leader Meshaal, under orders from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Two agents sprayed a poisonous substance into Meshaal's ear as he walked into the Hamas offices in Amman, Jordan. The assassination attempt was unsuccessful and not long afterward the two Israeli agents were captured.

In 1978, Bulgarian dissident Markov was waiting at a bus stop after a shift at the BBC when he felt a sharp jab in his thigh. He turned to see a man picking up an umbrella. A small bump appeared where he felt the jab and four days later he died. An autopsy found he'd been killed by a small pellet containing a 0.2-milligram dose of ricin. Many believe the poisoned dart was fired from the umbrella.

On December 30, 1916, mystic and spiritual healer Rasputin arrived at Yusupov Palace in St Petersburg at the invitation Prince Felix Yusupov. There, Prince Yusupov offered Rasputin cakes laced with potassium cyanide but he just kept eating them. Yusupov then gave him wine in a cyanide-laced wine glasses, but still Rasputin continued to drink. With the poison failing, Rasputin was shot and killed.