August 16 in Medical History
16 entries: discoveries, epidemics, drugs and the people who shaped medicine.
Observed today
- Christian feast day: — Roch
Events
- Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker arrive in Boston to be exhibited
- Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians is hit on the head by a fastball thrown by Carl Mays of the New York Yankees. Next day, Chapman will become the second player to die from injuries sustained in a Major League Baseball game.
- Blood for BritainPioneering "Blood for Britain" program sending blood plasma for WWII wounded from the US, headed by Charles R. Drew , officially begins in Britain
- Longest survival of a pig's kidney transplant: the kidney survives a month in the body of a brain-dead man in research at NYU Langone Health
Born on this day
- Wilhelm WundtGerman physiologist, psychologist and philosopher, born in Mannheim, Duchy of Baden, German Confederation (d. 1920)
- Elsie InglisScottish surgeon and suffragette (died 1917)
- Wendell StanleyAmerican biochemist, first to crystallize a virus (Nobel Prize - 1946), born in Ridgeville, Indiana (d. 1971)
- David PatonAmerican ophthalmologist who created the Flying Eye hospital, born in Baltimore, Maryland (d. 2025)
- James ReillyIrish surgeon and politician, Minister for Children and Youth Affairs
Died on this day
- John PembertonAmerican pharmacist who invented Coca-Cola, dies of stomach cancer at 57 (1831-1888)
- Jean-Martin CharcotFrench neurologist, dies at 77
- Selman WaksmanUkrainian-American microbiologist (Nobel 1951-ingenious, systematic and successful studies of the soil microbes that led to the discovery of streptomycin), dies at 85
- Oveta Culp HobbyAmerican government official (US Secretary of Health) and newspaper publisher (Houston Post), dies at 90
- Princess Christina [Maria Christina]Dutch royal, singer, and dance therapist, dies of bone cancer at 72
- William G. AndersonAmerican osteopath, civil rights activist and president of the Albany Movement, dies at 98