August 26 in Medical History
13 entries: discoveries, epidemics, drugs and the people who shaped medicine.
Events
- Dutch professor Jacob Jongbloed demonstrates an artificial heart in Paris
- Fluoridation of San Francisco water begins
- Legionella outbreak in Quebec City, Canada, kills 8 and infects 104
- Democratic Republic of Congo's health ministry informs the WHO of an outbreak of Ebola; later confirmed as a different strain to that affecting west Africa
- Johnson & Johnson is ordered to pay the state of Oklahoma $572 million in the first trial against an opioid manufacturer
Born on this day
- Heinrich QuinckeGerman internist and surgeon (introduced lumbar puncture), born in Frankfurt an der Oder (d. 1922)
- Charles RichetFrench physiologist (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1913 for work on anaphylaxis), born in Paris, France (d. 1935)
- Margaret UtinskyAmerican nurse, recipient of the Medal of Freedom (died 1970)
- Albert SabinPolish American physician who invented the oral polio vaccine, born in Bialystok, Russian Empire (1906-1993)
- David NabarroBritish physician best known for leading the United Nations' responses to Ebola and Covid-19, born in London (d. 2025)
Died on this day
- Antonie van LeeuwenhoekDutch microbiologist, microscopist who was the first to observe bacteria and protozoa and naturalist (Philosophical Transactions), dies at 90 (1632-1723)
- Catherine HallBritish nurse who raised the professional profile of nursing and to establish its central role in health care, dies at 73
- Edward Brandt Jr.American physician and public health official, dies at 74