December 12 in Medical History
14 entries: discoveries, epidemics, drugs and the people who shaped medicine.
Events
- 1st case of plague on Oahu, Hawaii
- Eddie Shore hits Toronto Maple Leaf star Ace Bailey from behind, fracturing his skull and ending his career
- Willem J. Kolff and his team at Ohio's Cleveland Clinic remove the heart from a dog and replace it with a pneumatic pump, which keeps the dog alive for 90 minutes, proving the feasibility of the artificial heart
- Tampa Bay Buccaneer Dexter Manley retires after failing drug test
- British PM Boris Johnson announces a emergency COVID-19 booster program to protect the NHS and stem a possible incoming “tidal wave of Omicron”
Born on this day
- Erasmus Darwininfluential English physician, poet, philosopher, and botanist (grandfather of Charles Darwin), born in Newark-on-Trent, England (d. 1807)
- Enid Balint-EdmondsBritish psychoanalyst, born in London (d. 1994)
- Étienne-Émile Baulieu [Étienne Blum]French biochemist, physician and inventor of the abortion pill, born in Strasbourg, France (d. 2025)
- William G. AndersonAmerican osteopath, civil rights activist and president of the Albany Movement, born in Americus, Georgia (d. 2026)
- Richard DavidsonAmerican psychologist, born in Brooklyn, New York
Died on this day
- MaimonidesJewish physician, philosopher, and scholar (born 1135 or 1138)
- Albrecht von HallerSwiss experimental physiologist, biologist and author (Acadamy of Science), dies at 69
- Daniel Carleton GajdusekAmerican virologist, (1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work on transmissibility of kuru), dies at 85
- Claude CastonguayQuebec politician (task force on Quebec health care), dies at 91