December 15 in Medical History
24 entries: discoveries, epidemics, drugs and the people who shaped medicine.
Events
- Leidse university names Rembert Dodoens professor of botany and medicine
- 1st General pharmacopoeia in US published, Boston
- Christine Jorgenson is the first known American to undergo a sex-change operation
- American Psychiatric Association removes homosexuality from its list of mental disorders
- MLB suspends 3 Kansas City Royals players - Willie Wilson, Willie Aikens, and Jerry Martin - due to cocaine usage
- CIA director William J. Casey suffers a cerebral seizure
- Mayor of Flint, Michigan declares state of emergency over contaminated water supplies amid calls for a criminal investigation
- Affordable Care Act ('Obamacare') ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge in Fort Worth, Texas; later reversed by US Supreme Court
- UK newspaper "The Sun" publishes recording of Tom Cruise berating his film crew for breaking COVID-19 protocols
- COVID-19 Omicron variant called "probably the most significant threat" of the pandemic by head of UK Health Security Agency, warning of "staggering" growth in next few days
- Tens of thousands of nurses go on strike in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in largest strike in NHS history
Born on this day
- L. L. ZamenhofPolish physician and linguist (Esperanto), born in Białystok, Poland, Russian Empire (d. 1917)
- Niels Ryberg FinsenDanish-Farosese physician and phototherapist (Nobel Prize for Medicine 1903 for treatment for Lupus), born in Tórshavn, Faroe Islands (d. 1904)
- William HitzigAustrian Maxwell physician, born in Austria (d. 1983)
- Nicholas P. DallisAmerican psychiatrist and comic strip writer (Rex Morgan, M.D.), born in New York City (d. 1991)
- Maurice WilkinsNew Zealand-born English physicist whose X-ray diffraction studies of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) with Rosalind Franklin, proved crucial to discovery of DNA’s molecular structure by James Watson and Francis Crick (Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, 1962), born in Pongaroa, New Zealand (1916-2004)
Died on this day
- Daniel RutherfordScottish chemist and physician (born 1749)
- Forrest C. ShakleeAmerican chiropractor and founder (Shaklee Products), dies at 91
- Seewoosagur RamgoolamMauritian physician and politician, 1st Prime Minister of Mauritius (born 1900)
- Charles FletcherBritish pioneering physician and TV presenter (wrote the 1st report into the dangers of smoking), dies at 84
- Heinrich GrossAustrian physician (b. 1914)
- Eugene Victor WolfensteinAmerican political scientist and psychoanalyst, dies at 70
- Donald MetcalfAustralian physiologist and immunologist (born 1929)
- Shigeko SasamoriJapanese peace activist, nurse aide and Hiroshima survivor, dies at 92