December 19 in Medical History
17 entries: discoveries, epidemics, drugs and the people who shaped medicine.
Events
- Irish-born physician John Bodkin Adams is arrested in connection with the suspicious deaths of more than 160 patients. Eventually he is convicted only of minor charges.
- Mary Lund is 1st woman to receive a Jarvik VII artificial heart at Abbott Northwestern Hospital, Minneapolis
- Alex Puccio ascends Terre De Sienne V13 (8B) at Hueco Tanks, six months after spinal surgery
- At least 48 people die after drinking bath lotion in Irkutsk, Siberia, thinking it contained alcohol
- First use of a drone to deliver vaccines to the island of Erromango, Vanuatu, by UNICEF
- "Science" names anti-obesity medications that mimic the hormone GLP-1 their breakthrough of the year, that contain semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro)
Born on this day
- Antoine Louis DugèsFrench obstetrician and naturalist (died 1838)
- John Kirk BarryBritish physician, explorer and administrator in Zanzibar (companion to explorer David Livingstone), born in Barry, Scotland (d. 1922)
- George Davis SnellAmerican geneticist (1980 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, H-2 gene), born in Bradford, Massachusetts (d. 1996)
- Catherine HallBritish nurse who raised the professional profile of nursing and to establish its central role in health care, born in Sheffield, England (d. 1996)
- William SchutzAmerican psychologist and academic (died 2002)
- William DeVriesAmerican cardiothoracic surgeon (artificial heart), born in Brooklyn, New York
- Martin Hume JohnsonEnglish physiologist and academic
- Rosa BlasiAmerican stage and screen actress (Strong Medicine), and family therapist, born in Chicago, Illinois
- Anne Marie HochhalterAmerican disability and anti-gun activist, paralysed during the Columbine School massacre, born in Bismarck, North Dakota (d. 2025)
Died on this day
- Alois AlzheimerGerman psychiatrist and neuropathologist (Alzheimer Disease), dies at 51 (1864-1915)
- Douglas DickAmerican actor and psychologist (Rope, Waterfront), dies at 95