December 21 in Medical History
18 entries: discoveries, epidemics, drugs and the people who shaped medicine.
Events
- 1st group hospital insurance plan offered (Dallas Tx)
- Dried human blood serum is first prepared at the University of Pennsylvania
- Louis Washkansky, the first man to undergo a human-to-human heart transplant, dies in Cape Town, South Africa, having lived for 18 days after the transplant.
- Man of the YearTaiwanese-American AIDS researcher David Ho is named Time Magazine's Man of the Year
- Detroit Lions linebacker Reggie Brown, knocked unconscious in game
- Governor of California Gavin Newson says there are now no intensive care beds left in Southern California or the San Joaquin Valley
- US begins vaccinating for COVID-19 using the Moderna vaccine
- Biden Receives VaccineUS President-elect Joe Biden receives the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine live on TV
Born on this day
- Emmanuel-Persillier LachapelleCanadian physician and founder of Hôpital Notre-Dame, Montreal), born in Sault-au-Récollet, Montreal (d. 1918)
- Hermann Joseph MullerAmerican geneticist and Nobel laureate, born in New York City (d. 1967)
- Frank FennerAustralian microbiologist and virologist (died 2010)
Died on this day
- James ParkinsonEnglish physician (First description of Parkinson's disease) and political activist, dies at 69
- Oskar LassarGerman dermatologist (electrophysical therapy, advocated for public bath houses), dies at 58
- Claude TozerAustralian doctor and cricketer (dashing NSW batsman), shot to death by a patient at 30
- Ernst-Günther SchenckGerman doctor and member of the SS whose memoirs proved historically valuable, dies at 94
- Autar Singh PaintalIndian medical scientist, dies at 79
- Edwin G. KrebsAmerican biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1918)
- Aggrey BurkeJamaican-British academic, activist and the first Black NHS consultant psychiatrist, dies of cancer at 82