December 23 in Medical History
13 entries: discoveries, epidemics, drugs and the people who shaped medicine.
Events
- Van Gogh Cuts Off EarVincent van Gogh cuts off part of his left ear with a razor after an argument with fellow painter Paul Gauguin and sends it to a female courtesan for safekeeping
- First hospital ship built to transport wounded naval personnel is launched
- Alain Bombard arrives in Barbados after 65 days at sea proving his theory that a shipwrecked person could survive with almost no provisions, despite having lost 25 kg (65 lbs) in weight
- First successful human kidney transplant is performed by Dr. Joseph E. Murray at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts
- First US case of space motion sickness
Born on this day
- Johann Lukas SchubaurGerman composer, and physician, baptized in Lechfeld, Electorate of Bavaria, Holy Roman Empire (d. 1815)
- Edward BlythEnglish zoologist (died 1873)
- Niels JerneDanish immunologist (1984 Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology), born in London, England (d. 1994)
- Michael C. BurgessAmerican physician and Republican party politician (US Representative from Texas, 2003-25), born in Rochester, Minnesota
Died on this day
- John A. SampsonAmerican gynecologist, studied and coined the word endometriosis, dies at 73
- William Francis GanongAmerican physiologist (b. 1924)
- Alfred G. GilmanAmerican scientist (1994 Nobel Prize for G-protein discoveries), dies at 74
- Jean-Marie PeltFrench biologist, pharmacist, and academic (born 1933)