December 26 in Medical History
14 entries: discoveries, epidemics, drugs and the people who shaped medicine.
Events
- US Navy formally commissions 1st hospital ship, the USS Red Rover - a captured Confederate sidewheel barracks ship converted for the purpose - for service on the Mississippi
- 1st East-West Shrine Bowl game of college football 'all-stars' played before 25,000 fans at Ewing Park, San Francisco. Proceeds continue to benefit Shriners Hospitals for Children.
- WHO Chief Escapes DeathIsrael airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen narrowly misses WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in Sanaa
Born on this day
- Justine SiegemundSilesian midwife (1st woman to publish a German medical text - The Court Midwife), born in Rohnstock, Lower Silesia (d. 1705)
- Friedrich Reinhold KreutzwaldEstonian physician and author (died 1882)
- Norman OrentreichAmerican dermatologist known as "the father of modern hair transplantation", born in New York City (d. 2019)
Died on this day
- John FothergillEnglish physician, dies at 68
- Martinus van MarumDutch physician and inventor (constructed largest electrostatic machine in the world), dies at 87
- Jean Léonard Marie PoiseuilleFrench physician and physiologist (blood pressure), dies at 72
- Emil du Bois-ReymondGerman physiologist, co-discoverer of nerve action potential and founder of modern electrophysiology, dies at 78
- Mary Ann BevanEnglish nurse who, after developing acromegaly, toured the circus sideshow circuit as "the ugliest woman in the world" (born 1874)
- Jonathan Drummond-WebbSouth African pediatric heart surgeon (b. 1959)
- James B. EdwardsAmerican dentist, soldier, and politician, 3rd United States Secretary of Energy (born 1927)
- Melanie WatsonAmerican disability advocate and actress (Kathy Gordon in "Diff’rent Strokes"), dies at 57