December 3 in Medical History
20 entries: discoveries, epidemics, drugs and the people who shaped medicine.
Observed today
- Doctors' Day (Cuba)
Events
- The first recorded successful separation of conjoined twins Elisabet and Catherina Meijerin is carried out by Swiss surgeon Johannes Fatio in Basel
- First US dental society organized (NY)
- Airborn chemicals combine with fog to kill 60 (Meuse Valley, Belgium)
- First Human Heart TransplantSouth African surgeon Dr. Christiaan Barnard performs the world's first human-to-human heart transplant, on Louis Washkansky, at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town; he survives for 18 days
- Bhopal disaster: A Union Carbide pesticide plant leaks 45 tons of methyl isocyanate and other toxic compounds in Bhopal, India, officially killing 2,259. Other estimates are as high as 16,000 (including later deaths) and over half a million injured.
- “I actually believe they’re going to be the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation,” warns Dr. Robert Redfield, head of US CDC about the months ahead with COVID-19
Born on this day
- Lombe AtthillNorthern Irish obstetrician and gynaecologist (died 1910)
- Carlos FinlayCuban epidemiologist and physician (died 1915)
- Donald Matheson SutherlandCanadian physician and politician, 5th Canadian Minister of National Defence (died 1970)
- Anna FreudAustrian-English psychoanalyst and daughter of Sigmund Freud, born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (d. 1982)
- Richard KuhnAustrian-German biochemist (Nobel 1938-work on carotenoids and vitamins), born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (d. 1967)
- Robert Arthur HughesBritish missionary and surgeon who worked in India, born in Oswestry, England (d. 1996)
- Eddie Bernice JohnsonAmerican nurse and politician (died 2023)
- Ewa KopaczPolish physician and politician, 15th Prime Minister of Poland
Died on this day
- (Nicolaas) "Cola" DebrotDutch lawyer, doctor.author and politician (Governor of the Netherlands Antilles, 1962-70), dies at 79
- Lewis ThomasAmerican physician and writer on biology (The Lives of a Cell, The Medusa and the Snail), dies of cancer at 80
- Elizabeth GlaserAmerican AIDS activist, and wife of actor Paul Michael Glaser, dies of AIDS at 47
- Charles ShayNative American soldier and Army medic at Normandy, dies at 101
- Jo Ann Allen BoyceAmerican pediatric nurse and member of the Clinton 12, dies of cancer at 84