December 31 in Medical History
21 entries: discoveries, epidemics, drugs and the people who shaped medicine.
Events
- Alabama becomes 1st state to license dental surgeons
- Dr R N Harger's "drunkometer", 1st breath test, introduced in Indiana
- DDT, first of the modern insecticides used against malaria and typhus, is banned by the US Environmental Protection Agency after evidence of adverse environmental side effects
- Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen loses his arm in a car crash
- South African and US surgeons separate Zambian conjoined twins joined at the head
- The World Health Organization is informed of cases of pneumonia with an unknown cause, detected in Wuhan. This later turned out to be COVID-19, the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- WHO grants the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine emergency authorization, paving the way for worldwide distribution
Born on this day
- Andreas VesaliusFlemish physician and anatomist (De humani corporis fabrica), born in Brussels, Habsburg Netherlands (now Belgium) (1514-1564)
- Hermannus BoerhaaveDutch botanist and physician, born in Voorhout, Netherlands (d. 1738)
- Johann SpurzheimGerman physician, born in Trier, Electorate of Trier, Germany (d. 1832)
- Friedrich Robert FaehlmannEstonian physician, philologist, and academic (died 1850)
- Konstantin KonikEstonian surgeon and politician, 19th Estonian Minister of Education (died 1936)
- Marie Van Brittan BrownAmerican nurse and co-inventor of the home security system with her husband Albert L. Brown, born in Manhattan, New York (d. 1999)
- Avram HershkoHungarian-born Israeli biochemist and Nobel laureate in Chemistry, born in Karcag, Hungary
Died on this day
- Thomas ErastusSwiss physician and theologist, dies at 59
- Giovanni Alfonso BorelliItalian physiologist and physicist (b. 1608)
- Gualtherus van DoeverenDutch physician, and educator (University of Groningen, Leiden University). dies of gout at 53
- Donalee TabernAmerican scientist and inventor of Pentothal - world's most widely used anesthetic, dies at 74
- Vasily Grigoryevich LazarevSoviet Russian cosmonaut (Soyuz 12, Soyuz 18A), dies at 62
- Philip Manson-BahrEnglish zoologist and specialist in tropical medicine, dies at 85
- Justin KeatingIrish surgeon, journalist, and politician, Minister for Industry and Commerce (born 1930)