February 21 in Medical History
24 entries: discoveries, epidemics, drugs and the people who shaped medicine.
Events
- Lucy B. Hobbs (Taylor) becomes 1st US woman to earn a DDS degree
- First US bacteriology laboratory opens in Brooklyn
- Dr. Harvey Cushing, the first U.S. brain surgeon, performs his first brain operation
- Alka Seltzer introduced
- The Convention on Psychotropic Substances is signed at Vienna
- AIDS patient Ryan White returns to classes at Western Middle School
- WHO pleads with Tanzania to start reporting COVID-19 cases amid fears of a hidden epidemic in the country
- Event of InterestIndia's BJP party issues resolution country had "defeated COVID under the able, sensitive, committed and visionary leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi ”, massive second wave hits two months later
- Australia's international border reopens to vaccinated tourists after 704 days, nearly two years
- Colombia's Constitutional Court, its highest court, decriminalizes abortion
Born on this day
- Harry Stack SullivanAmerican psychiatrist and psychoanalyst (died 1949)
- Henrik DamDanish biochemist who discovered vitamin K and won the 1943 Nobel Prize in Medicine, born in Copenhagen, Denmark (d. 1976)
- Helen Octavia DickensAmerican physician and gynaecologist (1st black women admitted to US College of Surgeons), born in Dayton, Ohio (d. 2001)
- Jean TatlockAmerican psychiatrist and physician (died 1944)
Died on this day
- Hieronymus BockGerman doctor (founder of modern botany), dies
- Justinus KernerGerman physician and medical writer (first detailed description of botulism), dies at 75
- Mary Edwards WalkerAmerican surgeon and feminist, only woman awarded Medal of Honor (US Civil War), dies at 86
- Acacio Gabriel ViegasIndian physician who identified the plague in Bombay, dies at 76
- Frederick BantingCanadian physician , recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, dies in a plane crash at 49 (1891-1941)
- Howard FloreyAustralian pathologist and pharmacologist who purified penicillin ( Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1945), dies at 69 (1898-1968)
- Gertrude B. ElionAmerican biochemist and drug researcher who developed groundbreaking leukemia and herpes drug treatments (Nobel 1988), dies at 81 (1918-1999)
- Bernard NathansonAmerican abortionist turned pro-life activist (b. 1926)
- Roger GuilleminFrench-American neuroscientist (1977 Nobel Prize for Medicine for work on neurohormones), dies at 100
- Martyn ButlerWelsh laser technician, HIV activist and co-founder of the Terrence Higgins Trust, dies at 71