January 22 in Medical History
18 entries: discoveries, epidemics, drugs and the people who shaped medicine.
Events
- Roe vs. WadeIn a landmark decision, the US Supreme Court legalizes most abortions (Roe v. Wade). Writing the majority opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun states that the criminalization of abortion does not have "roots in the English common law tradition."
- Cholera epidemic begins in Peru with first known sufferer, 300,000 people infected over the next 12 months
- The British government launches pro-vaccine campaign
- World's first mass vaccine program against Malaria begins in Yaoundé, Cameroon, after successful trials of RTS,S vaccine showed it saved one in three lives
Born on this day
- Ritchie [Richard] BlackmoreEnglish physician to William III and writer of epic poetry, born in Somerset, England (d. 1729)
- Richard BlackmoreEnglish physician and poet (died 1729)
- Albert NeisserGerman physician who discovered the bacteria that cause gonorrhea and leprosy, born in Schweidnitz, Prussian Empire (d. 1916)
- Wilbur ScovilleAmerican chemist and pharmacist (died 1942)
- Gisela JanuszewskaJewish-Austrian physician (died 1943)
- Franz AlexanderHungarian-American psychoanalyst (pioneered psychosomatic medicine), born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary (d. 1964)
- James Hamilton DoggartEnglish ophthalmic surgeon (died 1989)
- Henry BauchauBelgian psychoanalyst and author (died 2012)
- Paul S. RussellAmerican transplant surgeon and founder of the Boston Interhospital Organ Bank (New England Donor Services), born in Chicago, Illinois (d. 2026)
- Berthold GrünfeldCzech-Norwegian psychiatrist, sexologist, and educator, born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (d. 2007)
- Alfredo PalacioEcuadoran physician and politician, President of Ecuador (died 2025)
Died on this day
- Johann Friedrich BlumenbachGerman anthropologist and naturalised credited as a founder of zoology and anthropology, dies at 87
- László Batthyány-StrattmannHungarian physician and ophthalmologist (born 1870)
- Nico AdriaansDutch AIDS activist, founder of Rotterdam Junkiebond, dies of AIDS at 37