January 4 in Medical History
21 entries: discoveries, epidemics, drugs and the people who shaped medicine.
Events
- Portuguese Viceroy Fernando Álvarez de Toledo banishes Zutphen City's only physician, Joost Sweiter, "because he is a Jew"
- Dr. William West Grant performs the first successful appendectomy in Davenport, Iowa, on 22-year-old Mary Gartside
- French psychologist Émile Coué brings his self-esteem therapy to the US, promoting "Every day in every way I am getting better and better"
- Sharon Suffers Second StrokeIsraeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffers a second, more serious stroke, and his authority is transferred to acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
- The US Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention remove HIV infection from their list of communicable diseases of public health significance
- A fire in an escape room in Koszalin, Poland, kills five teenagers through carbon monoxide poisoning.
- First Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines are given to the general public, with 82-year-old Brian Pinker in the UK the first to receive the jab
- Johnson Announces New LockdownPrime Minister Boris Johnson announces a new national lockdown for England following Scotland as the COVID-19 variant spreads rapidly, with hospitalizations now higher than in the first wave
- The US and other countries, including Italy, Japan, and India, reintroduce COVID-19 testing for people arriving from China as the WHO warns China is under-representing the actual impact in the country
Born on this day
- Lars RobergSwedish physician and academic (died 1742)
- Lars RobergSwedish physician, natural science researcher, and educator, born in Stockholm, Sweden (d. 1742)
- Clara Emilia SmittSwedish doctor and author (died 1928)
- Manoel de AbreuBrazilian radiologist who developed chest photofluorography, born in São Paulo, Brazil (d. 1962)
- May-Britt MoserNorwegian psychologist and neuroscientist (2014 Nobel Prize for Physiology for discovery of place cells), born in Fosnavåg, Norway
- Maura L. GillisonCanadian medical oncologist and molecular epidemiologist credited with discovering HPV can cause oral cancers, born in London, Ontario (d. 2026)
Died on this day
- Stephen HalesEnglish physiologist, chemist and inventor (first person to measure blood pressure), dies at 83
- John William DraperBritish-American scientist , chemist, and early photographer , dies at 70 (1811-1882)
- Silas Weir MitchellAmerican physician (discovered causalgia, erythromelalgia) and author (Roland Blake, Hugh Wynne), dies at 84
- Nellie CashmanAmerican nurse, restaurateur, entrepreneur, and gold prospector (born 1845)
- Henri "Hans" FluIndonesian-Dutch family doctor who resisted the Nazis, murdered by Nazis at 31
- Ana GligićSerbian virologist (born 1934)