March 26 in Medical History
33 entries: discoveries, epidemics, drugs and the people who shaped medicine.
Observed today
- Purple Day (Canada and United States)
Events
- The Murder Act passes into law in Great Britain - allows corpses of executed murderers to be given to the Company of Surgeons for dissection
- Patent awarded for adhesive medicated plaster, precursor of band-aid
- US forbids immigration to criminals, anarchists, paupers and the sick
- Medic Alert Foundation forms
- "Marcus Welby, M.D.", starring Robert Young and James Brolin debuts as a TV movie on ABC-TV, prior to becoming a weekly series
- The Biological Weapons Convention enters into force.
- Murder of InterestA jury in Michigan finds Dr. Jack Kevorkian guilty of second-degree murder for administering a lethal injection to a terminally ill man
- In Scotland the prohibition of smoking in all substantially enclosed public places comes into force
- US soldier receives world's first penis and scrotum transplant at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland
- Maker of Oxyconti, Purdue Pharma agrees to pay Oklahoma $270 million settlement ahead of trial accusing the company of fueling the opioid epidemic
- State of emergency declared in Rockland County, New York, due to measles epidemic with unvaccinated children banned from public spaces for 30 days after 153 cases
- American cases of COVID-19 exceed all other countries on this date, with 81,578 cases and 1,180 deaths (New York Times)
Born on this day
- Conrad GessnerSwiss physician and naturalist, born in Zürich, Switzerland (d. 1565)
- David Humphreys StorerAmerican physician and academic (died 1891)
- Théodore TuffierFrench surgeon (died 1929)
- Elsa BrändströmSwedish nurse who helped POWs in Siberia, born in Saint Petersburg, Russia. (d. 1948)
- Viktor FranklAustrian neurologist and psychiatrist (Man's Search for Meaning) and founder of logotherapy, born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (d. 1997)
- Bernard KatzGerman-born Australian biophysicist (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1970), born in Leipzig, German Empire (d. 2003)
- Christian B. AnfinsenAmerican chemist (cell physiology, Nobel 1972), born in Monessen, Pennsylvania (d. 1995)
- Mustafa KalemliTurkish physician and politician, Turkish Minister of the Interior
- Gary RuvkunAmerican molecular biologist (2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of microRNA), born in Berkeley, California
- Sarah Mullally (née Bowser)English cleric (106th Archbishop of Canterbury, 2026-), and nurse (English National Health Service chief nursing officer, 1999-2004), born in Woking, Surrey, England
Died on this day
- Alessandra Gilianianatomist (born c. 1307)
- John MudgeEnglish physician (telescope mirrors) (b. 1721)
- James HuttonScottish geologist and father of modern geology, dies at 70 (1726-1797)
- Joseph-Ignace GuillotinFrench physician and freemason who proposed and became the namesake of the guillotine, dies of natural causes at 75
- Walt WhitmanAmerican poet (Leaves of Grass) and volunteer nurse during the Civil War, dies of pneumonia at 72 (1819-1892)
- William Chester MinorAmerican surgeon and contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary (b. 1834)
- Lillien Jane MartinAmerican psychologist who founded the world's 1st gerontology clinic in San Francisco, dies at 91
- Alex ComfortBritish physician, pacifist and author (The Joy of Sex), dies at 80
- Georgeanna Seegar JonesAmerican reproductive endocrinologist who oversaw the birth of the first American 'test tube' baby, dies at 92
- Tomas TranströmerSwedish poet (Nobel Prize for Literature - 2011), dies at 83