March 27 in Medical History
24 entries: discoveries, epidemics, drugs and the people who shaped medicine.
Events
- John Parker Paynard originates medicated adhesive plaster
- First successful non-direct blood transfusion is performed by Dr. Albert Hustin in Brussels
- Typhoid Mary ArrestedTyphoid Mary [Mary Mallon] is arrested and returned to quarantine on North Brother Island, New York after spending five years evading health authorities and causing several further outbreaks of typhoid
- Two-month ceasefire agreed by Government of Sudan in its civil war, to treat health conditions such as Guinea worm and river blindness, lasts six months, the longest-ever health ceasefire
- The Food and Drug Administration approves Viagra for use as a treatment for erectile dysfunction, the first pill to be approved for this condition in the United States.
- Grey's AnatomyTV medical drama "Grey's Anatomy" created by Shonda Rhimes starring Ellen Pompeo and Sandra Oh debuts on ABC
- Russia's Soyuz TMA-16M launches to deliver three crew members to the international space station to research the long-term effects of micro gravity
- COVID-19 PandemicUK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announces he has contracted COVID-19 but will continue to lead the country "thanks to the wizardry of modern technology" while in self-isolation
- China announces Shanghai will be locked down in two stages over nine days affecting 25 million people to carry out COVID-19 testing
- Harvard University says it will remove a 19th century book binding of human skin, originally taken without consent from a deceased French mental patient
- Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announces a major restructure of the US Department of Health, including laying off 33 % of its workforce, about 10,000 employees
Born on this day
- Giovanni Battista GrassiItalian physician, zoologist, and entomologist (died 1925)
- Thomas Graham BrownScottish mountaineer and physiologist (died 1965)
- John Fleming BrockSouth African nutritional scientist, physician and a professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Cape Town, born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa (d. 1983)
- Veronika TushnovaRussian poet and physician (died 1965)
- Stefan WulFrench sci-fi author (The Temple of the Past), born in Paris (d. 2003)
- Alastair BellinghamBritish haematologist and president of the Royal College of Pathologists (1993-96), born in Surrey, England (d. 2017)
- Sir John E. SulstonBritish molecular biologist, co-recipient of 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (roundworm genome sequencing), born in Fulmer, Buckinghamshire, England (d. 2018)
- Alice WongAmerican disability rights activist and author (Year of the Tiger), born in Indianapolis, Indiana (d. 2025)
Died on this day
- Andreas AnagnostakisGreek physician (b. 1826)
- Richard Montgomery GanoAmerican minister, physician, and general (born 1830)
- Gregorio MarañónSpanish physician, philosopher, and author (born 1887)
- Wilfred BigelowCanadian heart surgeon (b. 1913)
- Toni Grant [Glickman]American radio psychologist (The Toni Grant Program, KABC-AM), dies of complications of dementia at 73