May 12 in Medical History
22 entries: discoveries, epidemics, drugs and the people who shaped medicine.
Observed today
- International ME/CFS and Fibromyalgia Awareness Day
- International Nurses Day
Events
- National Hospital Day 1st observed in the United States
- Second Opium Law introduced - international law to control drugs
- Sandoz Labs begins manufacturing LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide)
- Queen Wilhelmina AbdicatesQueen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands abdicates due to ill health
- A new cancer drug is announced which can only be found in bark of a rare tree in the Pacific Northwest
- Brazil declares end to Zika national emergency as cases decrease
- Militants storm a hospital and a funeral in Kabul, Afghanistan, shooting an estimated 40 people dead including new mothers and their babies
- Russia's confirmed cases of COVID-19 reach 232,000, 2nd highest in the world, a day after President Vladimir Putin eased the country's lockdown
- US coronavirus task force testifies to the Senate that the US "is not out of the woods yet" that the pandemic is not under control and risks surge in cases if reopens too soon
- Wuhan, epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak, draws up plans to test all 11 million residents after it records a new cluster of 6 cases
- North Korea orders a national lockdown after confirming its first COVID-19 cases with the Omicron variant. International experts doubt these the first, express concern for its unvaccinated 25 million population
- US pandemic-era expulsion policy Title 42, which expelled most migrants, expires
Born on this day
- Florence NightingaleBritish nurse who revolutionized nursing during the Crimean War, born in Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany (now Italy) (1820-1910)
- Clemens von PirquetAustrian physician (Pirquet’s skin test for tuberculosis, coined the word 'allergy'), born in Vienna, Austria (d. 1929)
- Dorothy HodgkinBritish biochemist who developed protein crystallography to study molecular structure, including that of vitamin B12 (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1964), and first woman to receive the Copley Medal, born in Cairo, Egypt (1910-1994)
Died on this day
- Jędrzej ŚniadeckiPolish writer, physician, chemist (creation of modern Polish terminology in the field of chemistry), dies at 69
- Agnes Forbes BlackadderScottish medical doctor (born 1875)
- Erik EriksonAmerican developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst (coined the phrase "identity crisis"), dies at 91
- Kai SetäläFinnish physician and professor (born 1913)
- Irena Sendler [née Krzyżanowska]Polish nurse, social worker, and WWII heroine who helped smuggle Jewish ghetto children to safety, dies at 98