May 31 in Medical History
20 entries: discoveries, epidemics, drugs and the people who shaped medicine.
Observed today
- World No Tobacco Day (International)
Events
- Samuel Pepys' Last Diary EntryCiting poor eyesight, English civil servant Samuel Pepys records the final entry in his famous diary
- Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) became a Schedule I drug in the United States
- 5th Children's Miracle Network Telethon raises $1,060,000
- Peru says its COVID-19 death toll is three times higher than its official count (180,764 vs 68,000), making it one of the hardest hit countries per capita
- Osaka Leaves the French OpenNaomi Osaka pulls out of the French Open citing her mental health, after refusing to appear at compulsory post match press conferences
Born on this day
- Walt WhitmanAmerican poet (Leaves of Grass) and volunteer nurse during the Civil War, born in West Hills, New York (1819-1892)
- Kusumoto Inefirst Japanese female doctor of Western medicine (died 1903)
- Julius Richard PetriGerman microbiologist generally credited with inventing the device known as the Petri dish, born in Barmen, Kingdom of Prussia (now part of Wuppertal, Germany) (d. 1921)
- Francis Avery JonesWelsh gastroenterologist, born in Briton Ferry, Carmarthenshire, Wales (d. 1998)
- Dame Margaret June ClarkWelsh Professor Emeritus of Community Nursing at Swansea University, born in Wales (d. 2025)
- Louis J. IgnarroAmerican pharmacologist (1968 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for work on nitric oxide), born in Brooklyn, New York City
Died on this day
- Elizabeth BlackwellBritish-American physician who was the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States, dies at 89 (1821-1910)
- Walter Jackson Freeman IIAmerican physician (developer and practitioner of psychiatric surgery transorbital lobotomy), dies at 76
- Jacques MonodFrench biochemist (1966 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine - genetic control of enzyme and virus synthesis), dies at 66
- Charles A. HufnagelAmerican surgeon (artificial heart valve pioneer), dies at 72
- Eric BoylandEnglish biochemist (cancer research), dies at 97
- George TillerAmerican pro-abortion physician, murdered while in church at 67
- Hans KeilsonGerman-Dutch psychoanalyst and author (born 1909)
- Fred A. KummerowGerman-American biochemist and advocate against the use of trans-fatty acids in food, dies at 102