November 12 in Medical History
22 entries: discoveries, epidemics, drugs and the people who shaped medicine.
Observed today
- Birth of Sun Yat-Sen, also Doctors' Day and Cultural Renaissance Day. (Republic of China)
- National Health Day (Indonesia)
- World Pneumonia Day
Events
- Sir James Young Simpson, a British physician, is the first to use chloroform as an anesthetic
- Egas Moniz performs the first modern brain surgery on the frontal lobes to treat mental disorders, at Santa Marta Hospital in Lisbon, Portugal
- Scientists perform 1st artificial synthesis of a live cell
- WHO calls for attacks on and around hospitals in Gaza to stop, with newborn babies reportedly dying as a result of power, water and oxygen cuts
Born on this day
- Jeanne ManceFrench-Canadian settler who founded the first hospital in North America (Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal), born in Langres, France (1606-1673)
- Charles BellScottish surgeon and artist (died 1842)
- Johann Friedrich von EschscholtzLivonian physician and botanist (died 1831)
- Thaddeus William HarrisAmerican entomologist and botanist (died 1856)
- Alexander BorodinRussian chemist and composer (Robert LeDiable), born in Saint Petersburg, Russia (d. 1887)
- Sun Yat-senChinese revolutionary and father of modern China, born in Xiangshan [now Zhongshan], Guangdong, Qing Dynasty (1866-1925)
- Archibald "Moonlight" GrahamAmerican MLB baseball outfielder (New York Giants - 1 game, 1905), medical doctor, and subject of "Field of Dreams" film, born in Fayetteville, North Carolina (d. 1965)
- Welton TaylorAmerican microbiologist, inventor and civil rights activist (developed tests for salmonella), born in Birmingham, Alabama (d. 2012)
- Leonard AbramsonAmerican pharmacist, philanthropist and the founder of US Healthcare, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (d. 2026)
- Ria Lubbers (née Maria Hoogeweegen)Dutch wife of Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers, and disability advocate, born in Rotterdam, Netherlands (d. 2024)
Died on this day
- Notker PhysicusSwiss painter
- Friedrich HoffmannGerman physician and chemist, first to investigate carbon monoxide poisoning, dies at 82
- Norman BethuneCanadian doctor, communist and humanitarian (Spanish Civil War, Second Sino-Japanese War), dies of blood poisoning from a cut on his finger from operating on a wounded soldier at 49 (1890-1939)
- Katherine ElliottBritish physician (oral rehydration therapy), dies at 75
- Daniel SternAmerican psychologist and theorist (born 1934)