November 20 in Medical History
17 entries: discoveries, epidemics, drugs and the people who shaped medicine.
Events
- Farmington Mine Disaster: 78 miners are killed in a coal mining explosion in West Virginia, leading to the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969
- First artificial blood transfusion occurs at the University of Minnesota Hospital in the US when a patient refuses a conventional blood transfusion due to religious beliefs and receives the blood substitute Fluosol
- World Health Organization announces first global effort to combat AIDS
- FDA approves new therapy for use as an initial AIDS treatment, 3TC
- Mississippi 15 week abortion ban overturned by US judge saying it violated women's constitutional rights
Born on this day
- Gustav GiemsaGerman chemist and bacteriologist (died 1948)
- James CollipCanadian biochemist and physiologist (insulin), born in Belleville, Ontario (d. 1965)
- Robert A. BruceAmerican cardiologist and pioneer (exercise cardiology), born in Somerville, Massachusetts (d. 2004)
- Douglas DickAmerican actor and psychologist (Rope, Waterfront), born in Charleston, West Virginia (d. 2015)
- (Andrzej) "Andrew" SchallyPolish-American endocrinologist (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1977), and cancer researcher, born in Wilno, Poland (d. 2024)
- Arieh WarshelIsraeli-American biochemist and biophysicist
- Mama Cax [Cacsmy Brutus]Haitian-American model and disability activist (Savage X Fenty Show 2019), born in Brooklyn, New York (d. 2019)
Died on this day
- Otto Karl BergGerman botanist and pharmacist (born 1815)
- Henry DraperAmerican amateur astronomer (photos of the Moon, Orion Nebula), dies of pleurisy at 45 (1837-1882)
- Bert Geoffrey AchongTrinidadian pathologist and inventor (electron microscopist), dies at 67
- Ancel KeysAmerican nutritionist and physiologist who established connection between diet and heart disease and strokes, dies at 100
- Aaron KlugLithuanian born British biochemist (Nobel prize for Chemistry 1982), dies at 92