September 13 in Medical History
19 entries: discoveries, epidemics, drugs and the people who shaped medicine.
Events
- Vermont railroad worker Phineas Gage survives an iron rod 1+1⁄4 inches (3.2 cm) in diameter being driven through his brain; the reported effects on his behavior and personality stimulate discussion of the nature of the brain and its functions.
- Radioactive Cesium-137 is stolen by scavengers from an abandoned hospital site in Goiânia, Brazil; four people die and 249 suffer radiation contamination
- George Burns undergoes surgery to drain fluid from his brain
- British rock singer Mike Smith (Dave Clark Five) fractures spine falling while trying to enter his home after locking himself out, becomes permanently paralyzed from the waist down
- Nearly 40% (36.6%) of all female suicides occur in India according to report published in "The Lancet"
- Minaj Spreads MisinformationNicki Minaj tweets misinformation about vaccines making men impotent, forcing prominent officials including Antony Fauci and the Health Minister of Trinidad, to publicly debunk it
- Rise in overdose deaths from fentanyl laced stimulants mark the "fourth wave" of the overdose crisis in the US, according to UCLA research
Born on this day
- Walter ReedU.S. Army physician and bacteriologist who proved mosquitoes transmit yellow fever, born in Belroi, Virginia (d. 1902)
- Adolf MeyerAmerican psychiatrist and neurologist (pioneered mental hygiene), born in Niederweningen, Switzerland (d. 1950)
- Ramón Grau6th and 10th President of Cuba, born in La Palma, Spanish Cuba (d. 1969)
- Leopold RužičkaCroatian-Swiss chemist (Nobel 1939), born in Vukovar, Croatia (d. 1976)
- Kai SetäläFinnish physician and professor (died 2005)
- Keith BlackAmerican neurosurgeon and academic
- Antony GalioneEnglish pharmacologist
- Maria FurtwänglerGerman physician and actress (Tatort, Shades of Happiness), born in Munich, Germany
- Akiko IwasakiAmerican immunologist and long Covid researcher, born in Inga, Japan
Died on this day
- August KroghDanish zoophysiologist ( Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1920 for study of arterioles and capillaries), dies at 74 (1874-1949)
- Betty JeffreyAustralian nurse and author (born 1908)
- Douglas BlackScottish physician and medical scientist (played a key role in the development of the National Health Service), dies at 89