History of Medicine

Heart Transplant

South African surgeon who performed the first human heart transplant operation (1967)		Christiaan Barnard
Hospital and city where he did it		Groote Schuur
Hospital and city where he did it		Cape Town
The first heart transplant patient (aged 54)		Louis Washkansky
The first heart transplant patient survived		18 days
Britain's first heart transplant (1968) took place in		Marylebone Hospital
Britain's first heart transplant recipient (survived 49 days)		Frederick West
Hospital near Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, where the UK's first successful heart transplant was performed in 1979 by Sir Terence English; later became famous for heart–lung transplants		Papworth

Test Tube Baby

The first test tube baby (born Oldham, Lancashire, 1978)		Louise Brown
Doctors at the Centre for Human Reproduction, Oldham, who pioneered the technique of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and produced the first test tube baby		Patrick Steptoe
		Robert Edwards
The first test tube baby to give birth to a child of her own (1999 – Louise's younger sister, born in 1982)		Natalie Brown

People

Canadian physician and physiologist who discovered insulin in 1921		Frederick Banting
		Charles Best
19th–century English obstetrician: described the uterine contractions not resulting in childbirth, now known by his name		John Braxton Hicks
First to describe colour blindness scientifically, and gave his name to it; suffered what is technically known as deuteranopia (inability to distinguish red and green)		John Dalton
Scottish biologist and pharmacologist who discovered penicillin (the first natural antibiotic) in 1928		Alexander Fleming
Joint winners of the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, along with the above, for their work in developing the use of penicillin as a drug	Australian pharmacologist and pathologist	Howard Florey
	German–born biochemist	Ernst Chain
Leader of the team at Maryland University, that identified the HIV virus in 1984		Robert Gallo
Italian obstetrician (1863–1908) who gave his name to a flexible wire saw, used for bone cutting (mainly in amputation) and the operation in which it was first used, to assist in obstructed labour		Leonardo Gigli
English physician who discovered the circulation of the blood – publishing his findings in a treatise in 1628		William Harvey
American surgeon (1920–2016): invented a portable oxygen system for ambulatory patients, a valve for draining blood and air from the chest cavity, and a procedure for preventing choking		Henry Heimlich
English physician (from Berkeley, Gloucestershire) who administered the first successful vaccine in 1796, demonstrating that inoculation with cowpox gave immunity to smallpox		Edward Jenner
Split with Freud over the latter's emphasis on sexual instinct; went on to define introvert and extrovert as the two main psychological types		Carl Gustav Jung
Austrian immunologist, won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1913 for the discovery of the ABO system for classification of blood (1900–2)		Karl Landsteiner
Royal College of Physicians: founded in 1518 by		Thomas Linacre
Scottish physician, 1716–94: published A Treatise on the Scurvy (1753), leading to the prescription of lemon juice to all sailors in the Royal Navy from the early 19th century		James Lind
English surgeon: introduced the use of antiseptics in the 1860s, while working in Glasgow (using carbolic acid – now known as phenol – to sterilise surgical instruments and to clean wounds); known as the father of modern medicine		Joseph Lister
US surgeon (1845–1913): gave his name to the point (one third of the way from the right–side point of the hip–bone to the navel) where the appendix is commonly located; deep tenderness there is a sign of acute appendicitis		Charles McBurney
British plastic surgeon, achieved prominence treating badly–burned airman during World War II		Sir Archibald McIndoe
English doctor (1755–1824): published An Essay on the Shaking Palsy in 1817		James Parkinson
French chemist and microbiologist, 1822–95, whose work on fermentation led him to discover the connection between germs and disease; developed vaccines for rabies and anthrax		Louis Pasteur
Anglo–Indian physician, who discovered the life cycle of the malarial parasite plasmodium and confirmed that it was spread by mosquitoes; became the first British Nobel laureate in 1902		Sir Ronald Ross
American medical researcher and virologist (1914–95): discovered and developed one of the first successful polio vaccines, introduced in 1955		Jonas Salk
American entomologist, 1947–2023: won an Ig Nobel Prize in 2015 for creating and giving his name to a scale or index of the pain resulting from insect stings (specifically, the hymenoptera – bees, wasps, ants and sawflies)		Justin O(rvel) Schmidt
Pioneered the use of anaesthetics (chloroform) in Britain, in 1847		James (Young) Simpson

The Black Death

Arrival in Europe:

On the western shore of the Caspian Sea (in the lower drainage basin of the Volga)			1346
Turkey (around the Bosphorus), southern Greece, and the northern Mediterranean (Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica etc.)			1347
Much of southern Europe; also Paris and north–western France, southern England, and Dublin			1348
Further north into Europe (including all of France), the rest of England, Wales and Ireland, and southern Norway			1349
Most of Germany and Poland, and Scotland			1350
The epidemic began to subside (by which time the whole of Europe was affected) in			1353

The epidemic as such was over by 1400, but major outbreaks continued to occur until 1720 (including the Great Plague of London in 1665). Estimates of the number and percentage of people who died in the Black Death vary, for obvious reasons; the number was somewhere between 75 million and 200 million, and the percentage of Europe's population was between 30% and 60%.

Other

Popularised in Britain after use on Queen Victoria			Analgesia in childbirth
Principal disease involved in the Black Death (mid–14th century) and the Great Plague of London (1665–6)			Bubonic plague
Used by Lister to soak dressings in his pioneering work on antiseptics			Carbolic acid (phenol)
Anaesthetic discovered by Justus, Baron von Liebig			Chloroform
Medicine introduced by John Hughes Bennett			Cod liver oil
First produced in a small Mexican lab in 1951 by Carl Djerassi			Contraceptive pill
The first substance to be used as an anaesthetic: a colourless, highly volatile, sweet–smelling, extremely flammable liquid			(Diethyl) ether
Drug used in treating breast cancer, the subject of a controversy in 2006 over whether it should be available on the NHS			Herceptin
System of treating like with like, conceived in by 1796 by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann; its popularity peaked in the 19th century, at the end of which it began to wane; made a comeback in the 1970s, but has been shown in the 21st century to lack scientific justification; UK NHS funding was stopped in 2017			Homeopathy
Named by John Huxham in 1750			Influenza
Introduced by French psychologist Alfred Binet in 1905			Intelligence tests
1954: the first successful human organ transplant transplant (led by Dr. Joseph Murray and Dr. David Hume, at Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts): transplanted from Ronald Herrick into his identical twin Richard			Kidney
Procedure invented in 1974 by the Italian gynaecologist Dr. Giorgio Fischer			Liposuction
US virologist John F. Enders developed a vaccine in 1960 against			Measles
Greek word for pollution, used to denote the 'bad air' thought to cause diseases such as cholera and Black Death before the discovery of viruses and bacteria			Miasma
Discovered in 1869 by the Swiss physician and biologist Friedrich Miescher; they convey genetic information through their sequence within the DNA molecule			Nucleic acids
System of healing developed in the late 19th century by Dr. Andrew Still – involves manipulation of bones in the body			Osteopathy
First used on an Oxford policeman in February 1941			Penicillin
Pioneered by New Zealander Sir Harold Gillies, in London during World War I; Petty Officer Walter Yeo is believed to have been his first patient; carried on in World War II by Gillies's cousin, Sir Archibald McIndoe			Plastic surgery
The World Health Organisation declared an international emergency in 2014, following major outbreaks of (previously almost eradicated)			Polio
Hereditary disease that caused the 'madness' of George III			Porphyria
First described by the Dutch chemist Gerardus Johannes Mulder, and named in 1838 by his Swedish associate Jöns Jacob Berzelius: from a Greek word meaning "primary", "in the lead", or "standing in front", because they were believed to be the most important nutrients for maintaining the structure of the body			Proteins
First performed 1952 on George Jorgenson – born 1926 in New York, died 1989 in California as Christine (the operation was performed in Denmark)			Sex change
Disease that was declared eradicated by the World Health Organisation in 1980; Janet Parker, a medical photographer working at the University of Birmingham Medical School (who was exposed to it accidentally and not directly as a result of her work) was the last person to die from it			Smallpox
Sedative drug blamed for causing deformities in children born 1956–62 (prescribed to pregnant women to combat morning sickness and to aid sleep)			Thalidomide
The Russian biologist Dmitri Ivanovsky is credited with discovering (during his work on tobacco plants in 1892)			Viruses
Probably originated in Africa, and was imported to America via the slave trade; there have been at least 25 major outbreaks in America, e.g. in Philadelphia in 1793, when almost 10% of the population died and the capital had to be moved to Washington; there have also been outbreaks in Europe where the mosquito vector has been imported from America or the Caribbean – e.g. Swansea in 1865; a.k.a. Bronze John or the American Plague			Yellow fever