Medizingeschichte
18 cards from across every topic, each citing a source. Tap one to open it in the feed.
- A 28-year-old corrected some 300 medical errors in 1543.
Andreas Vesalius published "De humani corporis fabrica" in 1543, seven books with more than 250 illustrations. He …
- A doctor cut death rates by 90 % – and was mocked for it.
In 1847 Ignaz Semmelweis noticed in Vienna that up to 18 % of mothers died of childbed fever on the doctors' ward, but …
- A doctor drank bacteria to convince his colleagues.
Into the 1980s stomach ulcers were blamed mainly on stress. After attempts to infect piglets failed, Barry Marshall …
- A map and a pump handle defeated cholera.
In 1854 more than 600 Londoners died of cholera within days. John Snow plotted every death on a map – they clustered …
- A mouthwash is named after the man who made surgery safe.
In 1865 Joseph Lister read Pasteur's work on germs and began treating wounds and instruments with carbolic acid. …
- Before 1846, a good surgeon was fast, not gentle.
On 16 October 1846 William Morton gave the first public ether anaesthesia in Boston. Before that, patients were held …
- Exactly one human disease has been eradicated.
The last naturally occurring smallpox case was diagnosed on 26 October 1977 in Ali Maow Maalin, a hospital cook in …
- Florence Nightingale was, above all, a statistician.
In the Crimean War of 1854–56, ten times more British soldiers died of infection than of wounds in the military …
- Four rules that separate cause from coincidence.
Robert Koch and Friedrich Loeffler set out four conditions in 1884: the microbe is found in all the sick, can be grown …
- In 1990, one child in eleven died before their fifth birthday.
Globally, under-five mortality fell from 93 per 1,000 births (1990) to 37 per 1,000 (2022) – more than halved. Main …
- The first X-ray image showed his wife's hand.
On 8 November 1895 Wilhelm Röntgen in Würzburg discovered an unknown radiation that passed through wood and skin. A few …
- The first antibiotic was a lab accident during a holiday.
In 1928 Alexander Fleming returned from holiday to find a mouldy bacterial culture. Around the Penicillium mould, the …
- The insulin patent was sold for one dollar.
In 1921 Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolated insulin in Toronto. In January 1922, 14-year-old Leonard Thompson …
- The stethoscope was born of embarrassment and a sheet of paper.
In Paris in 1816, René Laennec was uncomfortable putting his ear directly on a woman's chest. He noticed that a …
- The word “vaccine” literally comes from cows.
In 1796 Edward Jenner transferred cowpox material to an 8-year-old boy, who then proved immune to deadly smallpox. …
- Until 1860, doctors believed disease came from smelly air.
The “miasma theory” blamed foul odours for epidemics. In the 1860s Louis Pasteur used swan-neck flasks to show microbes …
- Why drugs are tested so strictly today.
Contergan (thalidomide) launched in Germany in 1957 as an over-the-counter sleeping pill. By 1961 around 10,000 …
- “Could you patent the sun?”
In 1955 Jonas Salk's polio vaccine was approved after a trial with 1.8 million children. Asked who owned the patent, he …