178 Fun Facts About Doctor

What is the medical specialty focused on diagnosing and treating conditions of the skin, hair, and nails?

A dermatologist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the skin, hair, and nails.

Which ancient Greek physician is widely regarded as the 'Father of Medicine'?

Hippocrates gave medicine prognosis and clinical observation, and also humoral theory, which held sway for centuries before being discredited.

A pulmonologist specialises in diseases of which part of the body?

Pulmonologists are physicians who specialize in the respiratory system, including the lungs, airways, and related structures, diagnosing and treating conditions that affect breathing.

In what year did Christiaan Barnard perform the first human-to-human heart transplant?

Barnard performed the first human-to-human heart transplant on 3 December 1967 in Cape Town, South Africa; the donor was Denise Darvall, a young woman killed in a road accident.

Which medical instrument, invented by René Laennec in 1816, is used for auscultation, listening to the body's internal sounds?

The stethoscope's name is Greek for 'chest' plus 'look'; Laennec's first was a rolled tube of paper, used to listen to heart, lungs and gut.

What is the medical term for persistently high blood pressure?

Hypertension is persistently elevated pressure in the arteries rather than a one-off spike; it is called the 'silent killer' because it usually causes no symptoms while damaging the heart, brain and kidneys.

A pediatrician provides medical care primarily to which demographic?

The word comes from the Greek for 'healer of children'; the upper age limit varies by country, often 18 but sometimes 21.

Who is recognized as the founder of modern nursing, known for her work during the Crimean War?

Florence Nightingale, the 'Lady with the Lamp', opened the Nightingale Training School at St Thomas' Hospital in 1860; her polar-area diagrams showed most Crimean War deaths came from disease, not wounds.

Which medical specialist focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of cancer?

Most oncologists narrow further, into surgery, radiation, paediatrics, or one organ such as breast, brain or liver.

Bones, joints, ligaments, tendons — which specialist handles the musculoskeletal system?

An orthopedist (orthopaedic surgeon) treats the musculoskeletal system; Nicolas Andry coined 'orthopédie' in 1741 from the Greek for 'straight child', because the field began with correcting deformities in children.

Who is credited with the discovery of penicillin in 1928?

Alexander Fleming's mould was Penicillium rubens; Howard Florey and Ernst Chain later turned it into a usable drug and shared his 1945 Nobel Prize.

What is the medical term for an abnormally low level of blood sugar, typically under 70 mg/dL?

Hypoglycemia is the 'hypo' (under) one, as in hypothermia; hyperglycemia is its opposite.

Which type of medical doctor specializes in eye and vision care, and is qualified to perform eye surgery?

An ophthalmologist holds a medical degree and can operate; optometrists test sight and prescribe lenses, and opticians fit them.

What branch of medicine treats and prevents mental, emotional and behavioural disorders?

Psychiatry is the medical specialty; psychologists are not usually physicians, while neurology handles the nervous system's physical disorders.

Which scan spins X-rays around the body and lets a computer build cross-sectional images?

The 'A' in the older name CAT scan stood for axial; rotating X-ray beams and a computer produce slices of organs, bones, soft tissue and vessels.

In 1816 René Laennec invented his listening tube for the heart because he was uncomfortable doing what?

He was uncomfortable putting his ear directly on a woman's chest, so Laennec rolled a sheet of paper into a tube and found it carried her heart sounds clearly without any contact.

The original Hippocratic Oath opens by swearing to Apollo the Healer, Asclepius, and which two goddesses?

Hygieia (health) and Panacea (all-healing) were daughters of Asclepius; the oath invokes Apollo, Asclepius, Hygieia and Panacea, and the phrase 'first do no harm' does not actually appear in it.

Jenner's 1796 inoculation, the origin of the word 'vaccine', used matter from which disease?

Cowpox, a mild disease caught from cows' udders, protected against smallpox; Jenner's Latin name for it, Variolae vaccinae, comes from vacca, 'cow', and gave us the word 'vaccine'.

How did Elizabeth Blackwell get into Geneva Medical College in 1847, the first woman at a US medical school?

The male students voted her in as a joke: Geneva's faculty left the decision to the student body, which admitted her as a prank; Blackwell graduated first in her class in 1849, the first woman with a US medical degree.

In 1847, Ignaz Semmelweis cut maternal deaths in Vienna by making doctors wash their hands in what?

Semmelweis made doctors scrub in chlorinated lime solution before examining mothers; mortality on his ward fell from about 18% to under 2%, yet he was committed to an asylum in 1865, where guards beat him.

Joseph Lister pioneered antiseptic surgery at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary using which chemical?

Carbolic acid, now called phenol, was applied to wounds, instruments and dressings from August 1865 after Lister read Pasteur's work on germs; post-operative deaths on his wards fell sharply.

William Harvey's 1628 treatise on blood circulation is usually known by what short title?

De Motu Cordis, short for Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus, was printed in Frankfurt in 1628 while Harvey was physician to Charles I, having earlier attended James I.

Christiaan Barnard's first heart-transplant patient, Louis Washkansky, survived for how long after the 1967 operation?

18 days: Washkansky regained consciousness and chatted with his wife before pneumonia, helped along by the drugs suppressing rejection, killed him on 21 December 1967; Barnard's second patient, Philip Blaiberg, lived 19 months.

Barnard performed the first human heart transplant at which Cape Town hospital?

Groote Schuur Hospital, the University of Cape Town's teaching hospital, hosted the 3 December 1967 operation; the original theatres now house the Heart of Cape Town Museum.

Louis Pasteur is credited with vaccines against which two diseases?

Rabies and anthrax: Pasteur, a chemist rather than a physician, demonstrated an anthrax vaccine on sheep at Pouilly-le-Fort in 1881 and in 1885 gave his rabies vaccine to Joseph Meister, a boy bitten by a rabid dog.

Andreas Vesalius, author of the 1543 anatomy landmark De Humani Corporis Fabrica, was born in which city?

Vesalius was born in Brussels in 1514 into a family of court physicians; he taught anatomy at Padua and later served Emperor Charles V and then Philip II of Spain.

The degree abbreviation MD stands for which Latin phrase?

Medicinae Doctor is Latin for 'doctor of medicine'; the letters run in the reverse of English order because Latin puts the genitive 'medicinae' before the noun.

North American medical schools took the MD title from universities in which country?

Glasgow issued its first Doctor of Medicine to Samuel Benion in 1703.

Which Chinese physician is considered the first verifiable historical figure to develop an anaesthetic?

Hua Tuo, a physician of the late Han dynasty (c. 140-208), is recorded operating on patients dosed with 'mafeisan', a wine-and-herb anaesthetic whose recipe has never been recovered.

Cocaine was first used as a local anaesthetic in eye surgery in 1884 by Karl Koller, at whose suggestion?

Sigmund Freud, then researching cocaine and author of the 1884 paper Über Coca, pointed his Vienna colleague Koller toward its numbing effect; August Bier later used cocaine for spinal anaesthesia in 1898.

Wilhelm Röntgen received the very first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901 for discovering what?

X-rays: Röntgen noticed the new rays on 8 November 1895 while working with a cathode-ray tube and soon imaged the bones of his wife Anna Bertha's hand; he refused to patent the discovery.

Médecins Sans Frontières was founded in 1971 in the aftermath of which crisis?

The Biafran famine: French Red Cross doctors, Bernard Kouchner among them, broke medical silence over the starvation of secessionist Biafra (1967-70) and founded MSF in December 1971; it won the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize.

The Rod of Asclepius, the true symbol of medicine, is often confused with which two-snaked, winged staff?

The caduceus, Hermes' winged staff with two snakes, was adopted by the US Army Medical Corps in 1902 and the mix-up spread; the Rod of Asclepius has a single snake and no wings.

British Army surgeon James Barry, born Margaret Anne Bulkley, performed which first in Africa?

A caesarean where both mother and child lived: in Cape Town in 1826 Barry delivered a baby by caesarean section with both surviving, among the earliest such outcomes on record; the boy was named James Barry Munnik in gratitude.

Galen's anatomical reports, unchallenged for 1,300 years, were based mainly on dissecting which animals?

Barbary apes (macaques) were Galen's main subjects, since Roman custom forbade human dissection; Vesalius showed in 1543 that many of his 'human' findings were really monkey anatomy.

Which encyclopaedia by Ibn Sina (Avicenna) was a standard medical text in Europe for centuries?

The Canon of Medicine (al-Qanun fi al-Tibb), completed around 1025 and written in Arabic, stayed on the syllabus at European universities such as Montpellier into the 17th century.

Frederick Banting shared his 1923 Nobel Prize money with which student who helped isolate insulin?

Charles Best, a 22-year-old medical student, was Banting's assistant in the 1921 Toronto experiments; Banting gave him half his prize money, and Macleod did the same for biochemist James Collip.

Virginia Apgar devised her 10-point score for assessing newborns in which year?

Apgar presented the score in 1952 and published it in 1953; five signs (heart rate, breathing, muscle tone, reflex response and colour) are each rated 0-2 at one and five minutes after birth.

Jonas Salk's polio vaccine was announced a success in April of which year?

On 12 April 1955 the Francis field trial declared the Salk vaccine 'safe, effective and potent'; Salk declined to patent it, asking 'Could you patent the sun?'

Paul Ehrlich's 1909 drug Salvarsan, the first 'magic bullet', treated which disease?

Salvarsan (arsphenamine), an arsenic compound, was the first effective treatment for syphilis; Ehrlich coined the word 'chemotherapy' for such targeted drugs.

Ehrlich shared the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with which scientist for work on immunity?

Élie Metchnikoff, a Russian-born zoologist at the Pasteur Institute, discovered phagocytosis, cells that engulf microbes, while Ehrlich's side-chain theory explained antibodies; they shared the 1908 prize.

Elizabeth Blackwell helped Sophia Jex-Blake found which British institution in 1874?

The London School of Medicine for Women opened in 1874, founded by Sophia Jex-Blake with Blackwell's backing; Blackwell held its chair of gynaecology from 1875.

The academic title 'doctor' derives from the Latin verb docēre, meaning what?

Docēre means 'to teach', as in 'docent' and 'doctrine'; a medieval doctor was a licensed teacher, and 'physician' was the usual word for a medical man.

The first doctorates were awarded in the 13th century at the University of Paris and which other university?

Bologna, Europe's oldest university, and Paris granted the earliest doctorates as licences to teach; Bologna's were mostly in law, Paris's in theology.

In the UK, what does the MD degree usually represent, unlike the US?

In Britain the MD is a research or higher doctorate taken years after the MBBS or MBChB that licenses a doctor, whereas the US MD is the basic medical qualification.

The American School of Osteopathy, the first DO school, opened in 1892 in which state?

Missouri: the American School of Osteopathy opened in Kirksville in 1892; its successor, the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine, is the oldest US osteopathic school.

Who founded osteopathic medicine in 1874, the root of the American DO degree?

Andrew Taylor Still, a frontier doctor disillusioned by bleeding and purging, announced osteopathy in 1874 and opened its first school in 1892; D.D. Palmer founded chiropractic in 1895.

What is the US term for the doctor Britons call a general practitioner?

Primary care physician (PCP) is the US umbrella term for the family doctors, general internists and paediatricians patients see first; most British GPs work in community practices outside hospitals.

Which university's Pritzker School held the first white coat ceremony, in 1989?

The University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine held the first white coat ceremony in 1989; Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons made it a full ceremony in 1993 with the Arnold P. Gold Foundation.

In Argentina and Uruguay, white coats are worn as a symbol of learning by whom?

School students and teachers in Argentina and Uruguay wear the white 'guardapolvo' as a symbol of learning and equality in state schools, a custom dating from the early 20th century.

Sir William Osler invented which rite of passage for physicians training in a specialty?

Osler set up the residency program at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where young doctors lived in for years of graded specialty training; he also moved teaching from the lecture hall to the bedside.

Johns Hopkins Hospital opened in which year?

Johns Hopkins Hospital opened in Baltimore on 7 May 1889, endowed by the merchant's will; its medical school followed in 1893 and admitted women from the start.

The Mayo Clinic's three major campuses are in Rochester, Jacksonville and which Arizona area?

Phoenix/Scottsdale: Mayo opened its Scottsdale clinic in 1987 and Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix in 1998, joining the original Rochester, Minnesota, practice and the Jacksonville, Florida, campus of 1986.

England's oldest medical college, the Royal College of Physicians, was founded by charter from which king?

Henry VIII granted the charter in 1518 at the urging of his physician Thomas Linacre, who became the College of Physicians' first president; the 'Royal' came later.

The American Medical Association was founded in which year?

The AMA was founded in Philadelphia in 1847 by Nathan Davis and fellow delegates seeking national standards for medical education; it is headquartered in Chicago.

Which UK body keeps the official register of doctors and can strike them off?

The General Medical Council, created by the Medical Act 1858, keeps the register of licensed doctors and can suspend or erase them; it also sets standards for UK medical education.

The Lancet was founded in England in which year?

Thomas Wakley launched The Lancet in October 1823 as a radical reforming journal, choosing a name that meant both a surgical blade and an arched window that lets in light.

Who publishes The New England Journal of Medicine?

The Massachusetts Medical Society has published NEJM since buying it in 1921; the journal began in 1812 as the New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery and the Collateral Branches of Science.

Who illustrated the original 1858 edition of Gray's Anatomy?

Henry Vandyke Carter, a fellow demonstrator at St George's, drew the 363 woodcut figures while Henry Gray wrote the text; Gray died of smallpox in 1861, aged 34.

The prescription symbol ℞ comes from which Latin word?

Recipe is the Latin imperative 'take', the word that opened a prescription's instructions; the ℞ with a slash through the R is a medieval manuscript abbreviation.

What does the Latin maxim 'primum non nocere' mean?

'First, do no harm' underpins the bioethical principle of non-maleficence; the Latin tag is not in the Hippocratic Oath itself, which promises to keep patients from 'harm and injustice'.

Which 1964 World Medical Association declaration sets ethical rules for research on human subjects?

The Declaration of Helsinki, adopted by the World Medical Association in 1964, governs research involving human subjects; the 1948 Declaration of Geneva is the modern physician's pledge.

In the early 1930s, house calls made up roughly what share of doctor-patient meetings in the US?

About 40% of US doctor-patient meetings in 1930 were house calls; the share fell to 10% by 1950 and 0.6% by 1980 as cars, telephones and hospital technology pulled practice into the office.

The word 'quack' is clipped from a Dutch-derived term for a hawker of what?

Salves: 'quack' is short for 'quacksalver', from Dutch kwakzalver, a boastful seller of ointments; the 'quack' part meant to chatter or cry one's wares.

19th-century American 'snake oil' typically contained what in place of snake?

Mineral oil: when federal chemists tested Clark Stanley's Snake Oil Liniment in 1917 they found mineral oil, beef fat, red pepper and turpentine, and no snake at all; Stanley was fined $20.

The red and white stripes of a barber's pole traditionally recall which barber-surgeon service?

Bloodletting: the red stood for blood and the white for bandages, and the pole for the staff patients gripped to make their veins stand out while the barber-surgeon opened them.

Trepanning, one of the oldest surgeries, involves drilling a hole into what?

The skull: trepanned skulls with healed edges, some over 7,000 years old, show patients survived; the hole was meant to release evil spirits or relieve pressure.

Medieval barber surgeons were mainly charged with caring for whom?

Soldiers in battle: barber-surgeons travelled with armies to amputate limbs and dress wounds while university physicians held surgery beneath them; in peacetime they also shaved, pulled teeth and let blood.

The beaked plague-doctor costume was first described in which century?

17th: Charles de Lorme, physician to Louis XIII, described the waxed coat and herb-stuffed beak mask around 1619; cities hired plague doctors to treat everyone regardless of income.

The European medicinal leech, Hirudo medicinalis, can grow up to what length?

Hirudo medicinalis reaches up to 20 centimetres when fully extended; 19th-century demand for bloodletting, tens of millions of leeches a year in France alone, depleted wild populations.

The abandoned miasma theory blamed disease on what?

Bad air: 'miasma' is Greek for pollution, a noxious vapour thought to rise from rotting matter and marshes, which is how malaria got its name, 'mal aria' being Italian for bad air.

The word 'humor' in humoral medicine translates the Greek chymos, meaning what?

Juice or sap: chymos became Latin 'humor', meaning fluid, and the four humours were blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile; germ theory displaced the system in the 19th century.

Which reflex is the best-known one tested with a reflex hammer?

The patellar or knee-jerk reflex: a tap just below the kneecap stretches the quadriceps tendon and the leg kicks; Erb and Westphal first described the test in 1875.

An otoscope is used to examine which part of the body?

The otoscope lights and magnifies the ear canal and eardrum; a red, bulging drum points to otitis media, the middle-ear infection common in small children.

Where does the proverb 'Eat an apple on going to bed, and you'll keep the doctor from earning his bread' come from?

Pembrokeshire, Wales: Notes and Queries printed it in 1866 as a Pembrokeshire saying; the snappier 'an apple a day keeps the doctor away' came later.

US National Doctors' Day, March 30, was established by a law signed in which year?

1990: President George H.W. Bush signed Public Law 101-473 on 30 October 1990, designating 30 March 1991 as National Doctors' Day; the red carnation is the day's flower.

The WHO's constitution came into force on 7 April 1948, now marked annually as what?

World Health Day has been marked on 7 April since 1950, the anniversary of the WHO constitution taking effect in 1948; the agency is headquartered in Geneva.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded by the Nobel Assembly at which body?

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet, 50 professors of the Stockholm medical university, chooses the laureates; Nobel's 1895 will assigned the medicine prize to 'the Caroline Institute'.

Emil von Behring won the first Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1901 for serum therapy against which disease?

Diphtheria: Behring's antitoxin serum, raised in horses from 1890, cut child deaths so sharply he was hailed as 'saviour of children'; the 1901 Nobel citation names diphtheria.

Red Cross co-founder Henry Dunant received which honour in 1901?

Dunant shared the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901 with pacifist Frédéric Passy; his 1862 book A Memory of Solferino, written after witnessing the 1859 battle's aftermath, led to the Red Cross and the Geneva Convention.

Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, worked before the Civil War as a teacher and what?

Patent clerk: in 1854 Barton became a recording clerk at the US Patent Office in Washington, one of the first women in federal employment; she never attended nursing school.

Galen became court physician in Rome to which emperor?

Marcus Aurelius: Galen settled in Rome in 162 and became physician to the emperor and his son Commodus; he wrote well over 300 works in Greek.

Imhotep, later deified as a physician, was chancellor to which Egyptian king?

He may have designed Djoser's step pyramid.

Ancient Indian physician Sushruta made key contributions to cataract operations and which other field?

Plastic surgery: the Suśruta Saṃhitā describes rebuilding a nose with a flap of cheek or forehead skin, a rhinoplasty technique later known in Europe as the 'Indian method'.

Al-Zahrawi's Kitab al-Tasrif, a medieval medical encyclopedia, ran to how many volumes?

Thirty: the Kitab al-Tasrif, completed around the year 1000 in al-Andalus, filled 30 volumes; its final volume on surgery, with drawings of some 200 instruments, was translated into Latin and used for centuries.

The physician Rhazes (al-Razi) was of what nationality?

Persian: al-Razi was born around 865 in Rayy, near modern Tehran, and is remembered for the first clear clinical distinction between smallpox and measles.

Physician-rabbi Maimonides was born in which Spanish city?

Córdoba: born there in the 1130s, Maimonides fled the Almohad conquest as a boy, settled near Cairo and became physician to Saladin's court while writing the Mishneh Torah.

Paracelsus is credited as the father of which discipline?

Toxicology: Paracelsus's maxim that 'the dose makes the poison' founded the discipline; the Swiss physician was also an alchemist who gave zinc its name.

Barber surgeon Ambroise Paré served how many French kings?

Four: Paré was surgeon to Henry II, Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III, and replaced boiling-oil cautery of gunshot wounds with a soothing dressing of egg yolk, rose oil and turpentine.

Thomas Sydenham, 'the English Hippocrates', gave his name to which disease?

Sydenham's chorea is also called St Vitus' Dance.

Scottish surgeon John Hunter was a teacher of and collaborator with which vaccine pioneer?

Edward Jenner trained under Hunter in London from 1770 and remained his lifelong correspondent; Hunter's reply to one of Jenner's theories, 'Why think? Why not try the experiment?', became a scientific motto.

Rudolf Virchow, 'father of modern pathology', was nicknamed what by colleagues?

'The Pope of medicine' Virchow taught that every cell comes from a cell (omnis cellula e cellula) and co-founded social medicine; he also sat in the Reichstag as a liberal opponent of Bismarck.

James Parkinson first described 'the shaking palsy' in an essay of which year?

1817: Parkinson's An Essay on the Shaking Palsy described six cases of 'paralysis agitans'; Jean-Martin Charcot later proposed the name Parkinson's disease.

Thomas Hodgkin gave the first account of his eponymous lymphoma in which year?

1832: Hodgkin's paper On Some Morbid Appearances of the Absorbent Glands and Spleen described seven cases; Samuel Wilks named the disease after him in 1865 at Guy's Hospital.

Alois Alzheimer identified 'presenile dementia'; which colleague named the disease after him?

Emil Kraepelin, Alzheimer's chief in Munich, coined 'Alzheimer's disease' in the 1910 edition of his psychiatry textbook, four years after Alzheimer presented the case of patient Auguste Deter.

Georges Gilles de la Tourette's main medical contributions were in hysteria and what?

Hypnotism: under Charcot at the Salpêtrière, Tourette studied hysteria and the medical and legal uses of hypnotism; in 1893 a former patient who claimed she had been hypnotised against her will shot him in the head.

Robert Koch won the 1905 Nobel Prize for investigations into which disease?

Tuberculosis: Koch announced the tubercle bacillus on 24 March 1882, the date marked as World TB Day; he also identified the cholera bacterium in 1883 and the anthrax bacillus in 1876.

Which physician traced an 1854 London cholera outbreak to a Soho water pump?

John Snow mapped the Broad Street deaths around the pump and persuaded the parish to remove its handle; his 1855 book showed that Southwark and Vauxhall's sewage-tainted water spread cholera.

Which Scottish obstetrician introduced chloroform in 1847?

James Young Simpson, Edinburgh's professor of midwifery, tried chloroform on himself and two assistants after dinner in November 1847 and used it in childbirth days later; Queen Victoria's use in 1853 sealed its acceptance.

Dentist William Morton first publicly demonstrated which anaesthetic in 1846?

Inhaled ether: on 16 October 1846 at Massachusetts General Hospital's 'Ether Dome', Morton put patient Gilbert Abbott to sleep while John Collins Warren removed a neck tumour.

Dentist Horace Wells pioneered anaesthesia with which gas?

Nitrous oxide: Wells saw a man injured painlessly under laughing gas at a Hartford show in December 1844 and had his own tooth pulled under it the next day; he declined to patent the idea.

Crawford Long, first to use ether anaesthesia, was born in which US state?

Georgia: Long was born in Danielsville in 1815 and used ether to remove a neck cyst in Jefferson, Georgia, on 30 March 1842; he was named after statesman William H. Crawford.

Surgeon Robert Liston is linked to the only operation said to have a mortality rate of what?

300 percent: in the oft-told story Liston amputated so fast he cut off his assistant's fingers, patient and assistant died of sepsis, and a spectator whose coat he slashed dropped dead of fright.

Karl Landsteiner distinguished the main human blood groups in which year?

1901: Landsteiner's Vienna paper showed serum from some people clumped others' red cells, defining groups A, B and C (now O); AB was added in 1902, and he co-discovered the Rh factor in 1937.

Joseph Murray, 'father of transplantation', shared the 1990 Nobel Prize with whom?

E. Donnall Thomas pioneered bone-marrow transplantation; Murray had performed the first successful kidney transplant, between identical twins Ronald and Richard Herrick, in Boston in 1954.

Paul Lauterbur shared the 2003 Nobel Prize for making MRI possible with which physicist?

Peter Mansfield, a Nottingham physicist, showed how MRI signals could be analysed mathematically and captured fast; Lauterbur, at Stony Brook, had produced the first MRI image in 1973.

Felix Hoffmann, credited with synthesising aspirin, also re-synthesised which drug sold by Bayer?

Heroin: Hoffmann made diacetylmorphine in August 1897, eleven days after acetylsalicylic acid, and Bayer sold it as a 'non-addictive' cough remedy; C.R. Alder Wright had first synthesised it in 1874.

James Lind's pioneering clinical trial showed that citrus fruits cured which disease?

Scurvy, later understood as vitamin C deficiency, gave the Royal Navy its 'limey' nickname; Lind became chief physician at Haslar in 1758.

'Typhoid Mary' Mallon spread the disease through New York households while working as what?

A cook: Mallon, an Irish immigrant, infected the families she cooked for; sanitary engineer George Soper traced the outbreaks to her in 1907, and she spent some 26 years quarantined on North Brother Island.

Albert Sabin developed which form of polio vaccine?

Oral: Sabin's live attenuated vaccine, given in drops or on a sugar cube, was licensed in the US in 1961-62 and became the workhorse of global eradication; he refused to patent it.

Charles Drew's storage research helped create what during World War II?

Large-scale blood banks: Drew's 1940 thesis on storing plasma underpinned the Blood for Britain programme and the first American Red Cross blood bank; he resigned over the segregation of donations by race.

Ben Carson led a 70-member team in 1987 to separate twins joined where?

At the back of the head: the Binder twins from Germany were craniopagus, joined at the skull; the 22-hour operation at Johns Hopkins used deep hypothermia to stop their circulation during the separation.

Denton Cooley is famous for the first implantation of what?

A total artificial heart: in April 1969 Cooley implanted the Liotta heart in Haskell Karp as a bridge to transplant, without DeBakey's permission, starting a 40-year feud; he founded the Texas Heart Institute in 1962.

Heart surgeon Michael DeBakey was born to immigrants from which country?

Lebanon: DeBakey was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, in 1908 to Lebanese Maronite immigrants, and as a student devised the roller pump later used in heart-lung machines.

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was the first woman to qualify in Britain as a physician and later mayor of which town?

Aldeburgh, the Suffolk coastal town where she grew up, elected Garrett Anderson mayor in 1908, making her Britain's first female mayor; she had qualified in 1865 through the Society of Apothecaries.

Rebecca Lee Crumpler became the first African-American female doctor of medicine in which year?

1864: Crumpler earned her Doctress of Medicine at the New England Female Medical College in Boston and after the Civil War treated freed slaves in Richmond, Virginia.

Dr Mary Edwards Walker, a Civil War surgeon, was the first woman to receive which honour?

The Medal of Honor was awarded to Walker in 1865 for her Civil War service; it was rescinded in 1917 along with 910 others, she wore it anyway until her death, and Jimmy Carter restored it in 1977.

Where did Sophia Jex-Blake take her MD in 1877 after Edinburgh refused to graduate her?

Bern: after Scottish courts ruled in 1873 that Edinburgh need not graduate women, Jex-Blake took her MD at Bern in January 1877 and then registered through the Irish College of Physicians.

Which famous naturalist supported the Edinburgh Seven, Britain's first female university medical students?

Charles Darwin was among the public supporters of the seven, who began at Edinburgh in 1869 under Sophia Jex-Blake; the Court of Session ruled in 1873 that the university should never have admitted them.

Anandi Gopal Joshi, the first certified Indian female doctor of modern medicine, sailed to New York from where?

Kolkata: she sailed from Calcutta in April 1883, aged 18, and graduated from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1886, but died of tuberculosis in 1887 before she could practise.

After graduating in 1881, Conan Doyle served as ship's surgeon on the SS Mayumba bound for where?

West Africa: in October 1881 Doyle sailed on the Mayumba to the West African coast, calling at Liberia and Lagos, caught a fever and hated the trip; he had already sailed on the Arctic whaler Hope in 1880.

Conan Doyle set up his first medical practice in 1882 in which town?

Southsea, a suburb of Portsmouth, where Doyle hung his plate at 1 Bush Villas, Elm Grove, in June 1882 with under £10 to his name and wrote the first Sherlock Holmes story while waiting for patients.

In 1891 Conan Doyle went to Vienna to study which specialty?

His medical practice never thrived, leaving time to write.

Poet John Keats trained as an apprentice to Thomas Hammond, a surgeon and what?

Apothecary: Keats was apprenticed in 1810 to Thomas Hammond, surgeon-apothecary of Edmonton, then walked the wards at Guy's and passed the Society of Apothecaries' licence in 1816 before choosing poetry.

Poet William Carlos Williams was chief of pediatrics at which New Jersey institution?

Passaic General Hospital made Williams chief of pediatrics in 1924, a post he held until his death in 1963, while he practised from his home at 9 Ridge Road, Rutherford.

Che Guevara received his medical degree in Argentina in which year?

1953: Guevara qualified at the University of Buenos Aires in June 1953, having delayed his finals for the 1952 motorcycle journey with Alberto Granado that shaped his politics.

Michael Crichton, physician-turned-author, created which medical TV drama?

ER grew from a screenplay Crichton wrote in 1974 about his Massachusetts General internship; NBC ran it from 1994 to 2009 and it launched George Clooney.

Kite Runner author Khaled Hosseini completed his internal medicine residency at which hospital?

Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, where Hosseini finished his residency in the mid-1990s; he practised internal medicine until 2004, the year after The Kite Runner was published.

Comedian Ken Jeong earned his MD in 1995 where?

UNC: Jeong took his MD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1995 after Duke as an undergraduate, then did an internal medicine residency at Ochsner in New Orleans.

Monty Python's Graham Chapman trained at which London hospital's medical college?

St Bartholomew's: after Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Chapman did his clinical training at Bart's and qualified as a doctor but never practised, choosing comedy with John Cleese instead.

Sun Yat-sen, physician and founder of the Republic of China, was educated where before medical school?

Hawaii: from 1879 Sun studied at Iolani School and Oahu College in Honolulu, where his elder brother lived, before training at the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese, graduating in 1892.

Which physician was Malaysia's prime minister from 1981 to 2003 and again from 2018 to 2020?

Mahathir Mohamad qualified in medicine at the University of Malaya in Singapore in 1953 and ran a practice in Alor Setar before politics; he returned as prime minister in 2018 at the age of 92.

Hastings Banda, who studied medicine overseas, ruled which African country from 1964 to 1994?

Malawi: Banda, who qualified in medicine at Meharry and Edinburgh and practised in England, became prime minister at independence in 1964 and president in 1966, ruling until his 1994 election defeat.

Patch Adams founded which not-for-profit healthcare project in West Virginia?

The Gesundheit! Institute, a free-care project Adams started in 1971 with plans for a hospital in West Virginia; since the 1980s he has also led volunteers dressed as clowns to hospitals and orphanages.

In 2025, Dr Mehmet Oz became administrator of which US agency?

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services: the Senate confirmed Oz, a heart surgeon turned TV host, as CMS administrator in April 2025; he had lost a 2022 Pennsylvania Senate race to John Fetterman.

Sex therapist Dr Ruth Westheimer was sent from Germany at age ten to a school in which country?

Switzerland: in January 1939 her parents put her on a Kindertransport to a children's home in Heiden, Switzerland; they stayed in Frankfurt and died in the camps, and she later trained as a sniper in the Haganah.

Jack Kevorkian, 'Dr Death', said he assisted at least how many patients to die?

130: Kevorkian said he helped at least 130 people die between 1990 and 1998; after three acquittals he was convicted of second-degree murder in 1999 for the televised death of Thomas Youk and served eight years.

Dr Spock's Baby and Child Care had sold how many copies by his death in 1998?

50 million: Baby and Child Care, first published in 1946, had sold more than 50 million copies in dozens of languages by 1998; Spock had won rowing gold at the 1924 Paris Olympics.

Anthony Fauci directed the NIAID from 1984 until which year?

2022: Fauci led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 until his retirement in December 2022, serving under seven presidents from Reagan to Biden.

CNN's Sanjay Gupta trained and practised in which surgical specialty at Grady Memorial Hospital?

He has also been an associate professor of neurosurgery at Emory.

Gregory House heads diagnostic medicine at which fictional hospital?

Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, a fictional New Jersey institution; Hugh Laurie played the Vicodin-dependent diagnostician for eight seasons on Fox, 2004-12.

Doctor Zhivago was first published in 1957 in which country?

Italy: Milan publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli brought the novel out in November 1957 after the manuscript was smuggled out of the USSR; Pasternak won the 1958 Nobel and was forced to decline it.

Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein is described as a young scientist of what nationality?

Italian-born Swiss: in the 1831 edition Victor says he was born at Naples to a Genevese family; he studies at Ingolstadt, where he assembles and animates the creature.

Which London lawyer investigates the link between his friend Dr Jekyll and the murderous Mr Hyde in Stevenson's 1886 novella?

Gabriel John Utterson is the reader's eyes throughout; the 1886 book helped define the gothic horror genre.

Dr Kildare was created in the 1930s by Frederick Schiller Faust under which pen name?

Max Brand, the pen name Faust used for westerns such as Destry Rides Again, introduced Dr Kildare in a 1936 magazine story; Paramount filmed Internes Can't Take Money in 1937 with Joel McCrea.

Dr Michaela Quinn leaves the East Coast to practise in which Old West town?

Colorado Springs, Colorado, in the 1860s; Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman ran on CBS for six seasons, 1993-98, with Jane Seymour as the Boston-trained doctor.

Doogie Howser, M.D. was created by David E. Kelley and which Hill Street Blues producer?

Steven Bochco, producer of Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law, created the show with David E. Kelley; Neil Patrick Harris played the teenage doctor for 97 episodes on ABC, 1989-93.

The hospital in Shonda Rhimes's Seattle surgical drama was first called Seattle Grace and later renamed what?

Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, renamed in season 9 (2013) after Lexie Grey and Mark Sloan, who died in the plane crash; the show's title puns on the Gray's Anatomy textbook.

ER was set in the emergency room of a fictionalised version of which real Windy City institution?

Cook County Hospital, Chicago's public hospital, was the model for the show's County General; ER ran for 331 episodes over 15 seasons on NBC, 1994-2009.

Scrubs is set at which fictional teaching hospital?

Sacred Heart Hospital: Scrubs was filmed in the disused North Hollywood Medical Center, and the title puns on surgical scrubs and a term for a low-ranking person.

M*A*S*H's doctors served at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital near which Korean town?

Uijeongbu, north of Seoul, is where the series places the 4077th; the real 8055th MASH, where novelist Richard Hooker served as a surgeon, was its model, and the show ran on CBS from 1972 to 1983.

Which actor played Stephen Strange in Marvel's 2016 film Doctor Strange?

Benedict Cumberbatch played the neurosurgeon turned sorcerer in Doctor Strange (2016), directed by Scott Derrickson; Joaquin Phoenix had been in talks for the part before him.

Who played Dr Leonard 'Bones' McCoy in the original Star Trek?

DeForest Kelley played McCoy from 1966 to 1969 and in six films; 'I'm a doctor, not a...' became his catchphrase, and Karl Urban took the role in the 2009 reboot.

Dr Watson first appeared alongside Sherlock Holmes in which 1887 novel?

A Study in Scarlet, printed in Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887, opens with Watson invalided home from Afghanistan and introduced to Holmes in a hospital laboratory by young Stamford.

What is rapper Dr. Dre's real name?

Andre Young (Andre Romelle Young), born in Compton in 1965, took the name Dr. Dre from basketball star Julius 'Dr. J' Erving; he co-founded Death Row Records and Beats Electronics.

Dr Pepper was created in the 1880s by pharmacist Charles Alderton in which Texas city?

Waco: Alderton mixed the drink at Morrison's Old Corner Drug Store in 1885, a year before Coca-Cola; it went national at the 1904 St Louis World's Fair.

Doctor Dolittle first appeared in Hugh Lofting's illustrated letters to his children written from where?

The trenches of World War I: serving with the Irish Guards, Lofting wrote illustrated letters home about an animal doctor rather than describe the fighting; The Story of Doctor Dolittle followed in 1920.

Dr. Evil is primarily a parody of which Bond villain?

Ernst Stavro Blofeld: Dr. Evil's bald head, scar, Nehru jacket and lap cat copy Donald Pleasence's Blofeld in You Only Live Twice (1967); Mike Myers played both him and Austin.

Dr. No, the first Bond film, sends 007 to which island?

Jamaica: Bond investigates the murder of the Kingston station chief and finds Dr. No's lair on Crab Key; Joseph Wiseman played the villain and Ursula Andress walked out of the sea at Laughing Waters beach.

Dr. Strangelove is loosely based on which 1958 thriller novel?

Red Alert, Peter George's 1958 novel (published in Britain as Two Hours to Doom), was a straight thriller; Kubrick and Terry Southern turned it into black comedy, with George co-writing the screenplay.

ABC's The Good Doctor was a remake of a 2013 series from where?

South Korea: the original Good Doctor aired on KBS2 in 2013 with Joo Won as the autistic savant surgeon; David Shore adapted it for ABC in 2017 with Freddie Highmore as Shaun Murphy.

Martin Clunes's Doc Martin developed from a character in which 2000 comedy film?

Saving Grace (2000), in which Clunes played Cornish GP Martin Bamford; two TV prequels followed before Doc Martin proper ran for ten series on ITV from 2004 to 2022.

Who played kindly family doctor Marcus Welby on ABC from 1969 to 1976?

Robert Young, earlier TV's Father Knows Best, played Welby for seven seasons; James Brolin was his motorcycle-riding partner Steven Kiley, and the show was TV's top-rated series in 1970-71.

Jack Klugman's Quincy, M.E. was a medical examiner for which county?

Los Angeles County: Quincy worked for the county coroner's office; the show ran on NBC from 1976 to 1983 and drew on real LA chief medical examiner Thomas Noguchi.

New Amsterdam (2018) was based on a book about which real New York hospital?

Bellevue, the oldest public hospital in the US: Eric Manheimer's memoir Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital inspired the show, with Ryan Eggold as medical director Max Goodwin.

The Pitt reunited Noah Wyle with which two ER collaborators?

R. Scott Gemmill and John Wells, both ER writer-producers, made The Pitt for Max in 2025 with Wyle as Dr Robby; each episode covers one hour of a 15-hour shift.

Dick Van Dyke's Diagnosis: Murder began as a spin-off of which series?

Jake and the Fatman: Dr Mark Sloan debuted in a 1991 episode, 'It Never Entered My Mind', before three TV movies and an eight-season CBS run; Van Dyke's son Barry played detective Steve Sloan.

St. Elsewhere was set at a run-down teaching hospital in which city?

Boston: St. Eligius, nicknamed St. Elsewhere, was a decaying South End teaching hospital; the NBC series ran 1982-88 and ended with the notorious snow-globe finale.

Which BBC series is recognised as the longest-running primetime medical drama in the world?

It first aired on 6 September 1986.

Doctors, the BBC's daytime medical soap, was set in which fictional Midlands town?

Letherbridge, a fictional town in the West Midlands: Doctors ran on BBC One from 2000 to 2024, filmed at the BBC's Birmingham studios, and followed the staff of the Mill Health Centre.

Dick Wolf's Med, the third instalment of his Windy City franchise, premiered in which year?

2015: Chicago Med premiered on NBC on 17 November 2015 after backdoor pilots on Chicago Fire, following Fire (2012) and P.D. (2014) in Wolf's One Chicago franchise.

In 1929, German doctor Werner Forssmann threaded a catheter into his own what, earning a later Nobel Prize?

Heart: Forssmann pushed a urinary catheter 65 cm up a vein in his own arm into his right atrium, having strapped down the nurse who expected to be the subject, then walked to X-ray to photograph it.

What job did Forssmann take after his release from a US POW camp in 1945, before returning to medicine?

Lumberjack: barred from hospital posts as a former Nazi party member, Forssmann felled trees in the Black Forest, then worked as a country doctor and urologist in Bad Kreuznach before the 1956 Nobel with Cournand and Richards.

To prove his ulcer theory, Australian doctor Barry Marshall deliberately swallowed a broth of which bacterium?

Helicobacter pylori: Marshall drank a culture in 1984, developed nausea and bad breath within days, and biopsies showed gastritis; he and Robin Warren shared the 2005 Nobel for overturning the stress-causes-ulcers doctrine.

Why did Marshall and Warren's first 30 H. pylori cultures fail to grow anything?

Standard throat-swab practice discarded plates after 48 hours; left longer, the slow-growing spiral bacteria finally appeared.

Harvey Cushing, 'father of modern neurosurgery', won a Pulitzer Prize for a biography of which physician?

Published in 1925, the Life of Sir William Osler ran to three volumes; Cushing also first described the disease that bears his name.

In British usage, the word 'physician' traditionally contrasts with which other kind of doctor?

Surgeon: a physician treated with drugs while a surgeon worked with the hands (Greek cheirourgia, 'hand work'); the trades were separate guilds for centuries, which is why British surgeons traditionally drop 'Dr' for 'Mr' or 'Ms'.

In Italy and Portugal, the title 'Doctor' is customarily given to whom?

All or most degree holders: in Italy anyone with a laurea is addressed as 'dottore', and in Portugal 'doutor' is customary for any graduate; an Italian PhD is styled 'dottore di ricerca' to mark the difference.