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178 free Doctor trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
15 free doctor trivia questions with answers. Think you know everything about doctors and medicine? Put your knowledge to the test with our comprehensive Doctor trivia quiz. From famous physicians throughout history to modern medical breakthroughs, this quiz covers fascinating facts about the medical profession and healthcare.
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Q 01What is the medical specialty focused on diagnosing and treating conditions of the skin, hair, and nails?
Dermatologist
A dermatologist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the skin, hair, and nails.
Q 02Which ancient Greek physician is widely regarded as the 'Father of Medicine'?
Hippocrates
Hippocrates gave medicine prognosis and clinical observation, and also humoral theory, which held sway for centuries before being discredited.
Q 03A pulmonologist specialises in diseases of which part of the body?
Lungs and airways
Pulmonologists are physicians who specialize in the respiratory system, including the lungs, airways, and related structures, diagnosing and treating conditions that affect breathing.
Q 04In what year did Christiaan Barnard perform the first human-to-human heart transplant?
1967
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.
Q 05Which medical instrument, invented by René Laennec in 1816, is used for auscultation, listening to the body's internal sounds?
Stethoscope
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.
Q 06What is the medical term for persistently high blood pressure?
Hypertension
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.
Q 07A pediatrician provides medical care primarily to which demographic?
Children and adolescents
The word comes from the Greek for 'healer of children'; the upper age limit varies by country, often 18 but sometimes 21.
Q 08Who is recognized as the founder of modern nursing, known for her work during the Crimean War?
Florence Nightingale
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.
Q 09Which medical specialist focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of cancer?
Oncologist
Most oncologists narrow further, into surgery, radiation, paediatrics, or one organ such as breast, brain or liver.
Q 10Bones, joints, ligaments, tendons — which specialist handles the musculoskeletal system?
Orthopedist
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.
Q 11Who is credited with the discovery of penicillin in 1928?
Alexander Fleming
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.
Q 12What is the medical term for an abnormally low level of blood sugar, typically under 70 mg/dL?
Hypoglycemia
Hypoglycemia is the 'hypo' (under) one, as in hypothermia; hyperglycemia is its opposite.
Q 13Which type of medical doctor specializes in eye and vision care, and is qualified to perform eye surgery?
Ophthalmologist
An ophthalmologist holds a medical degree and can operate; optometrists test sight and prescribe lenses, and opticians fit them.
Q 21Joseph Lister pioneered antiseptic surgery at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary using which chemical?
Carbolic acid
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.
Q 22William Harvey's 1628 treatise on blood circulation is usually known by what short title?
De Motu Cordis
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.
Q 23Christiaan Barnard's first heart-transplant patient, Louis Washkansky, survived for how long after the 1967 operation?
Q 14What branch of medicine treats and prevents mental, emotional and behavioural disorders?
Psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty; psychologists are not usually physicians, while neurology handles the nervous system's physical disorders.
Q 15Which scan spins X-rays around the body and lets a computer build cross-sectional images?
CT scan
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.
Q 16In 1816 René Laennec invented his listening tube for the heart because he was uncomfortable doing what?
Putting his ear directly on a woman's chest
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.
Q 17The original Hippocratic Oath opens by swearing to Apollo the Healer, Asclepius, and which two goddesses?
Hygieia and Panacea
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.
Q 18Jenner's 1796 inoculation, the origin of the word 'vaccine', used matter from which disease?
Cowpox
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'.
Q 19How 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
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.
Q 20In 1847, Ignaz Semmelweis cut maternal deaths in Vienna by making doctors wash their hands in what?
Chlorinated lime solution
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.
18 days
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.
Q 24Barnard performed the first human heart transplant at which Cape Town hospital?
Groote Schuur
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.
Q 25Louis Pasteur is credited with vaccines against which two diseases?
Rabies and anthrax
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.
Q 26Andreas Vesalius, author of the 1543 anatomy landmark De Humani Corporis Fabrica, was born in which city?
Brussels
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.
Q 27The degree abbreviation MD stands for which Latin phrase?
Medicinae Doctor
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.
Q 28North American medical schools took the MD title from universities in which country?
Scotland
Glasgow issued its first Doctor of Medicine to Samuel Benion in 1703.
Q 29Which Chinese physician is considered the first verifiable historical figure to develop an anaesthetic?
Hua Tuo
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.
Q 30Cocaine was first used as a local anaesthetic in eye surgery in 1884 by Karl Koller, at whose suggestion?
Sigmund Freud
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.