Pioneers in Medicine Trivia Quiz

Answer: Elizabeth Blackwell

Ms. Blackwell enrolled in Geneva College in Upstate New York and graduated at the top of her class. She was refused staff privileges at all hospitals. Thus, she set up her private practice in New York City and specialized in the care of women and children

Answer: Banting and Best

In 1921 at the University of Toronto these men made the first major discovery for the treatment of diabetes. They extracted insulin from the pancreas glands of cattle and pigs. All current insulin for the treatment of diabetics is a human insulin produced by using DNA recombinant technology.

Answer: Fleming

Sir Alexander Fleming noticed a mold that contaminated his bacterial implants on laboratory Petri dishes inhibited the growth of the organisms. This was identified as Penicillin. Limited supplies were made available to the military services in about 1942-44.

Answer: Selman A. Waksman

Waksman undertook a sytematic program to identify substances in the soil that might have antibiotic characteristics. Three important antibiotics were isolated and identified, including actinomycin, streptomycin and neomycin.

Answer: Won the Nobel Prize in Medicine

He won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry (not medicine) in 1954 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962. No other person has won two unshared Nobel Laureate Awards in a lifetime. Although he discovered that sickle cell anemia was due to a genetic defect, he was not an M.D.

Answer: Norman E. Shumway

The patient survived the operation and lived for several weeks but then died. Dr. Shumway went on to become Chief of Cardiovascular Surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine.

Answer: Ordained as curate at the Church of St. Paul

Schweitzer was a philosopher, physician, musicologist, theologian and a missionary. He established a hospital in French Equatorial Africa.

Answer: Ignaz P. Semmelweis

In the 1840's puerperal fever (childbed fever) caused a 30 percent mortality in women deliveried in a hospital. At that time hospital doctors did not wear gowns or wash their hands before delivering a baby. He made the doctors wash their hands in chlorinated lime and adopted other antiseptic procedures for the delivery ward. Mortality from childbed fever dropped to less than 1 percent in a few years.

Answer: William Morton

W. T. G. Morton was a Boston dentist and performed the first public demonstration, at the Massachusetts General Hospital, of a painless tooth extraction while the patient was under ether anestesia.

Answer: Joseph Lister

Lister believed that infections were caused by airborne dust and thus he sprayed the air with a carbolic acid solution. Subsequently, he also applied carbolic acid to the instruments, the patient's wound and to the dressings. Queen Victoria made him a Baron. It is a sad commentary to the fact that the famous 1st Baron Joseph Lister is currently best known for a mouth wash.

Answer: James Simpson

Initially, his use of chloroform general anesthesia during child birth was strongly opposed by the church and by his medical colleagues. When Queen Victoria accepted chloroform anesthesia for the birth of Prince Leopold in 1853, the procedure gained general acceptance. He was knighted and became Sir James Simpson.

Answer: Discovery of the structure of DNA

Watson, an American geneticist, and Crick, an English phyicist, worked together at the University of Cambridge. They discovered the two strands of DNA held together in the form of a double helix.

Answer: Johann F. Miescher

The molecule containing ribonucleic acid (RNA) and desoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)was first discovered in 1868 by Johann F. Miescher. Hershey and Chase later determined that DNA was a genetic substance.

Answer: Name Nobel Laureate in micro-biology

Pasteur probably made more significant advancements in science and medicine that any other single person. He established 'The Germ Theory of Disease'; he developed vaccines for rabies and anthrax; he saved the silk industry from disaster; he proved that yeast was involved in fermentation (wine making); he established the presence of isomers in some organic compounds and he invented pasteurization to protect perishable foods.

He deserved the Nobel Prize but it was not established until 1931, a quarter century after his death.

Answer: Hippocrates

He was born circa 460 B.C.. At least 70 reports and articles are included in Hippocrates'Collection. He wrote the Hippocratic Oath, which is no longer a required pledge of graduating medical students.