History of Medicine final exam

Buck v Bell

1927 U.S. Supreme Court case upholding involuntary sterilization

Dobbs v Jackson

2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the federal constitutional right to abortion.

Franklin Roosevelt

US President who had Polio and survived, was in a wheelchair. Advocated for fighting against infantile paralysis.

thalidomide

drug prescribed to pregnant women for nausea, led to severe birth defects in their children , deformed arms and legs

Paul Ehrlich

Father of chemotherapy, developed the idea of “magic bullets” to treat microorganisms without harming host. Developed first chemotherapeutic treatment against syphillis.

antibiotic

Substance that kills or inhibits bacterial growth; penicillin was the first widely used clinical antibiotic.

Woordow Wilson

28th U.S. President (1913‑21); oversaw the 1918 influenza pandemic response and promoted the League of Nations, an early global‑health effort.

Griswold v Conneticut

1965 Supreme Court case establishing the constitutional right to privacy, later used to protect contraceptive use.

Typhus

bacterial disease largely transmited to people living in unsanitary conditions. Particularly present in soldiers during war and jails.

Cholera

Acute diarrheal illness caused by Vibrio cholerae; spread through contaminated water,

Rubella

German measles, mild in children, adults were more prone to complications and it was catastrophic for pregnant women. Vaccine successfully developed from using fetal cells.

Landsteiner

Austrian immunologist who discovered the ABO blood‑type system, enabling safe blood transfusion. First immunologist.

Mumps

Viral infection of salivary glands; vaccine (MMR) introduced in the 1970s dramatically reduced incidence.

AIDS

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, caused by HIV; identified in 1981, leading to global public‑health campaigns and antiretroviral therapy.

tuberculosis

caused by drinking infected cows milk, infection in the neck and lymph nodes, royal touch thought to cure it

Alexander Fleming

Scottish bacteriologist who discovered penicillin in 1928, opening the antibiotic era.

CRISPR

Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats; a gene‑editing technology pioneered by Doudna & Charpentier (2012).

Mary Mallon

“Typhoid Mary,” irish woman who was a cook and spread typhoid fever with her cooking to many people

Streptomycin

first effective drug developed for tuberculosis, found by Waksman

Salvarsan

Helped develop Arsphenamine, the first modern chemotherapeutic agent used to treat syphilis; Paul Ehrlich’s “magic bullet.”

Florey and Chain

refined penicillin production in the early 1940s, making it widely available for wartime medicine.

Banting and Best

isolated insulin, turning diabetes from a fatal disease into a manageable condition.

Comstock

US moral crusader, his 1873 Comstock Act banned “obscene” materials, including birth‑control information.

Schleiden and Schwann

Matthias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann formulated the Cell Theory establishing cells as the basic unit of life.

Mengele

Nazi physician known for horrific eugenic experiments on twins at Auschwitz

Domagk

Discovered Prontosil, which showed antibacterial properties. First effective anti-bacterial agent to be marketed commercially.

Monette

tbd

Doudna and Charpentier

engineered the CRISPR‑Cas9 system, earning the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Rebecca Crumpler

First African‑American woman physician (trained 1864); wrote A Book of Medical Observations highlighting health disparities.

Flexner

sent to the US to improve medical education standards, wrote the Flexner report which fixed licensure problems

AZT

Zidovudine, the first antiretroviral approved (1987) to treat HIV/AIDS; initially a cancer drug repurposed for viral therapy.

Franklin and Wilkins

produced X‑ray diffraction images of DNA that were crucial to Watson & Crick’s double‑helix model (1953).