Dulbecco and Vogt were the first to successfully grow the poliovirus in vitro. They were also able to plaque purify it-- an essential step for subsequent vaccine production.

The first discovery of the geometry of a protein structure. Franklin, whose X-ray photographs of DNA were crucial to Watson and Crick's discovery of the molecule's double helix structure in 1953, began researching the molecular structure of the tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) after moving from King's College to Birkbeck College in mid-1953. Between 1953 and her death in 1958, Franklin and her team of researchers made significant advances in knowledge of the virus's molecular structure, beginning with the present paper announcing her discovery, based on her X-ray photographs, that the rod-shaped TMV units are all the same length and that they are made up of identical protein subunits. Preceding Perutz and Kendrew's mapping of the structures of myoglobin and hemoglobin by several years, this was the first discovery of the geometry of a protein structure.

This study of the ipecacuanha root and its effects as a emetic, nauseant, expectorant and dispahoretic, Leibniz issued on what he called "the new American antidysentery drug" after reading about the root in Piso and Marggraf's Historia naturalis Brasilia (1648). The report is considered Leibniz's most comprehensive contribution to medicine. The printer of the work, Freytag, issued it in three different ways: As an appendix to Freytag's edition of Martin Lister's Sex exercitationes medicales de quibusdam morbis chronicis (Frankfurt, 1696), and also in Freytag's early periodical, Miscellanea curiosa, sive Ephemeridum medico-physicarum Germanicarum (Nuremberg, 1696). From that publication a separate pamphlet, or an early journal offprint, was also issued.

In this book d'Hérelle reported on the results of quantitative work based on the plaque-count, and dilution methods of assay that he invented. He described a three-step process for the life history of the bacteriophage virus: 1. Attachment to the susceptible bacterium, 2. Multiplication in the cell, 3. Disintegration of the cell to free the progreny virus particles and attachment of the progreny to other susceptible bacteria, if they are present.
English translation as The bacteriophage and its behavior. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins Co., 1926. 

First identification, observation under the electron microscope, and reproduction of photomicrographs of bacteriophages taken through the electron microscope.

Digital facsimile, but with poor reproductions of the two plates, from PubMedCentral at this link.

This work demonstrated the absorption of the phages on the host cell, and the lysis of the host cell and the liberation of a hundred or so daughter paritcles from each cell. It also showed that the particles multiply inside the cells rather than at their surfaces, since unti lysis occurs the number of particles visible at the surface remains constant. 
Digital facsimile from PubMedCentral at this link. For an extensive commentary on this paper, including correspondence between Anderson and Delbruck before and after publication see T. F. Anderson, "Electronic microscopy of phages," Phage and the origins of molecular biology. Expanded Edition, edited by John Cairns, Gunther Stent and James D. Watson (1992) 63-78.

First report on the application of synchrotron radiation to protein crystallography. Order of authorship in the original publication: Phillips, Wlodwawer..., Hodgson. Digital facsimile from pnas.org at this link.

"Synchrotrons can now produce X-rays that are one trillion times brighter than the X-rays Rosalind Franklin used for Photo 51, according to University of Liverpool biophysicist Samar Hasnain, editor in chief of the Journal of Synchrotron Radiation and other journals of the International Union of Crystallography. Indeed, synchrotrons have vastly expanded the scope and refinement of investigations of biological structures and dynamics. They have enabled dazzling biological discoveries, including those associated with five Nobel Prizes in the past 20 years. The most recent of these were Brian Walker [i.e Brian Kobilka] and Robert Lefkowitz's 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on G protein–coupled receptors, membrane proteins that send signals of extracellular molecules to the cell's interior, and Thomas Steitz, Venki Ramakrishnan, and Ada Yonath's 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on the structure of the ribosome, the cell's organelle for synthesizing proteins for many purposes. Walker [i.e. Brian Kobilka] and Lefkowitz's synchrotron work was primarily done at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) synchrotron at Argonne National Laboratory, in Illinois, and the Steitz, Ramakrishnan, and Yonath ribosome work involved research at multiple synchrotrons, including APS and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), in Grenoble, France" (https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/67/3/201/2962463).

Levine discovered the tumor suppressor protein p53, also known as Tumor protein P53. Because it prevents cancer formation TP 53 is classified as a tumor suppressor gene. The discovery was completed in 1989 and recorded in the following paper: Cathy A. Finlay, Philip W. Hinds, and Arnold J. Levine, "The p53 proto-onogene can act as a suppressor of transformation," Cell, 57 (1989), 1083-1093.

Identification by the many scientists in The Huntington's Disease Collaborative Research Group, including Gusella, of the single defective gene on chromosome 4 that causes the progressive brain disorder, Huntington's disease. The defect is dominant, meaning that anyone who inherits it from a parent with Huntington's will eventually develop the disease. The defective gene codes for a protein called huntingtin. Since identification of the defective gene, a diagnostic genetic test has been developed that can detect the defective gene in people who do not yet have symptoms of the disease.

Noller demonstrated that the ribosome is a ribozyme, a critical step in understanding how ribosomes translate the genetic information in DNA into the language of proteins.
 

Ambros and colleagues discovered the first known microRNA (miRNA), a small single-stranded non-coding RNA molecule (containing about 22 nucleotides) found in plants, animals and some viruses, that functions in RNA silencing and post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression. The human genome may encode over 1900 miRNAs, although more recent analysis suggests that the number is closer to 2,300.

The first human disease associated with deregulation of miRNAs was chronic lymphocytic leukemia. In this disorder, the miRNAs work as both tumor suppressors and oncogenes.

In 2024 Victor Ambros shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Gary Ruvkun for "the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation."

Order of authorship in the original publication: Lee, Feinbaum, Ambros.

"Abstract

"Importance  Despite advances in the assessment of technical skills in surgery, a clear understanding of the composites of technical expertise is lacking. Surgical simulation allows for the quantitation of psychomotor skills, generating data sets that can be analyzed using machine learning algorithms.

"Objective  To identify surgical and operative factors selected by a machine learning algorithm to accurately classify participants by level of expertise in a virtual reality surgical procedure.

"Design, Setting, and Participants  Fifty participants from a single university were recruited between March 1, 2015, and May 31, 2016, to participate in a case series study at McGill University Neurosurgical Simulation and Artificial Intelligence Learning Centre. Data were collected at a single time point and no follow-up data were collected. Individuals were classified a priori as expert (neurosurgery staff), seniors (neurosurgical fellows and senior residents), juniors (neurosurgical junior residents), and medical students, all of whom participated in 250 simulated tumor resections.

"Exposures  All individuals participated in a virtual reality neurosurgical tumor resection scenario. Each scenario was repeated 5 times.

"Main Outcomes and Measures  Through an iterative process, performance metrics associated with instrument movement and force, resection of tissues, and bleeding generated from the raw simulator data output were selected by K-nearest neighbor, naive Bayes, discriminant analysis, and support vector machine algorithms to most accurately determine group membership.

"Results  A total of 50 individuals (9 women and 41 men; mean [SD] age, 33.6 [9.5] years; 14 neurosurgeons, 4 fellows, 10 senior residents, 10 junior residents, and 12 medical students) participated. Neurosurgeons were in practice between 1 and 25 years, with 9 (64%) involving a predominantly cranial practice. The K-nearest neighbor algorithm had an accuracy of 90% (45 of 50), the naive Bayes algorithm had an accuracy of 84% (42 of 50), the discriminant analysis algorithm had an accuracy of 78% (39 of 50), and the support vector machine algorithm had an accuracy of 76% (38 of 50). The K-nearest neighbor algorithm used 6 performance metrics to classify participants, the naive Bayes algorithm used 9 performance metrics, the discriminant analysis algorithm used 8 performance metrics, and the support vector machine algorithm used 8 performance metrics. Two neurosurgeons, 1 fellow or senior resident, 1 junior resident, and 1 medical student were misclassified.

"Conclusions and Relevance  In a virtual reality neurosurgical tumor resection study, a machine learning algorithm successfully classified participants into 4 levels of expertise with 90% accuracy. These findings suggest that algorithms may be capable of classifying surgical expertise with greater granularity and precision than has been previously demonstrated in surgery."

Available at  doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.8363.

Discovery of the BRCA1 gene using the technique of restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP).

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Stratton and colleagues discovered the BRCA2 gene. Oder of authorship in the original publication: Wooster, Neuhausen, Mangion....Stratton.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Concerns miscarriage and aberrant gestation rather than removal or expulsion of embryo or fetus. Digital facsimile from wellcomecollection.org at this link.

Chilton was the first (1977) to demonstrate the presence of a fragment of Agrobacterium Ti plasmid DNA in the nuclear DNA of crown gall tissue. Her research on Agrobacterium also showed that the genes responsible for causing disease could be removed from the bacterium without adversely affecting its ability to insert its own DNA into plant cells and modify the plant's genome. Chilton described what she had done as disarming the bacterial plasmid responsible for the DNA transfer. Using Agrobacterium carrying the disarmed Ti plasmid, in 1983 Chilton and her collaborators produced the first genetically modified plants.

The first part of this work concerns cross-sectional anatomy; the second part systematically discusses the differences between anatomy in children and adults of different parts of the body.

A notorious anatomy textbook that was pulled from the market by the publisher due to protest over its use of Playboy magazine type models to illustrate female external anatomy, as well as its sexist language. Preface: "Perhaps we should have included photographs of garden-variety, American males and females who have let their physiques go to pot. Instead, we used female models as model females. The student will see the ordinary specimen every day. Only on rare occasions will the attractive, well-turned specimen appear before him for consultation. He should be prepared for this pleasant shock. For the growing ranks of female medics, we included the body beautiful of a robust, healthy male. We are sorry that we cannot make available the addresses of the young ladies who grace our pages. Our wives burned our little address books at our last barbecue get-together" (p. vii). Rosalind A. Coleman & James Rolleston, "Anatomy Lessons: The Destiny of a Textbook, 1971-72", South Atlantic Quarterly,  90, (1991), 153-73. Edward C. Halperin, "The Pornographic Anatomy Book? The Curious Tale of 'The Anatomical Basis of Medical Practice'," (published in Duke Medicine). 

The first sequence of the complete human genome, telomere to telomere, including transcriptional and epigenetic state of the repeat elements, adding 8% novel genome information left unresolved since the 2001 draft sequence. Order of authorship in the original publication: Nurk, Koren, Rhie...Miga. 

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

The authors showed how a coronavirus specific protease inhibitor designed in the lab, that could be administered by mouth to humans, achieved excellent plasma concentrations and antiviral potency. This drug, marketed as Pfizer's Paxlovid, was the first successful outpatient medicine for the treatment of COVID-19.
Order of authorship in the original publication: Owen, Allerton, Anderson.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Free access from FEBS Press at this link.

Sumner first isolated and crystallized an enzyme (urease) and proved that enzymes are proteins.
One month after publication of the above paper Sumner reinforced his discovery by recrystalizing urease, publishing a follow-up paper:
"Note. The recrystallization of urease," J. Biol. Chem., 70, 1926, 97-98.

In 1946 Sumner was awarded half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his discovery that enzymes can be crystallized." The other half was awarded to John Howard Northrop and Wendell Meredith Stanley "for their preparation of enzymes and virus proteins in a pure form."

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for the follow-up reference.)

Abstract:
"Proteins are essential to life, and understanding their structure can facilitate a mechanistic understanding of their function. Through an enormous experimental effort^1,2,3,4, the structures of around 100,000 unique proteins have been determined⁵, but this represents a small fraction of the billions of known protein sequences^6,7. Structural coverage is bottlenecked by the months to years of painstaking effort required to determine a single protein structure. Accurate computational approaches are needed to address this gap and to enable large-scale structural bioinformatics. Predicting the three-dimensional structure that a protein will adopt based solely on its amino acid sequence—the structure prediction component of the ‘protein folding problem’⁸—has been an important open research problem for more than 50 years⁹. Despite recent progress^{10,11,12,13,14}, existing methods fall far short of atomic accuracy, especially when no homologous structure is available. Here we provide the first computational method that can regularly predict protein structures with atomic accuracy even in cases in which no similar structure is known. We validated an entirely redesigned version of our neural network-based model, AlphaFold, in the challenging 14th Critical Assessment of protein Structure Prediction (CASP14)¹⁵, demonstrating accuracy competitive with experimental structures in a majority of cases and greatly outperforming other methods. Underpinning the latest version of AlphaFold is a novel machine learning approach that incorporates physical and biological knowledge about protein structure, leveraging multi-sequence alignments, into the design of the deep learning algorithm."

In 2024 Demis Hassabis and John Jumper shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with David Baker for "revealing protein's secrets through computing and artificial intelligence."

Order of authorship in the original publication: Jumper, Evans...Hassabis.  Open access from Nature at this link.

Abstract:
"The AlphaFold Protein Structure Database (AlphaFold DB, https://alphafold.ebi.ac.uk) is an openly accessible, extensive database of high-accuracy protein-structure predictions. Powered by AlphaFold v2.0 of DeepMind, it has enabled an unprecedented expansion of the structural coverage of the known protein-sequence space. AlphaFold DB provides programmatic access to and interactive visualization of predicted atomic coordinates, per-residue and pairwise model-confidence estimates and predicted aligned errors. The initial release of AlphaFold DB contains over 360,000 predicted structures across 21 model-organism proteomes, which will soon be expanded to cover most of the (over 100 million) representative sequences from the UniRef90 data set."

Open access from academic.oup.com at this link.

A little-known historical work on the history of physiology and the history of medicine by Owen, who, even though he was trained in medicine, most often wrote on topics in comparative anatomy, zoology, paleontology and evolution. Digital facsimile from the wellcomecollection.org at this link.

"Until Now, there have been no books and only a few articles available in English that deal with the actual practice of medicine in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Iran. Willem Floor’s Public Health in Qajar Iran fills this lacuna, giving a broad and comprehensive survey of the state of public health, medical practice, and its practitioners in 1800-1925. Based on firsthand accounts of European travelers and doctors who practiced and observed medical treatment, the study provides an overview of the major diseases the population suffered and how these were treated. It also includes the available evidence logged by Iranian patients abroad and at home, as well as contemporary Persian texts that comment on public health and its practice in Iran.

"Floor shuns the analysis of classic Islamic medical textbooks, explaining that their medical advice was hardly ever administered and that the authors often had ideological (religious) agendas in writing these treatises. Instead, Floor investigates the commonly accepted theories of diseases, disorders, and their cures, including Islamic Galenic medicine and pre-Islamic theurgic folk medicine based on traditional herb lore and trial-and-error. The book concludes with the impact of Western medicine on the traditional medical institutions and public health in Qajar Iran..." (publisher)

By demonstrating that the rabies organism is filterable Remlinger proved that rabies is a virus. The rabies virus was the second virus causing disease in humans to be identified. Remlinger made his discovery by following Walter Reed's technique used to identify the yellow fever virus, published by Reed in 1902.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

The first visual proof, by publication of electron micrographs at 25,000 magnification, that Negri bodies contain enormous numbers of rabies virus particles. Digital facsimile from rupress.org at this link.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Digital facsimile from wellcomecollection.org at this link.

In this wide-ranging ethnographic study Polak provided the most authoritative account of his introduction of western medicine into Iran as well as the state of medicine in Iran generally. "Polak (1865, II, pp. 192-348) devoted five chapters to exclusively medical topics. He describes the various health care professionals, their income, status and methods of treatment, as well as narcotics, poisons, and antidotes. He provides an encyclopedic list of common diseases, followed by a practical section on travel advice for foreigners, even including psychological problems of acculturation (Polak, 1865, II, pp. 349-60). Although he is not completely free from Orientalist misconceptions and remains strongly convinced of the overall superiority of the West, his detailed observations are extremely valuable. His medical practice allowed him to gain unique insights into Qajar society. For example, Polak (1865, I, p. 204) soberly notes the occurrence of a perineal tear in girls as resulting from marriage before puberty—nowadays this is considered child rape" (Encyclopedia Iranica). Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Abstract: "Although the late 17th century witnessed the recognition of fossils as the remains of extinct organisms—because they could be incorporated into the creation story embodied in the Great Chain of Being—acceptance of human antiquity through the indisputable demonstration of the contemporaneity of human bones, stone tools, and accepted fossils was not forthcoming for nearly 2 centuries thereafter. When it did occur, however, ancient humans were not seen as presenting a pattern of diversity similar to that seen in the fossil records of nonhuman organisms. Instead, human evolution then, as now, has typically been interpreted as being unilinear. This belief can be traced to Huxley (1863), who argued that the Feldhofer Grotto Neanderthal skullcap was merely an extension into the past of morphology seen in the Australian Aborigine, whom he took to represent the primitive end of an extreme range of variation he thought characterized Homo sapiens. During the mid-20th century, Mayr and Dobzhansky (mis)used their clout as founders of the evolutionary synthesis to cement in paleoanthropology the idea that human evolutionary history was characterized by nonspeciation. As such, anything that could be interpreted as potentially representing taxic diversity was relegated to the status of individual variation. Lack of understanding of the history of human paleontology, and the biases that constrained its perspective on human evolution, continue to affect the ways in which most paleoanthropologists pigeonhole human fossils."

King believed that the Feldhofer Neanderthal skull discovered by Fuhrott and Schaafhausen differed significantly from all known ancient and modern human crania. In this paper he proposed the name Homo neanderthalensis in order to distinguish the Feldhofer specimen from anatomically modern Homo sapiens; thus this paper is the source of the term “Neanderthal Man.”

King "noted the differences in the curved ribs, the skull muscle attachment suggesting carnivory and suggested that the Neanderthal was a species different from modern humans. He supported a modified version of Darwin's Origin of Species but he gave considerable emphasis to place the Neanderthal as being close and on a "lower scale" than Andaman and Australian aborigines and suggested that like them, the Neanderthal was "incapable of moral and theoistic conception".  (Wikipedia article on William King (geologist) ).

Gregory's PhD dissertation, of particular significance for its exhaustive analysis of prior taxonomic systems for mammalia. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Owen was the prime mover behind the construction of the Natural History Museum, a project that occupied him for over two decades. His On the Extent and Aims of a National Museum of Natural History, containing the text of his lecture delivered before the Royal Institution in April 1861, was part of his long campaign to obtain political backing for the South Kensington Museum.

After Owen's appointment as superintendent of the Natural History department of the British Museum in 1856, dissatisfied with the cramped and disorganized confines of the existing British Museum (located in Bloomsbury), Owen began lobbying for a "separate but unified national museum of natural history . . . to represent the three kingdoms of nature" (Rupke, p. 34), to be housed in a building spacious enough to display even the largest specimens of both living and fossil species. The project did not really get off the ground until October 1861, when "manipulated future Prime Minster Gladstone into the opinion that the current exhibition facilities for the Natural History Department of the British Museum were inadequate for their task. Owen cultivated Gladstone's support in order to bring the issue before Parliament once the Trustees of the British Museum fell into agreement with his extravagant plans for building not just more display space, but an entirely new building to house the natural history collection (Johnson-Roehr, "The Natural History Museum-London" [internet reference]).

After much heated debate, Owen's plan was approved and the South Kensington museum, designed by Albert Waterhouse, began construction in 1873. The building was completed by late 1879, and the museum opened its doors to the public in 1881. The social and cultural impact of Owen's Natural History Museum cannot be overestimated: Bill Bryson, in his Short History of Nearly Everything (2003), stated that "by making the Natural History Museum an institution for everyone, Owen transformed our expectations of what museums are for" (p. 81).

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Wallace delivered this paper to the polygenist Anthropological Society of London on 1 March 1864. It represents “the first effort to connect natural selection to the touchy problem of the evolution of human races” (Wallace 1991, 26), a topic that Huxley broached in his Evidence of Man's Place in Nature (1863) but which Darwin avoided until his Descent of Man (1871).

Wallace argued that man is fundamentally different from all other species because of the nature of the human mind, which enabled him “to remove his body from the modifying influence of external conditions, and the cumulative action of natural selection.” Though Wallace shares credit with Darwin for the theory of evolution by natural selection, Wallace differed fundamentally from Darwin in his attempt to distinguish the effect of natural selection upon man from its effect on the rest of living things. 

A politician, Gore was one of the first to draw popular attention to climate change. He supplemented the best-selling book with a film and DVD with the same title. Ten years later, recognizing that in spite of its wide circulation, his first effort had not had sufficient impact on governmental or social policies, Gore issued An inconvenient sequel, truth to power. Your action handbook to learn the science, find your voice and help solve the climate crisis. New York: Rodale Press, 2017. In spite of the social urgency expressed in the sequel, no film or DVD version was produced, and the impact of the sequel was limited.

For An inconvenient truth Gore shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

1) Using a phylogeographical model of the mammal-virus network, and projections of geographical range shifts, the authors assert that 3,139 mammal species will aggregate in new combinations at high elevations, seeking respite from rising heat.

2) Further they state that most mammalian species will have a range that overlaps with that of at least one previously unfamiliar species, and that more than 300,000 new cross-species encounters will occur globally, especially in tropical Africa and southeast Asia. They project that this will lead to a doubling in the number of cross-species contacts. They add that tropical hotspots of novel viral sharing will broadly coincide with areas of high population density, such as India, Indonesia, eastern China and the Philippines, by 2070.

3) They state that bats will become key drivers of altered virus sharing under climate change. Bats are known for their ability to harbor and transmit emergent pathogens. Furthermore, as winged mammals, bats are well positioned to respond to changing environmental conditions by taking flight and migrating to higher elevations or elsewhere.

4) The authors indicate that these ecological transitions are already underway, and that holding warming under 2 degrees Celsius in the 21^st century will not reduce viral sharing.

5) The authors indicate that birds have the best documented virome after mammals, and account for the majority of non-mammalian reservoirs of zoonotic viruses. Thus changing bird migration patterns in a warming world will have a special impact on transmission.

6) Lastly, they state that climate change could easily become the dominant anthropogenic force in viral cross-species transmission.

Order of authorship in the original publication: Carlson, Albery, Merow....

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

A history of hospitals in France from the earliest times, through charitable care for the poor by monks and nuns, to their evolution through legislation of the 16th and 17yh centuries. Includes a list of charitable institutions for the care of the poor no longer in existence by Recalde's time, arranged alphabetically by town from Aix to Verdun, and articles drawn from 17th and 18th century legislation, covering  hospital personnel, the keeping of records and accounts, attendance to the sick by doctors, surgeons and their students, bandaging of the wounded, patients’ diet (comprising meat of good quality, bread, cereal, red or white wine or beer, salt, vinegar, eggs, rice, and prunes), hospital beds and linen; spring cleaning (whitewashing, eradicating insects etc.)

"The substantial collection of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier’s apparatus is not the only surviving collection of eighteenth-century chemical apparatus and instrumentation, but it is without question the most important. The present study provides the first scientific catalogue of Lavoisier’s surviving apparatus. This collection of instruments is remarkable not only for the quality of many of them but, above all, for the number of items that have survived (ca. 600 items). Given such a wealth and variety of instruments, this study also offers the first comprehensive attempt to reconstruct the cultural and social context of Lavoisier’s experimental activities" (publisher).

The first published photographic study of fetal physiology using live human fetuses. Includes 20 full-age photographic plates, each with 6-12 images (189 total). The fetuses, all between 8.5 and 14 weeks gestation, were obtained by surgical abortion "undertaken in the interest of the health, sanity or life of the mother." During a secretive departmental study begun in 1932 Hooker and team used horse hairs to stroke the face, body, arms and legs of fetus and filmed their reflexes with a motion picture camera. When the studies were conducted the specimens were technically still alive but had been separated from the placenta, resulting in asphxia and death within 13 minutes. 

On p. 1226 the massive number of authors reported that "microscopic, culture, injection and inoculation studies on many different organisms to include mice, fish, invertebrates, insects, plants and lower animals such as parmecium, found that as of September 11, 1969, no evidence of pathogenicity has been observed."

See also: Vance I. Oyama, Edward L. Merek and Melvin P. Silverman, "A search for viable organisms in a lunar sample," Science, 167, 773-775. 
The authors found that "no viable life forms, including terrestrial contaminants, were found when the sample was tested in 300 separate environments," ending with "we conclude for this sample of the moon that there was no viable life present."

(Thanks for Juan Weiss for these references and their interpretation.)

Karlson and Butenandt (Nobel Prize 1939) defined pheromones as “substances which are secreted to the outside by an individual of the same species, in which they release a specific reaction, for example, a definite behavior or a developmental process.” They distinguished between pheromones acting via olfaction and those acting via oral or ingestive routes. The former produced immediate releasing responses (e.g., initiating and guiding the flight of the male silk worm moth, Bombyx mori, to the female) and the latter delayed endocrine or reproductive effects, such as the caste-determining substances of many social insects.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Heimlich proposed and described the eponymous “Heimlich maneuver” for what was then called the “café coronary,” a cause of sudden death seen mostly in restaurants, or at the dinner table, most often on those ingesting a very large chunk of steak after a generous amount of alcoholic beverages.

Heimlich described the maneuver as follows: “Standing behind the victim, the rescuer puts both arms around him just above the belt line, allowing head, arms and upper torso to hang forward. Then grasping his right wrist with his left hand, the rescuer rapidly and strongly presses into the victim’s abdomen forcing the diaphragm upward, compressing the lungs and expelling the obstructing bolus.”

Heimlich further described the maneuver in Henry Heimlich, Milton H. Uhley and Frank Netter (llustrator), "The Heimlich maneuver," Clinical Symposia, Ciba, 31, No. 3, 1979.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

The first major discussion of human skeletal pathology in American archeological samples. Jones introduced histopathological techniques in analysis of paleopathological material.

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

The first original Persian-language anatomy textbook based on western medical science, printed in a very small number of copies for the use of Polak’s Persian students. Polak, an Austrian physician, was responsible for establishing a modern European-based medical curriculum in Iran, augmenting (and eventually supplanting) the traditional Galenic medicine that had been taught in that country since the tenth century. At the invitation of the Persian government, Polak moved to Tehran in November 1851 to teach at Iran’s Dar al-Fonun (now the University of Tehran), the country’s first modern institute of higher learning, which included a medical school for the training of army physicians. He remained at the school for over eight years, returning to Austria in 1860.

During his tenure at Dar al-Fonun Polak instructed classes of 15-20 students in the basics of Western medicine and surgery—a task made more difficult by the students’ lack of the necessary scientific knowledge and background, since these first pupils “consisted mostly of princes, sons of courtiers and other high government officials” (Floor, The beginnings of modern medicine in Iran, pp. 1-15).

The first Persian-language surgery and ophthalmology textbook based on Western medical science. Polak based his textbook on Joseph Maximilien Chelius’s Handbuch der Chirurgie (1830) and Handbuch der Augenheilkunde (1843), but added chapters of his own on local maladies such as leishmaniasis, guinea worm, leprosy and bladder stones, based on his own extensive experience treating these diseases in Persia. 

Yamanaka (Nobel Prize 2012) and colleagues demonstrated the generation of Induced Pluripotent Stems Cells (iPS) from adult human dermal fibroblasts with the same 4 mice factors they used in GM 13287. By overexpressing these transcription factors in the human fibroblasts they report having isolated human pluripotent stems cells that resemble human embryonic stem cells by all measured criteria. At the end of their paper they stated, "Our study has opened an avenue to generate patient and disease-specific pluripotent stem cells."  See also No. 13287.

Order of authorship in original publication: Takahashi, Tanabe, Ohnuki, Yamanaka.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Gurdon and Uehlinger replaced the cell nucleus of frog ova with frog intestinal nuclei to generate tadpoles, some of which became fertile adult male and female frogs.

In 2012 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Sir John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent."  See also No. 256.12.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

In this paper Brown and Wilson defined character displacement as follows: "Two closely related species have overlapping ranges. In the parts of the ranges where one species occurs alone, the populations of that species are similar to the other species and may even be very difficult to distinguish from it. In the area of overlap, where the two species occur together, the populations are more divergent and easily distinguished, i.e., they 'displace' one another in one or more characters. The characters involved can be morphological, ecological, behavioral, or physiological; they are assumed to be genetically based."

Through their more than 40 year study of Darwin's finches on the Island of Daphne Major in the Galapagos, the Grants demonstrated how natural selection can drive rapid changes in body and beak size in response to changes in the food supply. In the process the Grants elucidated the mechanisms by which new species arise and how genetic diversity is maintained in natural populations. Their results, which show that the effects of natural selection can be seen within a single lifetime, or sometimes within a couple of years, are in distinct contrast to the theories of Charles Darwin who thought that natural selection required extensive periods of time for its operation.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

The authors sequenced the genome of 120 individuals representing all of Darwin’s finches. They found that a 240 kilobase haplotype encompassing the ALX1 gene, which encodes a transcription factor affecting craniofacial development, is strongly associated with beak shape diversity across Darwin’s finch species, as well as the medium ground finch (Geospiza fortis), a species that the Grants observed undergoing rapid evolution of beak morphology in response to the environmental changes described in their 2006 paper.
The authors saw variants of this gene in the finches, each of which encoded for a different type of beak morphology. These variants had arisen during natural selection processes.

Order of authorship in the original publication: Lamichhaney, Berglund, .... Grant, Grant.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

ABOUT
"Historians, journalists, and the public at large have long been interested in the 1918 “Spanish flu” epidemic, a dramatic chapter in American life that has spawned an impressive body of books, articles, and multimedia. The memory of the 1918 epidemic also has left a lasting mark on public health policy, planning, and practice. Indeed, for each influenza epidemic that followed in its wake – in 1957, 1968, and most, recently in 2009 – the events of 1918 have served both as a reference point and a severe if not “worst case” scenario.

IZ't was within this context that, in 2006-2007, the Center for the History of Medicine collaborated with the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on a study of the use of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) in American cities during the 1918-1919 influenza epidemic. Unlike in 1918, today we have the ability to develop vaccines against specific strains of influenza in circulation. The process is a lengthy one, however, requiring numerous steps and several months before a vaccine can be produced and distributed in bulk. Realizing that it would take approximately five to six months for the first supplies of vaccine to become available in the event of a new influenza pandemic, and with the possibility of a H5N1 “avian” influenza epidemic looming, public health officials at the CDC were interested to know what lessons could be gleaned from 1918. How did American cities respond in the fall of 1918? Were their efforts successful? Could these methods be used effectively today?

"After an intense, year-long examination of the public health response of 43 American cities during the 1918-1919 epidemic, researchers at the Center for the History of Medicine and the CDC concluded that those cities that used social distancing measures and other non-pharmaceutical interventions in 1918 fared better than those that did not. More specifically, we found a strong association between early, sustained, and layered use of NPI and mitigating the consequences of the epidemic. Our results were published in Journal of the American Medical Association in August 2007 (freely available at http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=208354), and subsequently became the basis for the Department of Health and Human Services’ community mitigation guidelines for pandemic influenza.

"Even with a growing literature on the historical, epidemiological, and public health aspects of the 1918 influenza epidemic in the United States, significant gaps remained in our social and cultural understanding of this cataclysmic event. Although influenza infected and affected nearly every community across the nation, each experienced the epidemic in markedly different ways. Contrary to the popular imagination, the history of the 1918 influenza epidemic is hardly a monolithic one and can be best characterized as many tales of multiple places and people. Consequently, narratives that capture the human dimension of epidemic response often can best be told from the local and personal perspective. At the same time, over-generalizations can discredit or distort the stories of the participants, the varying nature of community responses, and diminish the lessons that we can glean from studying the past.

"For this reason, we continued our study of the 1918-1919 influenza epidemic. We expanded our list of American cities to fifty. We visited hundreds of libraries and archival repositories across the nation, gathering thousands of pages of newspapers, public health reports and bulletins, and other documents. Using these materials, we crafted a detailed narrative essay for each city, exploring the story of influenza’s arrival in each community and the havoc it caused, but also documenting the civic response, the political and economic ramifications, and, in every community, the heroism and courageousness of doctors, nurses, and countless volunteers who gave their all to fighting the epidemic. Realizing that even this work would not allow us to tell the complete story, in 2009 we invited renowned historians of public health and experts on influenza virology to write original articles on various thematic aspects of the epidemic, including the science of influenza, public health in the early-20th century, and the institutional and community responses to the disease. Those essays became the basis for a special supplemental issue of Public Health Reports, sponsored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine, and published in April 2010 (freely accessible at http://www.publichealthreports.org/archives/issuecontents.cfm?Volume=125&Issue=9).

"Together, we believe that our anthology of city essays and the thousands of historical documents we gathered while conducting our research constitutes the largest digital collection of materials relating to the 1918-1919 influenza epidemic. It has been a true labor of love to produce, and we hope that you find this resource both useful and enjoyable as you browse, explore, and learn about this tragic event in history.

Sincerely,

J. Alex Navarro, PhD
Howard Markel, MD, PhD
Editors-in-Chief,
The American Influenza Epidemic of 1918-1919: A Digital Encyclopedia"

In this paper Tinbergen defined Tinbergen's Four Questions, or complementary categories of explanations for animal behavior. that form the basis of ethology: Causation, Ontogeny, Survival Value, and Evolution. 

In 1973 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Karl von Frisch, Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen "for their discoveries concerning organization and elicitation of individual and social behaviour patterns."
See No.14138.
(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link. Second edition, 1958 with appendix listing physicians, surgeons and pharmacists who received degrees or taught at the University of Guatemala from1902 to 1953.

McClintock (Nobel Prize 1983) discovered transposable elements or jumping genes. She found that certain parts of chromosome had switched position. This refuted the then-popular theory that genes were fixed in their position on a chromosome. McClintock found that genes could not only move but they could also be turned on or off due to certain environmental conditions or during different stages of cell development. Digital facsimile from PubMedCentral at this link.

The authors provided a molecular framework for understanding transposition phenomena at the molecular level, including molecular images at 2.3Å resolution of the Tn5 transposase complexed to its respective Tn5 transposon end DNA, its cleavage and subsequent transposition by a transposase.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

A finely written and superbly illustrated and produced study of Retzius's life and published works, issued in the style of Retzius's magnificent publications.

Catalogue of books on the subjects up to 1815 held by this library.

"... an abbreviated bibliography of 915 of the best and the worst of homeopathic literature from 1810 to 2000.... the book presents the work by category (Materia Medica, Repertory, Domestic Manuals, etc.) and in chronological order. Each entry contains the date, title, author, publisher, and number of pages. Most of the entries contain more detailed descriptions of the contents, and often quotes from contemporary reviews. Many of the entries also have a personal commentary by the author, placing the book into historical context, or commenting upon its relative value. The work contains an index of all the books listed chronologically and an index of all the books listed alphabetically by author" (publisher).

"The history of homeopathic medicine as seen through the people who contributed towards its development. Focusing on homeopathy in the USA and in the UK, it traces the development of the practice through the 1800s, the decline thought the first part of the 20th century, and the resurgence in the 1980s" (publisher).

"This work contains the bibliographic references of 1,457 published studies (from 1859 to 1997) on the history of Spanish psychiatry in all its aspects: general and local overviews, biographies and pathobiographies, evolution of ideas and theories on mental illness, treatments, organization of assistance, specific works on various hospitals, professional institutions (scientific associations, publications, chairs and teaching centers), psychiatric legislation, psychoanalysis... The references cover a wide variety of material: doctoral theses, general or monographic books, articles on magazine, chapters of collective books, presentations and communications to congresses....

"Arranged alphabetically by author, the bibliography is completed with three indices (onomastic, institutional and thematic) that make it possible to locate existing references on each specific person or topic.

"A final comment analyzes, quantitatively and qualitatively, the authors and topics of this extensive bibliography, showing a clear (and sometimes surprising) overview of what has been studied (and what remains to be studied) in the historical evolution of psychiatry" (publisher)

"Icons of Life tells the ... story of ... the Carnegie Institution of Washington's project to collect thousands of embryos for scientific study. Lynn M. Morgan blends social analysis, sleuthing, and humor to trace the history of specimen collecting. In the process, she illuminates how a hundred-year-old scientific endeavor continues to be felt in today's fraught arena of maternal and fetal politics. Until the embryo collecting project-which she follows from the Johns Hopkins anatomy department, through Baltimore foundling homes, and all the way to China - most people had no idea what human embryos looked like. But by the 1950s, modern citizens saw in embryos an image of “ourselves unborn,” and embryology had developed a biologically based story about how we came to be. Morgan explains how dead specimens paradoxically became icons of life, how embryos were generated as social artifacts separate from pregnant women, and how a fetus thwarted Gertrude Stein's medical career. By resurrecting a nearly forgotten scientific project, Morgan sheds light on the roots of a modern origin story and raises the still controversial issue of how we decide what embryos mean" (publisher).

The authors provide evidence that Ardipithecus may be the beginning of the evolutionary pathway that eventually led to hominids. This pathway was distinct from the evolutionary pathway that led to extant African apes.

"Ar. ramidus, first described in 1994 from teeth and jaw fragments, is now represented by 110 specimens, including a partial female skeleton rescued from erosional degradation. This individual weighed about 50 kg and stood about 120 cm tall. In the context of the many other recovered individuals of this species, this suggests little body size difference between males and females. Brain size was as small as in living chimpanzees. The numerous recovered teeth and a largely complete skull show that Ar. ramidus had a small face and a reduced canine/premolar complex, indicative of minimal social aggression. Its hands, arms, feet, pelvis, and legs collectively reveal that it moved capably in the trees, supported on its feet and palms (palmigrade clambering), but lacked any characteristics typical of the suspension, vertical climbing, or knuckle-walking of modern gorillas and chimps. Terrestrially, it engaged in a form of bipedality more primitive than that of Australopithecus, and it lacked adaptation to “heavy” chewing related to open environments (seen in later Australopithecus). Ar. ramidus thus indicates that the last common ancestors of humans and African apes were not chimpanzee-like and that both hominids and extant African apes are each highly specialized, but through very different evolutionary pathways" (Conclusion of the authors' introduction). Digital facsimile from academia.edu at this link.

Order of authorship in the original publication: White, Asfaw, Beyene, Haile-Selassie...

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

In 2004 Shubin, Daeschler and Jenkins discovered the first well-preserved Tiktaalik fossils in on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, Canada. Tiktaalik is a non-tetrapod member of Osteichthyes (bony fish) from the late Devonian period about 375 million years before present. It is complete with scales and gills, but has a triangular, flattened head and unusual, cleaver-shaped fins. Its fins have thin ray bones for paddling like most fish, but they also have sturdy interior bones that would have allowed Tiktaalik to prop itself up in shallow water and use its limbs for support as most four-legged animals do. The fins and other mixed characteristics mark Tiktaalik as a crucial transition fossil, a link in evolution from swimming fish to four-legged vertebrates. 

Order of authorship in the original publication: Shubin, Daescher, Jenkins.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

The authors showed that:
1) This transitional species had a set of features representing a major departure from the pattern in more primitive sarcopterygian fishes.
2) They presented data to indicate that Tiktaalik lived in a low gradient, meandering fluvial system within a subtropical to tropical climactic belt.
3) In this setting this species developed new mechanisms of head movement, respiration and body support; it could lift itself from the ground, enabling it to emerge from the water and ambulate on the ground, since it was endowed with an abundance of chest muscles.
4) The species had expanded gular plates and robust branchial elements that provided it with a mechanical basis for buccal pumping for lungs as well as gills. These elements assumed a
predominant respiratory function for air breathing.
5) Tiktaalik, unlike a fish, had a flat head, and eyes on top of its head and a neck. Thus Tiktaalik’s head architecture resembled that of the present day crocodile.

Order of authorship in the original publication: Daeschler, Shubin, Jenkins.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

The occasion of this meeting was the discovery in 1989 near Hyères (Var, France) of a human skeleton of the third or fourth century CE presenting lesions similar to those of syphilis. The volume contains fifty papers in French and in English by eighty-six authors, grouped under seven headings: (1) Theories and Men; (2) Treponematoses Today—  Present Clues for Past Lues?; (3) Syphilis, Treponemes and Bone Diagnosis from Present to Past; (4–5) Syphilis in Europe and in the New World before 1493? (6) After 1493 in the Old World; and (7) Round Tables and Conclusions.

The authors described and named this syndrome/illness of newborns for the first time, including pathological findings, clinical data, lab abnormalities, presentation and course of illness.

Order of authorship in the original publication: Diamond, Blackfan, Baty.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Darrow was the first to identify the cause of hemolytic disease of the newborn (HDN). Three years prior to the discovery of antibodies against the Rh antigen, Darrow correctly hypothesized that the disease was caused by destruction of red blood cells due to antibodies in the mother's blood. Darrow's research was inspired by her personal experiences with the disease.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

"The Revolutionary War broke out during a smallpox epidemic, and in response, General George Washington ordered the inoculation of the Continental Army. But Washington did not have to convince fearful colonists to protect themselves against smallpox―they were the ones demanding it. ...Wehrman describes a revolution within a revolution, where the violent insistence for freedom from disease ultimately helped American colonists achieve independence from Great Britain.

"Inoculation, a shocking procedure introduced to America by an enslaved African, became the most sought-after medical procedure of the eighteenth century. The difficulty lay in providing it to all Americans and not just the fortunate few. Across the colonies, poor Americans rioted for equal access to medicine, while cities and towns shut down for quarantines. In Marblehead, Massachusetts, sailors burned down an expensive private hospital just weeks after the Boston Tea Party...." (publisher)

Mechoulam and Gaoni showed that the active ingredient of "one of the most widely used illicit narcotic drugs," the flowering tops of Cannabis sativa, is "pure tetrhydrocannabinol" (THC).  This they called the "psychotomimetically active resin of the female flowering tops."

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

At the Seventh Congress of the German Dermatological Society held in 1901Blaschko presented observations of a rare dermatological condition involving patterned skin lesions S-shaped on the abdomen, V-shaped over the upper spinal region with an inverted U-shape from the breast onto the upper arm. Blaschko based his findings on examinations of over 140 patients with nevoid and acquired linear skin diseases. This unusual patterned condition was later referred to as "lines of Blaschko". Blaschko proposed an embryonic origin for this phenomenon.

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Falconer's writings on human antiquity appear in Vol. 2 of his Palaeontogical memoirs. Together with William Pengelly, Falconer was one of the first two scientists to visit Brixham Cave after its discovery in 1858, and he was instrumental in obtaining the necessary funding and scientific personnel for its excavation. Also included in Volume 2 is the text of Falconer’s November 1, 1858 letter to Joseph Prestwich, written during Falconer’s visit to Boucher de Perthes at Abbeville, mentioning the continuing Brixham excavations and urging Prestwich to visit the Abbeville site. The letter, which is credited with motivating Prestwich to visit Abbeville in late April 1859, forms part of Falconer’s draft of a history of research on human antiquity titled “Primitive man and his cotemporaries” [sic] originally composed in 1863, but left unpublished until its inclusion in vol. 2.  

Falconer played an essential, key role in the earliest acceptance of human antiquity by the British scientific community. Had his life not been cut short at the age of 57 he would have undoubtedly made further contributions. As it was, his scientific works filled two very thick volumes.

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

First use of the term "stem cells" in English.
Digital facsimile from rupress.org at this link.

Discovery of Hofbauer cells, oval eosinophilic histiocytes with granules and vacuoles found in the placenta, which are of mesenchymal origin, in mesoderm of the chorionic villus, particularly numerous in early pregnancy. Digital facsmile from wellcomecollection.org at this link.

Modern fate mapping began in 1929 when Walter Vogt marked the groups of cells using a dyed agar chip and tracked them through gastrulation.

Hensen's node. "Hensen’s research focused on the embryonic development of guinea pigs and rabbits. While studying those organisms he noticed something previously undiscovered—an enlarged area above the primitive streak. He referred to that area as the node in his article, “Beobachtungen uber die Befruchtung und Entwicklung des Kaninchens and Meerschweinchens” (Observations on the fertilization and development of the rabbit and guinea pig). Hensen’s article was meant to describe development and encourage other researchers to further investigate the node. After the article, people researched nodes, and in 1924 Hans Spemann and Hilde Mangold published their work on the node in African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis), for which they called the node the organizer. Hensen’s node and the organizer have nearly the same characteristics—in both chick and frog embryos they become the head processes. Kupffer’s vesicle which was later discovered in fish is also similar to the organizer and Hensen’s node" (https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/hensens-node).

Expanding on previous findings by a genome wide association study of severe COVID-19, specifically with respiratory failure which had found that a gene cluster residing on chromosome 3 had a significant association with severe acute respiratory failure post infection, the authors showed that:
1) Chromosome 3 in those patients is specifically populated by a 50,000 DNA nucleotides long segment that entered the human population by gene flow from Neanderthals or Denisovans.
2) This long haplotype entered the Neanderthal population, and was transmitted by Neanderthals to present day humans about 40,000-60,000 years ago.
3) This specific genomic segment is carried by about 50% of people in South Asia, is almost absent in East Asia and is carried by about 16% of European humans overall.
4) The authors posited that this genomic cluster was maintained in the genome most likely as the result of positive natural selection in Neanderthals because it probably contributed to the species chances of survival and reproductive success.

Order of authorship in the original publication: Zeberg, Pääbo. Available from nature.com at this link.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Paleogenomic study of a single bone fragment from a female hominin found in the Denisova Cave in the Altai mountains of Russia provided "direct evidence for genetic mixture between Neanderthals and Denisovans on at least two occasions: once between her Neanderthal mother and her Denisovan father and at least once in the ancestry of her Denisovan father.”

The authors indicated that finding a 1st generation Neanderthal Denisovan offspring among the small number of archaic specimens sequenced to date suggests that mixing between late Pleistocene hominin groups was common when they met.

Order of authorship in the original publication: Slon, Mafessoni, Vernot...Pääbo. Available from PubMedCentral at this link.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)