April 2021

 Easter Quiz - History of Medicine

We hope you have all enjoyed Easter and are looking forward to warmer and longer days.
Test yourself and spot the correct answer! 

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1. The Ebers papyrus, an Egyptian medical papyrus of herbal knowledge dating to 1550 BC, advises to treat Guinea worm disease (Dracunculiasis) using the following method:
   1. Drink 3 cups of water from the Nile and pray to the Gods for 3 days
   2. Wrap the emerging end of the worm around your index finger and thumb and quickly pull it out
   3. Wrap the emerging end of the worm around a stick and slowly pull it out
   4. Lure the worm with a honey-coated stick and remove it
   5. Enquire with the local Children’s doctor and be advised accordingly
2. Listing the causes of fingernail clubbing is a common theme in paediatrics (and medicine at large). The first to describe clubbing as a clinical sign was:
   1. Professor AJ Clubb
   2. Giovanni Alfonso Borelli
   3. Hippocrates
   4. Jean-Martin Charcot
   5. William Osler
3. Amongst many things, Soranus of Ephesus (98-138 AD) was the first to write about:
   1. The importance of starting weaning at 6 months
   2. A method of testing the breast milk by placing a drop of milk on a person’s fingernail and observing its behaviour
   3. The incidence of post-partum psychosis
   4. A case of severe iron-deficiency in an entirely milk-fed baby aged 3 years.
   5. Anaphylaxis to nuts
4. As well as making major contributions to the understanding of the cardiovascular and respiratory system, Galen of Pergamon (129-ca.200 AD) also managed to:
   1. Perform the first known tracheotomy (on a goat)
   2. Identify the location of the legendary city of Tartessos
   3. Perform a blood transfusion on himself
   4. Describe a disorder that corresponds to Rickets
   5. Ride to Samarkand
5. In 1796, the 8-year-old son of a gardener was deliberately inoculated with smallpox, to prove he was immune as a result of his earlier vaccination with cowpox. The author of this rather unethical (yet revolutionary) procedure was:
   1. Edward Jenner
   2. William Cullen
   3. Marie Curie
   4. Dominic Corrigan
   5. Louis Pasteur

 
ANSWERS: 1-3; 2-3; 3-2; 4-4; 5-1.