Favorite person from medical history?

Question

i need to write a biogrpahy on a person from medical history...

my teacher gave me a list to choose from... or i can find someone else too...

but i'll stay with the list.

anyways....

so i just wanted to ask you guys

who should i do my report on?

no limit on choosing?(:

person that suggest the most interesting person with a reason why gets best answer. easy yeahh? (:

Hippocrates.

Charles Richard Drew.

Girolamo Fracastoro.

Ignaz Phillip Semmelweis.

Louis Pasteur.

Clara Varton.

Elizabeth Blackwell.

Joseph Lister.

Pastor Theodore Fleidner.

Robert Jarvik.

Lillian Wald.

Walter Reed.

Mary Lasker.

Isabel Hampton Robb.

Thomas Bond.

Henry Oldenburg.

Jane Addams.

Christiaan Barnard.

Michael Ellis DeBakey.

Galen.

Zacharias Janssen.

Antony Von Leeuwenhoek.

Robert Koch.

Pierre and Marie Curie.

Florence Nightengale.

Sigmund Freud.

Dorothea Dix.

Jonas Salk.

Edward Jenner.

Aristotle & Plato.

Willem Johan Kolff.

Virginia Apgar.

Robert Hooke.

Robert Boyle.

Mary Eliza Mahoney.

John Peter Mettauer.

Peter Medawar.

William Harvey.

WHOO! stupid list hahaa.

please help?

Answer 1

Actually it's a great list. My choices include:

1) Semmelweis for his discovery of the cause of child bed fever, a septic condition that caused the death of so many women after childbirth. He was largely ignored because of his low origins.

2) Robert Koch who proved the germ theory of disease so effectively that even the Prussian demi-god, Rudolf Virchow, did not challenge him.

3) Virginia Apgar, an anesthesiologist who developed a system for evaluating newborns immediately after birth.

Not on your list is "an old woman of Shropshire" who had a secret formula to cure dropsy (congestive heart failure). Her clients would improve after treatment by doctors failed. Dr. William Withering obtained her formula and discovered that the active ingredient was an extract of foxglove, Digitalis purpura. Thus originated digitalis, an important medicine for the treatment of the failing heart.

Answer 2

I like Edward Jenner and Pasteur but that is because I am interested in microbiology :-)  

Answer 3

I've always liked Louis Pasteur.  He was a journeyman in school, so average that he had to take a class in remedial chemistry.  Yet he learned to think and to recognize significant details.  His most famous award wasn't even a medicinal thing.  Look up "Nobel Prize" and "Polarization" to get the whole story, and then put it in the perspective that this poor schlump was doing remedial work when he hit on something big.

Answer 4

With certainty, Hippocrates is my favorite. He is the "Father" of medicine; but there are many who came after him who should be recognized. Maimonides is one of them, of course; and thanks to person above for posting his prayer.

DeBakey is also a great physician, however he is not alive any longer (he died recently, actually).

Wow, so many choices, and many not even on that list. Still, I'll stick with Hippocrates. Sadly, if we still followed his oath, medicine may not be as screwed up as it is!

Answer 5

Moses Maimonides.  He was a rabbi, physician, and philosopher.  He wrote a prayer that is now known as the Maimonides Prayer for the Physician.  It's a very nice alternative to the Hippocratic Oath.

Here's a few of the paragraphs:

"Inspire me with love for my art and for Thy creatures. Do not allow thirst for profit, ambition for renown and admiration, to interfere with my profession, for these are the enemies of truth and of love for mankind and they can lead astray in the great task of attending to the welfare of Thy creatures. Preserve the strength of my body and of my soul that they ever be ready to cheerfully help and support rich and poor, good and bad, enemy as well as friend. In the sufferer let me see only the human being. Illumine my mind that it recognize what presents itself and that it may comprehend what is absent or hidden. Let it not fail to see what is visible, but do not permit it to arrogate to itself the power to see what cannot be seen, for delicate and indefinite are the bounds of the great art of caring for the lives and health of Thy creatures. Let me never be absent- minded. May no strange thoughts divert my attention at the bedside of the sick, or disturb my mind in its silent labors, for great and sacred are the thoughtful deliberations required to preserve the lives and health of Thy creatures."

                                        and

"Imbue my soul with gentleness and calmness when older colleagues, proud of their age, wish to displace me or to scorn me or disdainfully to teach me. May even this be of advantage to me, for they know many things of which I am ignorant, but let not their arrogance give me pain. For they are old and old age is not master of the passions. I also hope to attain old age upon this earth, before Thee, Almighty God!

"Let me be contented in everything except in the great science of my profession. Never allow the thought to arise in me that I have attained to sufficient knowledge, but vouchsafe to me the strength, the leisure and the ambition ever to extend my knowledge. For art is great, but the mind of man is ever expanding.

"Almighty God! Thou hast chosen me in Thy mercy to watch over the life and death of Thy creatures. I now apply myself to my profession. Support me in this great task so that it may benefit mankind, for without Thy help not even the least thing will succeed."

Answer 6

Personally, I would go with Pasteur. I have already done a report on him and the list of his accomplishments are nearly endless. He produced a rabies vaccine, developed the process known as pasteurization (very important for eliminating diseases in food), I believe he also found a vaccination for anthrax. . . Basically, he found that bacteria caused many unexplained ailments and that it was possible to vaccinate against them by using weakened organisms.

Answer 7

Where the heck is William Osler in that list?  You could make an essay out of his famous quotes alone.  ;-)

I know you said you were going to work off the list, but one guy I read a good book about recently deserves mention:  Maurice Hilleman.  You have never heard of him and neither had I, but he's the guy who created practically all the important vaccines we have today (smallpox and polio are the two major exceptions).  He's the man you have to thank for the fact that you didn't get hepatitis A or B, mumps, rubella, measles, pneumococcal pneumonia, meningitis caused by H. influenzae or meningococcus.  No one knows who he was and I think that should change, so there's my vote.

However, from your list, I am a big fan of Michael Ellis DeBakey (he's still alive and living in Chicago, I believe) because it's really pretty cool to have invented surgical techniques and have instruments named after you, and I think Charles Drew is a  great topic.

Answer 8

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bea...