Quiz of the Day
Medicine & Miracle Cures
Monday, 28 September 2026
Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin on 28 Sep 1928 — covering breakthroughs in medicine, vaccines, antibiotics and pioneering doctors.
1. Which Scottish bacteriologist discovered penicillin in 1928?
- Robert Koch
- Louis Pasteur
- Joseph Lister
- Alexander Fleming
Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in September 1928 at St Mary's Hospital in London, after noticing that a stray Penicillium mould contaminating one of his culture plates had killed the surrounding Staphylococcus bacteria. Famously, he had left the dishes out while on holiday. He shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery.
2. Edward Jenner developed the first successful vaccine against which disease?
- Polio
- Rabies
- Smallpox
- Cholera
In 1796 Edward Jenner inoculated a young boy, James Phipps, with material from a cowpox sore and showed it protected him against smallpox. The very word 'vaccine' comes from the Latin 'vacca', meaning cow. Jenner's method laid the foundation for all modern vaccination.
3. Jonas Salk is best known for developing a vaccine against which disease?
- Measles
- Polio
- Yellow fever
- Tuberculosis
Jonas Salk's inactivated polio vaccine was declared safe and effective in 1955, easing the fear of a disease that paralysed thousands of children each year. When asked who owned the patent, Salk replied there was no patent, saying 'Could you patent the sun?' An oral vaccine developed by Albert Sabin followed soon after.
4. Which French scientist created a rabies vaccine and gave his name to a food-preservation process?
- Claude Bernard
- Louis Pasteur
- Marie Curie
- Antoine Lavoisier
Louis Pasteur championed the germ theory of disease and in 1885 successfully treated a boy named Joseph Meister who had been bitten by a rabid dog. His name lives on in 'pasteurisation', the gentle heating that kills harmful microbes in milk and other foods. He is regarded as one of the founders of modern microbiology.
5. Which infectious disease was declared eradicated worldwide by the World Health Organization in 1980?
- Measles
- Malaria
- Smallpox
- Polio
Smallpox is the only human disease ever to be completely eradicated, with the WHO declaring victory in 1980. The last known natural case occurred in Somalia in 1977. A global vaccination campaign using Jenner's principle finally wiped out a disease that had killed hundreds of millions of people.
6. Which British nurse, nicknamed 'the Lady with the Lamp', became famous for caring for wounded soldiers during the Crimean War?
- Florence Nightingale
- Edith Cavell
- Clara Barton
- Mary Seacole
Florence Nightingale earned the nickname 'the Lady with the Lamp' for her night-time rounds among wounded soldiers during the Crimean War in the 1850s. She is considered the founder of modern nursing and later established a nursing school in London. She was also a gifted statistician who used pioneering diagrams to show how poor sanitation caused deaths.
7. Which ancient Greek physician is traditionally called the 'Father of Medicine'?
- Hippocrates
- Aristotle
- Pythagoras
- Galen
Hippocrates of Kos lived around the fifth and fourth centuries BC and helped separate medicine from superstition, teaching that diseases had natural causes. The Hippocratic Oath, a pledge of ethical conduct still echoed by doctors today, bears his name. The phrase 'first, do no harm' is associated with his tradition.
8. Insulin was first isolated as a treatment for diabetes in the early 1920s at which university?
- University of Toronto
- Johns Hopkins University
- University of Cambridge
- Harvard University
Frederick Banting and Charles Best, working at the University of Toronto, isolated insulin in 1921, and in 1922 a dying teenager named Leonard Thompson became the first person successfully treated. Banting and John Macleod received the 1923 Nobel Prize for the breakthrough. Before insulin, a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes was effectively a death sentence.
9. Which surgeon pioneered antiseptic surgery using carbolic acid in the 1860s?
- Joseph Lister
- William Halsted
- John Hunter
- Ambroise Paré
Inspired by Pasteur's germ theory, Joseph Lister introduced carbolic acid (phenol) to sterilise wounds and instruments, dramatically cutting deaths from surgical infection. His methods transformed operating rooms from deadly places into far safer ones. The antiseptic mouthwash Listerine was later named in his honour.
10. Which English physician first accurately described the circulation of blood, in 1628?
- William Withering
- Andreas Vesalius
- William Harvey
- Thomas Sydenham
In his 1628 work often known by its Latin title 'De Motu Cordis', William Harvey demonstrated that blood circulates around the body, pumped by the heart. This overturned centuries of belief based on the ancient physician Galen. Harvey served as physician to King James I and King Charles I of England.
11. Who performed the world's first successful human-to-human heart transplant in 1967?
- Denton Cooley
- Norman Shumway
- Christiaan Barnard
- Michael DeBakey
South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard carried out the first human heart transplant in December 1967 at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town. The recipient, Louis Washkansky, survived for 18 days before dying of pneumonia. The operation made headlines around the world and turned Barnard into an international celebrity.
12. Which German physicist discovered X-rays in 1895?
- Max Planck
- Heinrich Hertz
- Werner Heisenberg
- Wilhelm Röntgen
Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays in November 1895 while experimenting with a cathode-ray tube, and named them 'X' for their unknown nature. One of his first images was of his wife's hand, showing her bones and wedding ring. In 1901 he received the very first Nobel Prize in Physics.
13. Which Hungarian doctor showed that handwashing sharply reduced deaths from childbed fever?
- Paul Ehrlich
- Robert Koch
- Ignaz Semmelweis
- Rudolf Virchow
Working in a Vienna maternity ward in the 1840s, Ignaz Semmelweis found that doctors washing their hands in a chlorine solution dramatically cut fatal cases of childbed (puerperal) fever. His ideas were rejected by many peers, since germs had not yet been proven, and he died in an asylum. He was later vindicated as a pioneer of antiseptic practice.
14. The first public demonstration of ether anaesthesia during surgery took place in 1846 at which hospital?
- Bellevue Hospital
- Johns Hopkins Hospital
- St Thomas' Hospital
- Massachusetts General Hospital
On 16 October 1846, dentist William T. G. Morton publicly demonstrated ether anaesthesia at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, allowing a patient to have a neck tumour removed painlessly. The room where it happened is still known as the 'Ether Dome'. The event marked the birth of modern surgical anaesthesia.
15. Alexander Fleming shared the 1945 Nobel Prize with which two scientists who turned penicillin into a usable drug?
- Frederick Banting and Charles Best
- Gerhard Domagk and Paul Ehrlich
- Howard Florey and Ernst Chain
- Selman Waksman and Albert Schatz
Fleming discovered penicillin, but it was Howard Florey and Ernst Chain at Oxford who, more than a decade later, purified it and proved it could cure infections in patients. The three men shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Mass production during the Second World War went on to save countless lives from bacterial infection.