Medicine
- February 23 – The first mass vaccination of children against polio begins, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
- The first organ transplants are done in Boston and Paris.
- December 23 – Joseph Murray at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston carries out the first successful kidney transplant, between identical twins.
- The first of the anti-psychotic phenothiazine drugs, Chlorpromazine, starts being sold under the trade names Thorazine (U.S.) and Largactil (U.K.)
- The sucrose gap is introduced by Robert Stämpfli for the reliable measurement of action potential in nerve fibers.
Read more about this topic: 1954 In Science
Famous quotes containing the word medicine:
“In view of the fact that the number of people living too long has risen catastrophically and still continues to rise.... Question: Must we live as long as modern medicine enables us to?... We control our entry into life, it is time we began to control our exit.”
—Max Frisch (1911–1991)
“We have to ask ourselves whether medicine is to remain a humanitarian and respected profession or a new but depersonalized science in the service of prolonging life rather than diminishing human suffering.”
—Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (b. 1926)