1934 - Medicine

Medicine

The Dionne quintuplets born May 28 at Callander, Ontario, are the world's first five infants on record to be born at one delivery and survive. Elzire Dionne, 24, who already has six children, is delivered of five girls by her physician Allen R. Dafoe, 51; the infants Emilie, Yvonne, Cecile, Marie, and Annette average two pounds 11 ounces each and become the center of worldwide attention.

The virus responsible for influenza A is isolated by Indiana-born microbiologist Thomas Francis Jr., 34, of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (see 1933; Goodpasture, 1931). Francis will move to New York University Medical School in 1938 and isolate the virus responsible for influenza B in 1940, developing a polyvalent vaccine effective against both strains.

Pathologist William H. Welch dies at Baltimore April 30 at age 84; Nobel histologist Santiago Ramón y Cajal at Madrid October 17 at age 82.