Medical milestones, landmark publications, and notable births and deaths associated with April 8.

Events

1891 – Heinrich Irenaeus Quincke presented Ueber hydrocephalus at the Fifth Sitting of the 10th Congress for Internal Medicine (Wiesbaden), giving the first public account of lumbar puncture for diagnostic sampling and therapeutic CSF drainage. He described inserting a fine needle (with stylet) between L3–L4, measuring opening/closing pressure, and analysing CSF.

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Births

1817 – Charles Edouard Brown-Séquard (1817-1894), French physician and physiologist; described Brown-Séquard Syndrome (1850) and invented “The Elixir of Life” (Brown-Séquard Elixir)

1869 – Harvey Williams Cushing (1869-1939), American neurosurgeon; described the Cushing Reflex (1901), Cushing’s Syndrome I (1912), Cushing’s Disease (1932), Neurath-Cushing Dyspituitarism (1912), Cushing’s Symphalangism (1915), Cushing’s Syndrome II (1917), and the Bailey-Cushing classification of gliomas (1926)…and so much more

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Deaths

1866 – Benjamin Guy Babington (1794-1866), English physician; invented the Glottiscope (1829), provided an early description of Rendu-Osler-Weber disease and described Rubeola notha (bastard measles, later Rubella) in 1864

1918 – Ludwig Georg Courvoisier (1843-1918), Swiss surgeon; described Courvoisier Sign (1890)

1936 – Róbert Bárány (1876-1936), Austro-Hungarian otologist. Described Bárány bogengänge ohr (1907), the Bárány past pointing test (1906), Bárány caloric test (1906) and invented the Bárány chair (1907) and Bárány’s alarm apparatus (1908)

1951 – Arthur Sidney Blundell Bankart (1879-1951), British Orthopaedic surgeon; described the Bankart Lesion (1923) and Bankart Repair

1986 – George Kenneth Mallory (1900-1986), American pathologist; described Mallory–Weiss Lesion (1929)

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Further reading

• Quincke HI. Ueber hydrocephalus. Verhandlungen des Congresses für Innere Medicin, Zehnter Congress, Gehalten zu Wiesbaden, vom 6.-9. April 1891: 321-339.
• Quincke HI. Die lumbalpunction des hydrocephalus. Berliner Klinische Wochenschrift 1891; 28: 929-933 and 965-968
• Frederiks JA, Koehler PJ. The first lumbar puncture. J Hist Neurosci. 1997 Aug;6(2):147-53