Healthcare
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8correct to beat the crowd
This fun medical trivia quiz has 150 free questions with answers and starts with the easy stuff most people half-remember from school (how many bones an adult has, which organ makes bile, what a cardiologist treats) and works up to the discoveries that changed medicine: Jenner's vaccine, Fleming's mould, Semmelweis and hand-washing, the first heart transplant and the year the WHO was founded. The newest section is hospital trivia: where the word 'hospital' comes from, Florence Nightingale's school at St Thomas', the polio epidemic that produced the first intensive care unit, what 'code blue' means, why Laennec invented the stethoscope, the first ambulances at the siege of Málaga, Johns Hopkins, the Mayo Clinic and Röntgen's X-ray of his wife's hand. It is built as fun health trivia for a mixed room: nursing students, a hospital team social, a health class starter or a family quiz night. Every answer has been checked against a medical reference or encyclopaedia and the source is shown under each explanation, so nothing here is pub-quiz folklore.
30 of 150 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which South African surgeon performed the first human-to-human heart transplant, in 1967?
Barnard
Christiaan Barnard performed the first human-to-human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town, on 3 December 1967; patient Louis Washkansky lived 18 days before pneumonia, worsened by anti-rejection drugs, killed him.
Q 02Which organ is considered the largest in the human body?
Skin
Skin is the largest organ, and it never stops renewing itself: new cells form at the base of the outer layer and rise to replace old ones that flake off.
Q 03A prolonged deficiency of which vitamin is known to cause scurvy?
Vitamin C
Vitamin C deficiency causes scurvy; in 1747 naval surgeon James Lind compared six remedies on sick sailors, and those given citrus fruit recovered, in one of the first controlled trials.
Q 04Which condition causes around 60 to 70 percent of dementia cases?
Alzheimer's
Alzheimer's is named for Alois Alzheimer, who in 1906 examined the brain of his late patient Auguste Deter and found the plaques and tangles that still define the disease.
Q 05What is the medical term for the surgical removal of the gallbladder?
Cholecystectomy
A cholecystectomy removes the gallbladder, most often because of painful gallstones; nearly all are now keyhole operations, and people live normally afterwards because the organ is not essential.
Q 06Which scientist is credited with developing the first successful vaccine, specifically for smallpox?
Edward Jenner
Edward Jenner tested his idea in 1796 by scratching matter from a milkmaid's cowpox sore into eight-year-old James Phipps; exposed to smallpox two months later, the boy stayed well.
Q 07What is considered the largest internal organ in the human body by weight?
Liver
The liver, the heaviest internal organ and the body's largest gland, can regrow: when a living donor gives part of theirs away, the remainder returns to normal size.
Q 08How many permanent teeth does an adult human usually have?
32
32 teeth make a full adult set, but the last four, the wisdom teeth, arrive in the late teens or twenties and often lack room to come through, so many adults have them taken out.
Q 09Who is traditionally credited with inventing the stethoscope in the early 19th century?
René Laennec
René Laennec, working at Paris's Hôpital Necker in 1816, found that a rolled paper cylinder let him hear a patient's heart more clearly than pressing his ear to her chest.
Q 10In which Swiss city is the World Health Organization headquartered?
Geneva
Geneva has housed the WHO since its constitution came into force on 7 April 1948, a date now marked every year as World Health Day.
Q 11What figure is widely cited as the average internal human body temperature in Celsius?
37 °C
37 °C (98.6 °F) became the benchmark through German physician Carl Wunderlich's 1868 book; modern studies put the average a little lower, and Stanford researchers found it has drifted down since his day.
Q 12A doctor specializing in heart and blood vessel conditions is known as what?
Cardiologist
A cardiologist diagnoses and treats heart and blood-vessel disease; cardiology is a sub-specialty of internal medicine, while operations on the heart are left to cardiothoracic surgeons.
Q 13Which blood type is the 'universal donor' for red blood cells?
O Negative
O Negative blood lacks A, B and Rh antigens, so it can go to patients of any type, which makes it vital in emergencies when there is no time to test.
Q 21Which drug class, ibuprofen included, dulls pain and swelling by blocking the body's prostaglandin supply?
NSAIDs
NSAIDs block the COX enzymes that make prostaglandins, but those chemicals also protect the stomach lining, which is why long use of ibuprofen or naproxen can cause ulcers.
Q 22Which father of germ theory gave his name to the heat-treatment process that makes milk safe?
Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur devised the process for wine, not milk: in 1864 he found that briefly heating it to 50-60 °C killed the microbes that turned it sour.
Q 23Which organ, passed between identical twins in 1954, was the first transplanted successfully?
Kidney
Q 14Which Scottish microbiologist's contaminated petri dish in 1928 yielded penicillin?
Alexander Fleming
Alexander Fleming came back from holiday to find mould on a culture dish he had left out, with the bacteria around it dying off; Howard Florey and Ernst Chain later turned penicillin into a usable drug.
Q 15What is the longest bone in the human body?
Femur
The femur, or thigh bone, runs to about a quarter of a person's height, so forensic anthropologists can estimate how tall someone stood from this one bone.
Q 16What is the normal resting heart-rate range for an adult, in beats per minute?
60-100
The American Heart Association gives 60-100 beats per minute as the normal adult resting range; a rate below 60 is bradycardia, where trained endurance athletes often sit.
Q 17Which German physicist discovered X-rays in 1895?
Röntgen
Wilhelm Röntgen found the rays in November 1895 while experimenting with cathode-ray tubes at Würzburg; in German and several other languages X-rays are called Röntgen rays.
Q 18Which imaging technique uses a strong magnetic field and radio waves to image organs?
MRI
MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) aligns hydrogen nuclei in a strong magnetic field and reads the radio-frequency signals they emit; unlike CT and PET it uses no ionizing radiation.
Q 19Which hormone is deficient or ineffective in people with diabetes, leading to high blood sugar levels?
Insulin
Insulin, made in the pancreas, was isolated in 1921 by Frederick Banting and Charles Best in Toronto, working with dogs; it turned diabetes from a death sentence into a condition people live with.
Q 20A doctor who specializes in the medical and surgical care of the eyes is known as what?
Ophthalmologist
An ophthalmologist is a medical doctor trained to operate on the eyes; an optometrist tests sight and prescribes lenses but is not a physician, and an optician fits the glasses.
A kidney went from Ronald Herrick to his dying twin Richard in 1954; surgeon Joseph Murray chose identical twins because matching tissue made rejection far less likely, and later won a Nobel Prize.
Q 24Which gland at the base of the brain is nicknamed the 'master gland'?
Pituitary
The pituitary is no bigger than a pea, yet the hormones it releases control growth and tell the body's other hormone glands when to work.
Q 25Which disease did the World Health Organization certify wiped off the planet in 1980?
Smallpox
Smallpox's last natural case was a young Somali hospital worker, Ali Maow Maalin, in 1977; he recovered and later spent years as a vaccination campaigner in his own country.
Q 26The common cold is primarily caused by what type of pathogen?
Virus
A virus causes every cold, and more than 200 different ones can do it, most often rhinoviruses, which is why no single vaccine exists and why antibiotics, which only work on bacteria, do not help.
Q 27Which artery, the body's largest, carries blood straight out of the left ventricle?
Aorta
The aorta carries all the blood bound for the body, so a weak spot in its wall is dangerous: the bulge, called an aneurysm, causes massive internal bleeding if it bursts.
Q 28Which ancient Greek physician is traditionally called the 'Father of Medicine'?
Hippocrates
Hippocrates of Kos, active around 400 BC, is credited with the Hippocratic Oath and with humoral theory, which medicine later discarded.
Q 29Which organ under the left ribs filters worn-out red blood cells from the blood?
Spleen
The spleen also holds a reserve of blood and helps fight germs, yet people can live without one: after a splenectomy other organs take over much of its work, at the cost of a higher risk of infection.
Q 30How many bones are typically in the adult human skeleton?
206
206 bones make up a typical adult skeleton, but a baby is born with many more; they fuse as the child grows, as in the sacrum, where five vertebrae become one bone.