Medical Trivia
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199 free Medical trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This medical trivia quiz covers the practice of medicine as most people meet it: the diseases and what causes them, the drugs in the cabinet, the specialties on the hospital directory, the gadgets doctors use, the great institutions and charities, and the Greek and Latin behind the words. The easy questions are ones anyone who has been to a GP can answer: which snake-and-staff symbol is the correct one, what the Rx on a prescription means, what a placebo is and which vitamin scurvy lacks. From there it gets harder: Sertürner naming morphine after the god of dreams, warfarin's start as rat poison, Viagra's origins as an angina drug, Botox as the deadliest natural substance, the 100-day cough, the disease of kings, Landsteiner's A/B/C, Riva-Rocci's cuff, the first implanted pacemaker in Solna, the Apgar and Glasgow scores, the ICRC's three Nobel Prizes, MSF and Biafra, the NHS's launch at Park Hospital, and why the caduceus is the wrong symbol. If you want the great discoveries and their discoverers, our Medical History quiz covers Jenner to Barnard; for anatomy, try our Human Body quiz. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries for the diseases, drugs, devices, specialties and organisations named before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question.
30 of 199 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which symbol, a single serpent on a staff, is the predominant symbol of medicine?
Rod of Asclepius
The Rod of Asclepius, a single snake coiled on a staff, is the emblem of the Greek god of healing; the two-snake winged caduceus is the frequent mix-up.
Q 02The caduceus, wrongly used as a medical symbol, is traditionally the symbol of which god?
Hermes
The caduceus, a winged staff with two entwined snakes, is the emblem of Hermes, the Greek messenger god; the US Army Medical Corps adopted it in 1902 by mistake.
Q 03Hippocrates was born on which Greek island?
Kos
Hippocrates was born on Kos around 460 BCE; the plane tree called the Tree of Hippocrates in Kos town and the island's Asklepieion commemorate him.
Q 04Who wrote the widely used modern version of the Hippocratic Oath in 1964?
Louis Lasagna
He was Academic Dean of Tufts University's medical school.
Q 05What does the Latin word 'placebo' mean?
I shall be pleasing
Its negative counterpart, nocebo, means 'I shall harm'.
Q 06What is an inert treatment called when the patient expects it to do harm?
Nocebo
Nocebo, Latin for 'I shall harm', is the term Walter Kennedy coined in 1961 for ill effects produced by an inert treatment when the patient expects harm.
Q 07Aspirin's precursor salicin comes from the bark of which tree?
Willow
Willow bark's salicin is metabolized in the gut into salicylic acid, the medicinally active compound.
Q 08Which company was selling Aspirin globally by 1899?
Bayer
Bayer chemist Felix Hoffmann made pure acetylsalicylic acid in 1897, and Bayer registered the Aspirin trademark in 1899, selling it worldwide.
Q 09Children with viral infections are not given aspirin because of the risk of which condition?
Reye syndrome
Reye syndrome, a rare swelling of the liver and brain, is linked to aspirin given to children recovering from viral infections such as influenza or chickenpox.
Q 10Paracetamol is sold in the US under which brand name?
Tylenol
Tylenol is the US brand of acetaminophen, the American name for paracetamol; in Britain the same drug is sold as Panadol.
Q 11Ibuprofen was discovered in 1961 by researchers at which British company?
Boots the Chemists
Stewart Adams and John Nicholson first sold it as Brufen.
Q 12Friedrich Sertürner named the opium alkaloid he isolated in 1804 after which Greek god?
Morpheus, god of dreams
Morphine takes its name from Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams, for its sleep-inducing effect; Friedrich Sertürner isolated it from opium in 1804.
Q 13Statins lower cholesterol by inhibiting which enzyme?
HMG-CoA reductase
Statins such as atorvastatin and simvastatin block HMG-CoA reductase, the rate-limiting enzyme of cholesterol synthesis in the liver.
Q 21The word insulin comes from the Latin for what?
Island
Insulin comes from the Latin insula, 'island', because it is secreted by the islets of Langerhans, the clusters of beta cells in the pancreas.
Q 22Metformin was introduced as a diabetes medicine in France in which year?
1957
Metformin was launched in France in 1957 as Glucophage after Jean Sterne's trials; it descends from guanidine research on goat's rue, or French lilac.
Q 23Who first used the term 'antibiotic' in 1942?
Selman Waksman
Selman Waksman coined 'antibiotic' in 1942 for microbial substances that kill other microbes; his lab's discovery of streptomycin earned him the 1952 Nobel Prize.
Q 14Warfarin first came into large-scale commercial use in 1948 as what?
Rat poison
Warfarin went on sale in 1948 as a rat poison; its anticoagulant effect had been traced to mouldy sweet clover that made cattle bleed to death in the 1920s.
Q 15Which US president was treated with warfarin after a highly publicised heart attack?
Dwight Eisenhower
Dwight Eisenhower was given warfarin after his September 1955 heart attack, which helped the drug, sold as Coumadin, gain acceptance as a human anticoagulant.
Q 16Pfizer discovered sildenafil, later Viagra, in 1989 while looking for a treatment for what?
Angina
Pfizer synthesised sildenafil in 1989 as a candidate angina drug; trial volunteers reported erections, and it was approved as Viagra for erectile dysfunction in 1998.
Q 17Which bacterium produces the neurotoxin behind Botox, the deadliest known natural substance?
Clostridium botulinum
Clostridium botulinum produces botulinum toxin, the most lethal toxin known by weight; Botox is a heavily diluted preparation of its type A toxin.
Q 18Botulism was first linked in early-1800s Württemberg to poisoning from what food?
Blood sausage
Blood sausage was the culprit: at Wildbad, Württemberg, in 1793 thirteen people fell ill and six died after eating one made from pork stomach; Justinus Kerner later studied the 'sausage poison'.
Q 19Epinephrine, the fight-or-flight hormone, is produced mainly by which glands?
Adrenal glands
The adrenal glands, one atop each kidney, make epinephrine (adrenaline) in their inner medulla; it raises heart rate and blood sugar for the fight-or-flight response.
Q 20Who was the first to use penicillin successfully in a patient, treating an eye infection in 1930?
Cecil George Paine
Cecil George Paine, a Sheffield pathologist who had studied under Fleming, cured eye infections with crude penicillin filtrate in 1930, the first recorded clinical use.
Q 24Who brought smallpox inoculation from Turkey to Britain in 1721?
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu saw variolation in Constantinople and had her daughter inoculated in London in 1721; Jenner's cowpox vaccine followed 75 years later.
Q 25Which form of diabetes is the most common?
Type 2
Type 2 diabetes accounts for roughly 90% of cases worldwide; it involves insulin resistance, whereas the rarer type 1 is an autoimmune loss of insulin-producing cells.
Q 26The word 'asthma' comes from a Greek word meaning what?
Panting
Asthma comes from the Greek ásthma, meaning 'panting'; Hippocratic writers used it for any laboured breathing before it named the specific airway disease.
Q 27Under the 2017 ACC/AHA guideline, what blood pressure begins stage 2 hypertension?
140/90 mmHg or above
Under the 2017 ACC/AHA guideline, stage 2 hypertension is 140/90 mmHg or above; stage 1 spans 130–139/80–89, and 'elevated' is 120–129 systolic with diastolic under 80.
Q 28What is the most common cause of a heart attack?
Rupture of an atherosclerotic plaque
Rupture of an atherosclerotic plaque in a coronary artery, triggering a clot that blocks blood flow, causes most heart attacks; about 15.9 million occurred worldwide in 2015.
Q 29What is a stroke whose symptoms last less than 24 hours called?
A transient ischemic attack
A transient ischemic attack, or mini-stroke, is a brief blockage of blood flow to the brain whose symptoms resolve within 24 hours, often within an hour.
Q 30The word 'cancer' comes from the ancient Greek for which animal?
Crab
Hippocrates and Galen likened tumours with swollen veins to crabs.