160 free Medical trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 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 160 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 two-snake, winged caduceus is often misused for the purpose.
Q 02The caduceus, wrongly used as a medical symbol, is traditionally the symbol of which god?
Hermes
Its adoption in US medicine came from misunderstandings of classical symbology.
Q 03Where is the oldest manuscript containing the Hippocratic Oath held?
The Vatican Library
It dates to roughly the 10th to 11th century.
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
The idea of a placebo effect was discussed in 18th-century psychology.
Q 07Aspirin's precursor salicin comes from the bark of which tree?
Willow
It has been used for its health effects for at least 2,400 years.
Q 08Which company was selling Aspirin globally by 1899?
Bayer
Felix Hoffmann, or perhaps Arthur Eichengrün, made pure acetylsalicylic acid there in 1897.
Q 09Children with viral infections are not given aspirin because of the risk of which condition?
Reye syndrome
High doses can also cause ringing in the ears.
Q 10Paracetamol is sold in the US under which brand name?
Tylenol
In Britain it is Panadol; Americans call the drug acetaminophen.
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 12Morphine was named after which Greek god?
Morpheus, god of dreams
Friedrich Sertürner isolated it from opium in 1804.
Q 13Statins lower cholesterol by inhibiting which enzyme?
HMG-CoA reductase
Atorvastatin and simvastatin are among the family.
Q 21The word insulin comes from the Latin for what?
Island
It is made by beta cells in the pancreatic islets.
Q 22Metformin, the first-line type 2 diabetes drug, was introduced as a medicine in France in which year?
1957
It descends from research on goat's rue, or French lilac.
Q 23Who first used the term 'antibiotic' in 1942?
Selman Waksman
He later won a Nobel for streptomycin.
Q 24Who brought smallpox inoculation from Turkey to Britain in 1721?
Q 14Warfarin first came into large-scale commercial use in 1948 as what?
Rat poison
Its anticoagulant effect was traced to mouldy sweet clover that made cattle bleed.
Q 15Which US president was treated with warfarin after a highly publicised heart attack?
Dwight Eisenhower
The drug is sold as Coumadin among other names.
Q 16Pfizer discovered sildenafil, later Viagra, in 1989 while looking for a treatment for what?
Angina
It was approved for erectile dysfunction in 1998.
Q 17Which bacterium produces the neurotoxin behind Botox, the deadliest known natural substance?
Clostridium botulinum
In strongly diluted form it is Botox.
Q 18Botulism was first linked in early-1800s Württemberg to poisoning from what food?
Blood sausage
Thirteen people fell ill and six died after eating pork stomach filled with it.
Q 19Adrenaline is produced mainly where in the body?
Adrenal glands
It drives 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
He was a student of Fleming.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Jenner's cowpox vaccine came 75 years later.
Q 25Which form of diabetes is the most common?
Type 2
Type 1 is usually treated with insulin injections.
Q 26The word 'asthma' comes from a Greek word meaning what?
Panting
Salbutamol inhalers treat rapidly worsening symptoms.
Q 27What resting blood pressure counts as stage 2 hypertension?
140/90 mmHg or above
Stage 1 begins at 130/80.
Q 28What is the most common cause of a heart attack?
Rupture of an atherosclerotic plaque
About 15.9 million heart attacks occurred worldwide in 2015.
Q 29What is a stroke whose symptoms last less than 24 hours called?
A transient ischemic attack
It is also called a mini-stroke.
Q 30The word 'cancer' comes from the ancient Greek for which animal?
Crab
Hippocrates and Galen likened tumours with swollen veins to crabs.