6 November — On this day in medicine

On 6 November 1880, moving filaments in patients’ blood convinced Alphonse Laveran that the organisms he was studying in Constantine were alive. This observation helped establish malaria’s parasitic origin; it was not yet the demonstration of mosquito transmission.

Born in Paris on 6 November 1797, Gabriel Andral earned his medical doctorate in 1821 and subsequently taught at the Paris Faculty of Medicine. His clinical and pathological writings, together with his research on blood, illustrate the development of observational medicine in the nineteenth century.

James Naismith was born on 6 November 1861 in Almonte, Canada. As a physical education instructor, he devised basketball in 1891 as an indoor activity for students. He later earned a medical degree in Denver before joining the University of Kansas in 1898.