Croatia in the story of science and medicine

Did you know that azithromycin, the antibiotic sold worldwide as Zithromax, was invented in Zagreb?

Begin the walk

In 1980 a team at PLIVA in Zagreb set one nitrogen atom into the ring of erythromycin.

Azithromycin PLIVA, Zagreb, 1980 · after the structure by Yikrazuul, public domain

Its story closes the last chapter

Five chapters, one map

29 true stories in five chapters. The sources for each are at the foot of the page.

Before historyFrom the Neanderthals to 2010The first draft of the Neanderthal genome was read mostly from bones found in a Croatian cave.
Dubrovnik, a city of medicinec. 1280 to 1826In 1377 Dubrovnik became the first city in the world to bring in quarantine without stopping its trade.
Scholars of the coast1458 to 1758A Jesuit from Dubrovnik drew one curve to explain the forces in nature, and helped secure the dome of St Peter’s.
The age of inventions1856 to 1909The fingerprint system that solved a double murder in 1892 was devised by a man born on Hvar.
Medicine for the world1926 to 1980A measles vaccine strain made in Zagreb still protects children in India.

The Krapina 3 Neanderthal skull, a plate of 1906

Before history

From the Neanderthals to 2010

Neanderthals in the hills north of Zagreb, and what their bones still tell science.

c. 130,000 years ago

Neanderthals in Krapina made jewellery from eagle talons.

Eight eagle talons from Krapina on black — **Eagle talons from Krapina** photo Luka Mjeda, CC BY 4.0

Eight white-tailed eagle talons from the site carry cut marks, polish and small notches.

On the map: an illustration

Neanderthals in Krapina made jewellery from eagle talons 130,000 years ago.

Between 1899 and 1905 the geologist Dragutin Gorjanović-Kramberger dug almost 900 bones of about seventy Neanderthals out of Hušnjakovo hill. In 2015 a Croatian and American team read them as parts of a necklace or bracelet, made well before modern humans reached Europe.

2010

The first draft of the Neanderthal genome was read mostly from bones in a Croatian cave.

Pääbo received the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and the Nobel announcement names the 2010 genome.

The first draft of the Neanderthal genome was read mostly from bones found in a Croatian cave.

For the 2010 draft, Svante Pääbo’s team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, with the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, analysed 21 bones from Vindija Cave and built most of the sequence from three of them. In 2017 the team published the genome of a Neanderthal woman from Vindija who lived about 50,000 years ago. With it, researchers found 10 to 20 percent more Neanderthal DNA in people living today, including variants linked to LDL cholesterol and schizophrenia.

Vindija Cave

Photo Thilo Parg, CC BY-SA 4.0, animated for this page with a depth map

The Lazarettos of Dubrovnik on the water

Dubrovnik, a city of medicine

c. 1280 to 1826

A merchant republic paid its doctors from public money, wrote quarantine into law and took in abandoned children. A son of the city became the Pope’s physician.

c. 1280

Medieval Dubrovnik paid its doctors from public money, when the usual fee was a chicken.

The arcade of the Rector’s Palace in Dubrovnik — **The Rector’s Palace in Dubrovnik** photo László Szalai, public domain

Dubrovnik was among the first European cities to keep physicians on a public salary, probably from about 1280.

Medieval Dubrovnik paid its doctors from public money, in an age when the usual fee was a chicken.

Dubrovnik was among the first European cities to keep physicians on a public salary, the medicus salariatus, probably from about 1280, when a physician first appears in its records. A 2021 review in the Croatian Medical Journal argues that public pay opened care to every citizen and ended the custom of the chicken.

1317

The pharmacy of the Friars Minor in Dubrovnik dates from 1317, and it survives in the friary on the Stradun.

The Croatian Encyclopaedia calls it the oldest monastery pharmacy preserved on Croatian soil. Most of its early records were lost in the earthquake and fire of 1667.

The old pharmacy of the Franciscan friary in Dubrovnik, its shelves of jars — **The Old Pharmacy of the Friars Minor** Dubrovnik · photo Bernard Gagnon, CC BY-SA 4.0, animated for this page

The oldest monastery pharmacy preserved on Croatian soil

Photo Bernard Gagnon, CC BY-SA 4.0, animated for this page · the mortar and pestle: illustration

1377

Dubrovnik became the first city in the world to bring in quarantine without stopping its trade.

The wait was later lengthened to forty days, and the word quarantine comes from that number.

In 1377 Dubrovnik became the first city in the world to bring in quarantine without stopping its trade.

The Great Council of Ragusa ordered anyone arriving from places struck by plague to wait thirty days, the trentino, on the islet of Mrkan or in Cavtat before entering the city. In the 17th century the Republic built the lazarettos at Ploče, just outside the city walls, and they still stand.

The ship, the islet and the walls: an illustration

1432

In 1432 Dubrovnik opened a home for abandoned babies, with turning wheels built into its walls.

A foundling wheel illustration

By a decision of the Great Council on 9 February 1432, the Republic founded the Hospital of Mercy for abandoned children.

A baby could be laid in a wheel in the wall and turned inside to be cared for, on the model of the convent of St Clare, which already took in foundlings. In the second half of the 18th century the same house also took in unmarried women to give birth, with midwives to care for them.

Copper engraving of Ragusa, the historic Republic of Dubrovnik

Ragusa, where quarantine was written into law in 1377.

Ragusa · Merian, Frankfurt, 17th century · copper engraving

1696

An orphan from Dubrovnik became physician to the Pope.

Engraved portrait of Giorgio Baglivi at 34 — **Giorgio Baglivi at 34** engraving, 1703 · Rijksmuseum, CC0

His De praxi medica (1696) asked doctors to go back to watching the patient at the bedside.

An orphan from Dubrovnik became physician to the Pope and told medicine to trust what it sees.

Đuro Armeno was born in Dubrovnik in 1668 and orphaned young. In Lecce the physician Pietro Angelo Baglivi raised him and gave him his name. He trained under Marcello Malpighi, became physician to Pope Innocent XII and professor of anatomy in Rome, and was elected to the Royal Society of London.

1826

A skin disease known to doctors worldwide is named after the island of Mljet.

Babino Polje on the island of Mljet — **Babino Polje, Mljet** photo August Dominus, CC BY-SA 3.0

In 1826 the Dubrovnik physician Luko Stulli described islanders on Mljet whose palms and soles thickened, and concluded that the disease was inherited and not contagious.

It entered the medical literature as mal de Meleda, the disease of Mljet, and still has that name. Late 19th-century doctors took it for leprosy, and its cause was later found in the SLURP1 gene on chromosome 8. Around 1800 Stulli had brought smallpox vaccination to Dubrovnik.

Bošković’s figure of the forces from the Theoria

Scholars of the coast

1458 to 1758

From Rab to Rome and Vienna, men of the coast wrote about trade, the soul, light, flight and the forces of nature.

Della mercatura1573
Judita1522 edition
Variorum problematum collectio1607
De radiis visus et lucis1611
Machinae novaec. 1615

1458

A merchant from Dubrovnik described double-entry bookkeeping decades before the man usually credited with it.

Benedikt Kotruljević, who served at the court of Naples, finished his book on the art of trade on 26 August 1458.

He told every merchant to keep three books, a memorandum, a journal and a ledger, and described double-entry bookkeeping about forty years before Luca Pacioli’s printed account of 1494. The manuscript was printed only in 1573, edited and altered by Frane Petrić.

c. 1510–1520

The earliest known use of the word “psychology” is by a poet from Split.

Marko Marulić wrote a Latin work titled Psichiologia de ratione animae humanae, on the nature of the human soul, between about 1510 and 1520.

Marko Marulić, called the father of Croatian literature, wrote a Latin work titled Psichiologia de ratione animae humanae, on the nature of the human soul, between about 1510 and 1520. The work is lost. It is known only from a list of his writings by his contemporary Frane Božićević, and on that title rests the earliest known use of the word.

Psichiologia, the title of Marulić’s lost work illustration

1603–1608

In a cave near Dubrovnik, Getaldić built a mirror that melted lead and silver with sunlight.

After meeting Viète in Paris and Galileo in Padua, Getaldić returned to Dubrovnik and worked with parabolic mirrors in a cave by the sea.

In a sea cave near Dubrovnik, Marin Getaldić built a mirror that melted lead and silver with sunlight.

After meeting Viète in Paris and Galileo in Padua, Getaldić returned to Dubrovnik and worked with parabolic mirrors in a cave by the sea, later called Bete’s cave after his nickname. In 1603 he showed that parabolic mirrors can be cut from many kinds of cone. In a letter to Clavius in 1608 he wrote that his latest mirror melted not only lead but silver. Marin Mersenne repeated his experiments in France.

A parabolic mirror brings the sun’s rays to one point illustration

1611

Isaac Newton credited a Croatian archbishop with explaining the rainbow.

Markantun de Dominis, born on Rab and later archbishop of Split, published De radiis visus et lucis in Venice in 1611.

“more fully discover’d and explain’d by the famous Antonius de Dominis Archbishop of Spalato”
Isaac Newton, Opticks

In his Opticks, Newton wrote that the rainbow was “more fully discover’d and explain’d by the famous Antonius de Dominis Archbishop of Spalato”, who taught that the inner bow forms in round raindrops by two refractions and one reflection.

Light in a drop of rain, after de Dominis illustration

c. 1615

One of the earliest printed parachute designs was drawn by a bishop from Šibenik.

Its best-known plate, Homo volans, the flying man, shows a man hanging from cloth stretched on a rectangular wooden frame.

Faust Vrančić served at the court of Rudolf II in Prague and published Machinae novae, 49 large engravings of some 56 machines, from mills and bridges to clocks. The Croatian Technical Encyclopaedia calls it the first drawing with all the basic parts of a modern parachute, and notes that rough earlier descriptions exist. The Croatian column of his five-language dictionary of 1595 is counted as the first Croatian dictionary.

Homo volans: a man hangs from a framed sail beside a tower — **Homo volans, the flying man** Faust Vrančić, Machinae novae, c. 1615 · Library of Congress, public domain, animated for this page

Homo volans, the flying man

Faust Vrančić, Machinae novae, c. 1615 · Library of Congress, public domain, animated for this page

1742–1744

When cracks spread through the dome of St Peter’s, the Pope asked three mathematicians.

Ruđer Bošković was born in Dubrovnik in 1711 and left for Rome at 14 to join the Jesuits.

When cracks spread through the dome of St Peter’s, the Pope asked three mathematicians. One was from Dubrovnik.

In 1740, still a theology student, he became professor of mathematics at the Roman College. In 1742 he, Le Seur and Jacquier examined the cracks in Michelangelo’s dome and proposed iron rings around its base. Iron rings were fitted between August 1743 and September 1744.

Title page of the three mathematicians’ report on the dome of St Peter’s, 1743 — **The mathematicians’ report on the dome** Rome, 1743 · public domain

1750s

Before Gauss and Legendre, he fitted a line through messy measurements, a method statisticians still use.

With Christopher Maire he measured an arc of the meridian of about two degrees between Rome and Rimini, from 1750 to 1752.

Portugal wanted Bošković for a survey of Brazil, but Pope Benedict XIV kept him in Italy. To estimate the Earth’s flattening from five such arcs, he chose the line that made the sum of the absolute errors smallest, with the positive and negative errors balancing out. The statistician Roger Koenker traces the absolute-error approach behind today’s quantile regression back to this method.

Maire and Bošković’s map of the Papal States, from Rimini down to Rome — **New map of the Papal States, 1755** Christopher Maire, from observations made with Bošković · public domain

1758

He proposed that matter is made of points held apart by a single law of force.

Between any two points one law acts, repelling at very small distances, then turning from attraction to repulsion and back, and at large distances becoming Newton’s gravity.

“the atoms of Boscovich” had “a great advantage over the more usual notion”
Michael Faraday

In 1758 he proposed that matter is made of points with no size, held apart by a single law of force.

Sent to Vienna in 1757 to represent the Republic of Lucca in a water dispute with Tuscany, he finished his main book there, the Theoria philosophiae naturalis. He drew it as one continuous curve. Its shape resembles the way physicists draw the force between two atoms today, and Faraday wrote that “the atoms of Boscovich” had “a great advantage over the more usual notion”. His name is carried today by the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb, a crater on the Moon and Dubrovnik’s airport.

Ruđer Bošković in 1756, holding an armillary sphere and a pair of dividers

A single law of the forces in nature · Vienna, 1758

Ruđer Bošković at 45, with an armillary sphere and dividers · portrait by an unknown painter, 1756 · public domain

The painting is animated for this page. The curve is drawn over his own figure in the Theoria (Venice, 1763), public domain.

Early Whitehead torpedoes, a plate of 1906

The age of inventions

1856 to 1909

More than fifty years of inventions and discoveries, from the year Tesla was born in Smiljan to the Moho, found in Zagreb.

Tesla
torpedo
Kleopatra
velocimeter
fingerprint
Jaruga
pencil
Moho

1856

Nikola Tesla, whose name is the unit used to rate MRI magnets, was born in Smiljan.

Portrait of Nikola Tesla — **Nikola Tesla** photograph by Napoleon Sarony, c. 1890 · public domain

Tesla was born on 10 July 1856 in Smiljan in Lika, then in the Military Frontier of the Austrian Empire, to Serbian parents.

His father was an Orthodox priest. In New York in 1887 he filed his first patents on multiphase alternating current and on motors driven by a rotating magnetic field. In 1960 the General Conference on Weights and Measures named the SI unit of magnetic flux density the tesla.

Lupis’s coast-saver and early Whitehead torpedoes, a plate of 1906 — **Lupis’s coast-saver and early Whitehead torpedoes** Eidem and Lütken, 1906 · public domain

1864–1866

The modern torpedo was developed in Rijeka in the 1860s, from an idea by a local naval officer.

Ivan Lupis, a naval officer from Rijeka, designed a small unmanned boat packed with explosive, driven by a spring and steered from shore by cords.

A naval commission liked the idea but found its drive and steering unsolved, so in 1864 Lupis signed an agreement with Robert Whitehead, an English engineer who ran a works in Rijeka. Whitehead produced an original design, a fish-shaped weapon that ran under water on compressed air, and showed it to the Austrian naval commission on 21 December 1866. The first torpedoes carried both names, Luppis-Whitehead.

The run under the water: an illustration

1874–1880

Asteroids were discovered from a telescope in Pula, among them Kleopatra.

The asteroid Kleopatra, shaped like a dog bone — **Kleopatra, detail** ESO/Vernazza, Marchis et al./MISTRAL algorithm (ONERA/CNRS), CC BY 4.0

Radar images in 2000 showed Kleopatra shaped like a dog bone. It is thought to be rich in metal.

On the map: an illustration

Asteroids were discovered from a telescope in Pula, among them Kleopatra, a metal-rich “dog bone”.

In the 1870s the Austro-Hungarian navy kept an observatory in Pula. There the Austrian astronomer Johann Palisa found new asteroids, starting with 136 Austria on 18 March 1874, and on 10 April 1880 he found 216 Kleopatra. Images from ESO’s Very Large Telescope, published in 2021, measured it at about 270 km long and showed two small moons around it.

1887

An Istrian physics teacher built an electric speed recorder, a forerunner of the taximeter and tachograph.

His velocimeter recorded a vehicle’s speed, the time spent driving and standing, and when passengers got on and off.

An Istrian physics teacher built an electric speed recorder in 1887, a forerunner of the taximeter and the tachograph.

Josip Belušić, from near Labin, taught physics and mathematics. At the 1889 Paris World’s Fair it was judged the best of more than 120 such devices, and in 1891 a hundred were fitted to Paris cabs, though it never came into wide use.

The ride and its record: an illustration

1892

The fingerprint system that solved a double murder was devised by a man born on Hvar.

Lámina V of Dactiloscopía comparada: the four basic types of fingerprint — **Dactiloscopía comparada** Juan Vucetich, La Plata, 1904 · public domain

Ivan Vučetić was born in Hvar in 1858 and moved to Argentina in 1884.

On the map: an illustration

The fingerprint system that solved a double murder in 1892 was devised by a man born on Hvar.

In 1891 he set up an identification office in La Plata and began classifying fingerprints. In 1892 a bloody print on a door identified the killer in a double murder in Necochea, a case the US National Library of Medicine describes as the first use of fingerprint evidence in a murder investigation. Argentina made his ten-finger system official in the early 1900s, and many other countries took it up.

1895

In 1895 Šibenik switched on one of the first complete multiphase alternating-current systems in the world.

The Jaruga power plants on the Krka waterfalls in 1903 — **The Jaruga power plants, 1903** public domain

On 28 August 1895 power from a hydroelectric plant at Jaruga, on the Krka waterfalls, ran along a line about 11 kilometres long to Šibenik.

On 28 August 1895 power from a hydroelectric plant at Jaruga, on the Krka waterfalls, ran along a line about 11 kilometres long to Šibenik, where six transformer stations fed some 340 street lamps. The generators and transformers came from Ganz of Budapest. The IEEE marked the plant with a Milestone plaque in 2013.

1906

A Zagreb engineer filed his automatic pencil for a patent in 1906.

The automatic pencil illustration

His pencil pushed its lead forward as it wore down, so it never needed sharpening.

A Zagreb engineer filed his automatic pencil for a patent in 1906, and “penkala” became the Croatian word for a pen.

Slavoljub Penkala, a chemical engineer born in Liptovský Mikuláš in today’s Slovakia, settled in Zagreb in 1900. He filed some 80 inventions and improvements, among them a fountain pen with solid ink. In 1910 he finished an aeroplane in Zagreb and set up the first airfield in Croatia.

1909

The boundary between the Earth’s crust and mantle was discovered in Zagreb.

How the Moho was found illustration

On 8 October 1909 an earthquake struck Pokuplje, 39 kilometres south-east of Zagreb.

The boundary between the Earth’s crust and mantle was discovered in Zagreb, starting from the records of one earthquake.

Andrija Mohorovičić gathered seismograms from stations across Europe, and at stations 300 to 700 kilometres away he found four waves where he expected two. He concluded that the same waves had come by different paths, bending at a surface about fifty kilometres down where the rock changes abruptly. Today it is called the Mohorovičić discontinuity, or the Moho.

Medicine for the world

1926 to 1980

In the 20th century, work done in Zagreb reached Geneva, Zurich, India and pharmacies around the world.

1926–1948

A doctor from a Slavonian village chaired the commission that set up the World Health Organization.

Portrait photograph of Andrija Štampar, 1939 — **Andrija Štampar, 1939** Bulletin of the History of Medicine · public domain

Andrija Štampar, born in Brodski Drenovac in 1888, built the public health service of interwar Yugoslavia.

Andrija Štampar, born in Brodski Drenovac in 1888, built the public health service of interwar Yugoslavia and in the 1930s reorganised public health in China for the League of Nations. His School of Public Health in Zagreb, founded in 1926, made a hundred or more health films before the Second World War. In 1946 he was elected chair of the Interim Commission that did the WHO’s work until its constitution came into force, and in 1948 he presided over the first World Health Assembly in Geneva.

1939

A cooper’s son from Vukovar won the Nobel Prize.

Lavoslav Ružička behind glassware in his laboratory — **Lavoslav Ružička, c. 1939** ETH-Bibliothek Zürich · public domain

Lavoslav Ružička was born in Vukovar in 1887 and went to school in Osijek.

A cooper’s son from Vukovar won the Nobel Prize, and his first research was on a Dalmatian insect powder.

As Hermann Staudinger’s assistant he studied the active substances of Dalmatian insect powder, which they named pyrethrins. At ETH Zurich he solved the synthesis of the male sex hormone androsterone in 1933 to 1934 and shared the 1939 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Adolf Butenandt. In 1940 he lectured in Zagreb under the title “From Dalmatian insect powder to sex hormones”.

1941

The cage molecule behind drugs for Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease was first synthesised in Zagreb.

Portrait photograph of Vladimir Prelog — **Vladimir Prelog, c. 1945** ETH-Bibliothek Zürich · public domain · the adamantane cage, Jynto, CC0

With his student Rativoj Seiwerth he made the first synthesis of adamantane, published in 1941. Amantadine and memantine are built on its cage.

The cage molecule behind two of today’s drugs for Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease was first synthesised in Zagreb.

Vladimir Prelog, born in Sarajevo and schooled in Zagreb and Osijek, began teaching in Zagreb in 1935 and teamed up with Kaštel, the small drug firm that became PLIVA, which paid for his laboratory. Prelog left for Zurich in 1941 and shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and the Kaštel laboratory grew into the PLIVA research institute where azithromycin was made.

Ball-and-stick model of the adamantane cage

1968

A measles vaccine strain made in Zagreb still protects children in India.

At the Institute of Immunology in Zagreb, the Edmonston measles virus was weakened further by 19 passages in human diploid cells, giving the Edmonston-Zagreb strain.

Croatia’s live measles vaccine of 1968 to 1969 was grown this way. Today Edmonston-Zagreb is among the most common measles strains in the MMR vaccines available in India.

The flasks and the passages: an illustration

Measles virus under the electron microscope · Cynthia S. Goldsmith and William Bellini, CDC · public domain

Azithromycin after the structure by Yikrazuul, public domain

Azithromycin · PLIVA, Zagreb, 1980

After the structure by Yikrazuul, public domain

1980

Azithromycin, sold worldwide as Zithromax, was invented in Zagreb.

PLIVA sells it as Sumamed, and Pfizer sold it under licence from PLIVA as Zithromax.

In 1980 a team at the PLIVA research institute set a nitrogen atom into the ring of erythromycin, which widened the ring from fourteen members to fifteen and made the first azalide antibiotic. The Croatian Encyclopaedia names the team as Gabrijela Kobrehel, Slobodan Đokić, Gorjana Lazarevski and Zrinka Tamburašev. In 2000 the American Chemical Society named Slobodan Đokić and Gabrijela Kobrehel, together with representatives of Pfizer, Heroes of Chemistry.

On the map: an illustration

The story continues.

The coast at Brsečine · film by Quahadi, CC BY-SA 4.0

The next chapter starts in Zagreb, Croatia, on 4 December 2026.

Plexus Week brings together the Conference, Building Bridges and the Gala Evening. At Plexus, young scientists from Croatia and abroad meet the people who shaped medicine and science. 11 Nobel laureates have come so far.

Zagreb, CroatiaPlexus Week 20264–5 December · Novinarski dom and Hotel EsplanadeSo far: 2,500+ guests · 30+ countriesRegister for Plexus Week

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Croatia in the story of science and medicine

Sources

Each item with the sources its fact check kept. The fact checks are kept with the page’s research.

Open the list of sources

Picture credits

Every picture is in the public domain or under the free licence named beside it. Moving versions of CC BY-SA pictures are shared under the same licence. Drawings marked “illustration” were made for this page.

Eagle talons from Krapina · photo Luka Mjeda, CC BY 4.0
The Krapina 3 skull · Dragutin Gorjanović-Kramberger, 1906 · public domain
Vindija Cave · photo Thilo Parg, CC BY-SA 4.0
The Rector’s Palace in Dubrovnik · photo László Szalai, public domain
The Old Pharmacy of the Friars Minor · Dubrovnik · photo Bernard Gagnon, CC BY-SA 4.0
The Lazarettos of Dubrovnik · photo Lasta, public domain
Giorgio Baglivi at 34 · engraving, 1703 · Rijksmuseum, CC0
Babino Polje, Mljet · photo August Dominus, CC BY-SA 3.0
Kotruljević’s book on trade · title page, Venice, 1573 · public domain
A page from Marulić’s Judita, 1522 · public domain
Variorum problematum collectio · Marin Getaldić, Venice, 1607 · public domain
Light in a drop of rain, after de Dominis · illustration · De radiis visus et lucis, Venice, 1611, public domain
Homo volans, the flying man · Faust Vrančić, Machinae novae, c. 1615 · Library of Congress, public domain, animated for this page
The mathematicians’ report on the dome · Rome, 1743 · public domain
New map of the Papal States, 1755 · Christopher Maire, from observations made with Bošković · public domain
Ruđer Bošković at 45 · portrait by an unknown painter, 1756 · public domain
Kleopatra, detail · ESO/Vernazza, Marchis et al./MISTRAL algorithm (ONERA/CNRS), CC BY 4.0
Nikola Tesla · photograph by Napoleon Sarony, c. 1890 · public domain
Lupis’s coast-saver and early Whitehead torpedoes · Eidem and Lütken, 1906 · public domain
Dactiloscopía comparada · Juan Vucetich, La Plata, 1904 · public domain
The Jaruga power plants, 1903 · public domain
Andrija Štampar, 1939 · Bulletin of the History of Medicine · public domain
Lavoslav Ružička, c. 1939 · ETH-Bibliothek Zürich · public domain
Vladimir Prelog, c. 1945 · ETH-Bibliothek Zürich · public domain · the adamantane cage, Jynto, CC0
Measles virus under the electron microscope · Cynthia S. Goldsmith and William Bellini, CDC · public domain
Azithromycin · after the structure by Yikrazuul, public domain
Adamantane · Jynto, CC0
Ragusa · Merian, Frankfurt, 17th century · copper engraving, public domain
Bošković’s figure of the forces · Theoria, Venice, 1763 · public domain
The coast at Brsečine · film by Quahadi, CC BY-SA 4.0
The Med&X logo · Med&X brand files
Music · J. S. Bach, Aria from the Goldberg Variations · Kimiko Ishizaka, Open Goldberg Variations, 2012, CC0

Moving versions made for this page: Bošković’s portrait (layers and light, public domain), the pharmacy and Vindija Cave (depth and light, CC BY-SA 4.0, after Bernard Gagnon and Thilo Parg), the Lazarettos, the Ragusa engraving and Vrančić’s flying man (public domain), the portraits of Štampar, Ružička and Prelog (light, public domain). Drawings, map scenes and the Plexus card were made for this page.