Emergency medicine is a medical specialty in which physicians care for patients with acute illnesses or injuries which require immediate medical attention. While not usually providing long-term or continuing care, emergency medicine physicians diagnose a variety of illnesses and undertake acute interventions to resuscitate and stabilize patients. Emergency medicine physicians practice in hospital emergency departments, in pre-hospital settings via emergency medical services, other locations where initial medical treatment of illness takes place, and recently the intensive-care unit. Just as clinicians operate by immediacy rules under large emergency systems, emergency practitioners aim to diagnose emergent conditions and stabilize the patient for definitive care.

Physicians specializing in emergency medicine in the US and Canada can enter fellowships to receive credentials in subspecialties. These are palliative medicine, critical care medicine, medical toxicology, wilderness medicine, pediatric emergency medicine, sports medicine, emergency medical services, and undersea and hyperbaric medicine.

Johns Hopkins (May 19, 1795 – December 24, 1873) was an American entrepreneur, abolitionist and philanthropist of 19th-century Baltimore, Maryland.

His bequests founded numerous institutions bearing his name, including Johns Hopkins Hospital, Johns Hopkins University, Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

A biography entitled Johns Hopkins: A Silhouette written by his cousin, Helen Hopkins Thom, was published in 1929 by the Johns Hopkins University Press.

Johns Hopkins was born on May 19, 1795, to Samuel Hopkins (1759–1814) of Anne Arundel County, Maryland, and Hannah Janney (1774–1864), of Loudoun County, Virginia. Home was Whitehall, a 500-acre (two km²) tobacco plantation in Anne Arundel County. His first name derives from a maternal great-grandmother, Margaret Johns, who passed it on to her son.

The Hopkins family were members of the Society of Friends (Quakers). In 1807 they emancipated their slaves in accordance with their local Society decree, which called for freeing the able-bodied and caring for the others, who would remain at the plantation and provide labor as they could. The second eldest of eleven children, 12 year-old Johns was required to work on the farm, interrupting his formal education. From 1806 to 1809, he likely attended The Free School of Anne Arundel County, which was located in today's Davidsonville, Maryland.