Want to be immortalized? Name a body part
The Haversian canals, isles of Langerhans and Broca’s area aren’t destinations on a map: They’re parts of the human body (in the bones, pancreas and brains, to be precise), named for the people who discovered them.
For hundreds of years, the names of doctors and scientists have been immortalized in the names of the organs or diseases they discovered. But some in the field of medicine are now questioning whether the trend should continue.
In 16th century Europe, the science of human anatomy became wildly popular. The new anatomists eagerly dissected the bodies of executed criminals (often before large audiences) to explore what lay beneath the skin. And many of the researchers named what they saw for themselves -- whether they deserved such recognition or not.
A popular professor with a thriving medical practice, Gabriele Fallopio spent countless hours in the dissection chamber. His name remains attached to the reproductive tubes he described that connect the ovaries to the uterus in women.
Fallopio also laid claim to the Fallopian canal (which houses a major facial nerve), the Fallopian ligament (running between the hip and the pelvis) and Fallopian pregnancies (more commonly called tubal pregnancies today).
Not all of these eponyms were entirely fair: An ancient Greek doctor, for one, had described the Fallopian tubes nearly 2,000 years before Fallopio did.
But Fallopio ceded bodily territory too. Though he was the first to note small folds in the lining of the small intestine, these ultimately were named for a Dutch anatomist, Thomas Kerckring, who wrote about them more than 100 years after Fallopio died.
Eponyms became even trendier in the 17th century. A physician named Eustachio claimed the tube connecting the throat and middle ear. One named Malpighi attached his name to a layer of cells on the tongue. Dutch anatomist Regnier de Graaf died at 32 but still managed to affix his name to egg-containing follicles in the ovaries.
And then there were those who, like Fallopio, spread their names far and wide across the body. English anatomist Thomas Willis’ name became attached to several new diseases as well as parts of the body: the circle of Willis (a cluster of arteries at the base of the brain), Willis’ cords, Willis’ nerve (a major cranial nerve) and Willis’ pancreas.
Willis was followed by countless doctors whose monikers were adopted to name the diseases they defined: Alzheimer’s disease, Down syndrome, Hodgkin’s disease and Tourette’s syndrome are among the most familiar -- but by some accounts, they’re just a few of thousands.
In Nazi Germany, several doctors named newly discovered conditions and syndromes for themselves. But in recent decades, doctors and patients have begun to ask whether some of these -- such as Reiter’s syndrome and Wegener’s granulomatosis -- should be formally renamed, given the doctors’ unethical experiments on humans.
The point was taken up by doctors debating the subject of medical eponyms in the British Medical Journal this month. Keep the eponyms, wrote Australian doctor Judith Whitworth, who said they’re an important reflection of medicine’s long history.
Toss them, said English physician Alexander Woywodt and American rheumatologist Eric Matteson, writing in the same issue. They argued that body parts and diseases often have been named for the most powerful or self-promoting researcher, not necessarily the most deserving one.
They also point out that rarely has an organ or disease been discovered by a single individual. To be fair, they said, perhaps a disease such as Behçet’s syndrome (named for a Turkish dermatologist who died in 1948) should be renamed for all of those who contributed to doctors’ understanding of it.
The new name, they proposed (tongue firmly in cheek): “Hippocrates-Janin-Neumann-Reis-Bluthe-Gilbert-Planner-Remenovsky-Wev e-Shigeta-Pils-Grütz-Carol-Ruys-Samek-Fischer-Walter-Roman-Kumer-Adam antiades-Dascalopoulos-Matras-Whitwell-Nishimura-Blobner-Weekers-Regi nster-Knapp-Behçet’s disease.”
Patients, doctors and medical students, not to mention Behçet, would surely be displeased.
