Dictionary of Medical Eponyms

Abstract

Of all the elements that make up the language of medicine, surely eponyms are the most impertinent, intrusive, irrelevant, and exasperating. To spell and pronounce correctly the whole multinational melange of surnames in the modern medical lexicon would be a feat of almost superhuman linguistic virtuosity. Students of medical history tell us that many of the eponyms in current use honor the wrong people as discoverers or inventors of the things named. Virtually all eponyms are semantically inert, and those that seem to mean something (Head zones, Moon molars, Quick test, Sippy diet) do not. Some include given names and may be so alphabetized (Argyll Robertson pupil under A, Grey Turner's sign underG). Unstable onomastic conventions add further confusion: Quervain or de Quervain, Recklinghausen or von Recklinghausen, Cajal or Ramon y Cajal? Despite these objections to their use, eponyms continue to flourish and multiply, perhaps because they introduce a