Neurosurgery and a small section from the Greek myth: the God Pan and Syrinx

Abstract

Origins of the medical termsSyrinxandlumbarhypertrichosisarewell-knownpathologiesin neurosurgery practice. The word Syrinx, from Greek,means “shepherd’spipe”; Syringa of syrinx, from Greek,means “tube, hole, channel, shepherd’spipe” [3, 5, 10, 14].The word hypertrichosis originates from Greek (Gr.Thrix =hair). As in most of the sciences, many medical terms haveorigins in the Greek language [17] due largely to theinfluences of The “Father of Medicine”, Hippocrates, andthe prominent Greek physician, Galen of Pergamon. Heseparated medicine from philosophy as the first, and hiscitizen Galen of Pergamon have great role on this situation[17, 21]. The scientists who followed, including the RomanAulus Cornelius Celsus (author of De Medicina and knownas Cicero medicorum—the Cicero of doctors), used wordsthat were directly imported from Greek, preserved thewords’ Greek grammatical endings, Latinized the Greekletters and words, and most importantly translated Greekanatomical terminology into Latin [21]. Today, more than90% of medical terms have Greek, Latin, or Greco-Latinorigins [17].History of the word syringomyeliaAlthough Hippocratic physicians had knowledge of devel-opmental anomalies related to the lower spine, a Persianphysician, Al-Razi (Rhazes, 865–925 AD), was the first todescribe a spinal dysraphism, spina bifida [9]. Theexistence of a central canal of the spinal cord was one ofthe most remarkable of the observations of the Frenchphysician and anatomist Charles Estienne [18]. Estiennewas a contemporary of famous anatomist Vesilus. Inaddition to describing many other anatomical structures,Estienne published descriptions of the spine and itsligaments in La Dissection des parties du corps humain in1546. Eight years later, French physician Jean FrancoisFernel wrote about a canal within the spinal cord in hiswork, Medicina ad Henricum II [9]. In 1700, Brunner madea description in an autopsy of a child revealing meningo-myelocele, syringomyelia, and hydrocephalia [8]. AlthoughPortal described the clinical signs and symptoms of thisdisease in 1804 [8, 9], Olliver d’Angers was the first whoused the term “syringomyelia” to describe the cysticcavitations of the spinal cord in his book Traite de laMoelle Epiniere et de ses Maladies, Paris and Brussels,Crevot (Treatment of medulla spinalis and its diseases) in1827 [9, 10]. In 1824, a cavitation of the spinal cord incontinuity with the fourth ventricle was described by thesame author in the book De la Moelle Epiniere et de sesMaladies, Paris, Chez Crivot (Textbook of medulla spinalisand its diseases). He thought syringomyelia was a result ofdevelopmental arrest of the spinal cord [8]. Later, in 1856,Stilling demonstrated that the central canal was open in allvertebrates and called the condition as “hydromyelia”;according to him, the term syringomyelia should be usedfor other spinal cavities [9]. After studies in man and birds,Lebendorff found that the causative factor of thesepathologies was a neural tube closing failure during theearly fetal life in 1881 [9]. Morgagni (1769), Cleland(1883), Simon, Langhans (1881), Chiari (1891), Arnold(1894), Russell and Donald (1935), and Gardner (1958) arethe other scientists that we have to remember in relationwith syringomyelia [8–10].