Rapid Responses to:
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Rapid Responses: Rapid Responses published:
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![[Read Rapid Response]](/icons/misc/sectionDOWN.gif)
What's in a name?
- John A S Beard (31 August 2007)
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The eponym should always live on
- Neil G Snowise (2 September 2007)
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Should eponyms be abandoned?
- Keith Baxby (2 September 2007)
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Re: Should eponyms be abandoned?
- David J Ogden (4 September 2007)
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Medical Eponyms
- Sameer Chadha, Shikha Mehta, Sumeet Chadha Medical Students (4 September 2007)
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Wrong spelling, right argument
- Neville W Goodman (5 September 2007)
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What did he do in the war
- Andrew Charters (5 September 2007)
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Should eponyms be abandoned? Abandon that idea!
- Christopher J McAloon (6 September 2007)
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The Tower of Babel
- Donatella Lippi (10 September 2007)
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John A S Beard, GP VTS Oxford Deanery
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Here here! Long may eponyms be used. That they bring "colour to medicine" and an historical context is quite right. Competing interests: None declared |
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Neil G Snowise, Pharmaceutical Physician Bath
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In the increasingly bland medical world of reduced individuality, standard formats and political correctness, it’s more important than ever to keep the eponym! As Judith Whitworth says ( BMJ Sept 1st ), they bring colour to medicine - and they remind us of our medical culture and history. Woywodt’s three arguments ( BMJ Sept 1st ) in favour of their abandonment don’t really stack up to anything resembling robustness. Firstly he is concerned that eponyms associated with the Nazis are inappropriate. I agree with that, and any other conditions associated with criminals – if there had been a Shipman Syndrome, it could easily be renamed. But this is neither here nor there in the overall scheme of over 7,000 eponyms. Second, he complains that they may not be named after all the people involved in their discovery. Well, life is unfair, in many aspects! Many activities are the result of good teamwork, but frequently only the leader of the team is remembered. In my neck of the woods, Caleb Parry described thyrotoxic eye disease well before Graves, but his descriptions weren’t written up till after his death, and he didn’t get his eponym. Better to remember someone associated with the discovery, than no-one at all, Dr. Woywodt. Third, a lack of scientific accuracy is not necessarily something that will be improved by abandoning eponyms. And as for the assertion that they cause confusion and hamper scientific discussion – where’s the evidence for that bit of fiction? Are the readers of this week’s BMJ confused by the articles on Silver Syndrome, Parkinson’s Disease and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, and are they hampering scientific discussion? I would think just the opposite and furthermore, some details of the life of James Parkinson, Edward Ehlers and Henri Danlos would have enhanced the articles. Keep the eponym, medicine would be poorer without it! Competing interests: None declared |
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Keith Baxby, Erstwhile urological surgeon Home DD2 1PD
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Whitworth's defence of eponyms is better argued, more pertinent and more entertaining than her opponents' case. Her penultimate paragraph clinches it. To keep or abandon eponyms? It's Hobson's choice. Competing interests: None declared |
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David J Ogden, Consultant Psychiatrist Fan Gorau Unit, Montgomery County Infirmary, Powys Local Health Board. Llanfair Road, Newtown SY16 2
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Sir Blanket abandonment of eponyms cannot be successfully argued. Surely the real question is whether medicalese (including e x c e s s i v e use of eponyms) should be abandoned; or at least brought to heel. The scholarly dandification of the English language by post- renaissance travellers around the 16th and 17th centuries AD included the absorbtion and reworking of a huge number of classical terms from greek and latin. This represented an inversion of the hard-won earlier rejection of latin as the exclusive language of knowledge and power, mediated at that time through the clergy. As such, this new tendency (with flourishing sciences such as medicine amongst the prime movers) was much criticized by linguists of the day. However, it continued apace until English had once again become a useful way of distinguishing educated from ignorant, and rich from poor. Language is a tool for communication. Corrupting its function for reasons of smug scholarly vanity, professional protectionism or simple laziness can hardly be of service to our patients, since it diminshes our capacity to communicate with them and each other. If we believe in patient -centred care, health empowerment or even just the resurgence of the vernacular, then we must stop hiding behind our clever eponyms and pseudoclassical tosh, and start saying what we mean. Competing interests: None declared |
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Sameer Chadha, Medical Student Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi, India, Shikha Mehta, Sumeet Chadha Medical Students
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We totally agree... the medical eponyms should certainly continue. They definitely add color to the large spectrum of medicine. Competing interests: None declared |
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Neville W Goodman, Consultant Anaesthetist Southmead Hospital, Bristol, BS10 5NB
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Judith Whitworth wins the argument hands down, but it is Avogadro not Avagadro. Competing interests: None declared |
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Andrew Charters, Child Psychiatrist Barnsley, S70 1LP
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I must admit to enjoying the richness of those eponyms which I have mastered. For the same reason I hated them as a student. In relation to this article, I once heard the autism expert Fred Volkar say that concerns about what Hans Asperger did in the war, lay behind delays in recognising his work on children with "autistic psychopathy". He said that he had been wrongly suspected of Nazi sympathies. Wikipedia is somewhat coy on the subject; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Asperger, saying that he was part of the "youth movements" of the 1920's and that it isn't known what he did in the war. Lorna Wing, child psychiatrist, who did so much to bring attention to these children, has said that she did not want to invent a separate category, but to bring recognition to the broader autism spectrum. I doubt that these children would have such a high profile without the eponym. Competing interests: None declared |
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Christopher J McAloon, FY1 Medicine Selly Oak Hospital Birmingham
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I read with interest the article in the article in last months BMJ 'Should eponyms be abandoned?' And found my self re-living memories of sitting in the library for hours on end trying to commit to memory Downs Syndrome, Conn's Syndrome, Salter - Harris classification and the hundreds more before my medical finals. I remember thinking to myself there must be an easier to classify diseases than the name of the individual credited for discovering it. I found the argument that certain individuals like Reiter being involved in the Nazi regieme a stimualting one for a reason why we should not use this particular eponym to refer to the type of reactive arthritis he described. It certainly lends it self to the argument of whether we should use any of the information Nazi doctors discovered in modern medicine. This is an ethical question which still causes much debate and I think goes beyind the question of the use of eponyms in medicine. I personally found myself agreeing with Judith Whitworth that these eponyms though hard to commit to memory are part of our medcial history. They celebrate the spirit of medicine with the endeavour to persue research and make discoveries that will push medical practice forward. We do not often look back at the individual that made the discovery but what it does for the practice of medicine. It is unfortunate that some individuals from which eponyms were derived may not have been rightfully deservied of the honour. However they were given them and they are now part of the rich tapestry of medical history which we have all suscribed too, so I for one am happy to learn about Addisons disease and Parkinsons disease. Competing interests: None declared |
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Donatella Lippi, Prof. History of Medicine University of Florence, 50134 Careggi, Viale Morgagni 85, Dep. Anatomy
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The linguistic discussion about eponyms is a thorny question. Eponyms bring colour to Medicine, but they contribute to a prosopographical interpretation of science and to the diffusion of the “forerunner’s virus”. From the patient’s point of view, the use of eponyms may represent a further obstacle for a proper understanding and it deeply marks the distance between the cultural background of the physician and of the patient himself. Even if we examine the problem from the physician’s standpoint, eponyms may produce misunderstanding, above all if we consider the problem of translations: at least three different pathologies, for example, are designated by the name of Marfan syndrome and the Babinski sign is known by a number of other names. Eponyms, however, represent a very interesting chapter in the History of Medicine: they can be considered an opportunity to investigate the creation and the development of a medical concept and the knowledge of the scientist’s personality. As far as the scientific communication is concerned, Claude Bernard wrote that scientific style is like a crystal. Scientists' eloquence is clarity. Competing interests: None declared |
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