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For me, bells ringing loudly in my head, the chase was just ten steps
to a shelf in my study where, for sentimental reasons, I keep the standard
multi-author medical textbook of the late 1950s - Price's Textbook of the
Practice of Medicine, 9th edition 1956, edited by Donald Hunter. Here, on
page 734, the section on pernicious aneaemia begins with the words
"Synonym - Addison's Anaemia". The distinguished author, Leslie J Witts,
preferred the term pernicious anaemia but still went on calling it
Addisonian - as did others (at least until the 12th edition of 1978),
hence the bells in my head.
From a grey head's perspective, the mistake made by the pharmaceutical
company in its patient information leaflet was not to use an eponym but to
confuse Addison's or Addisonian Anaemia with Addison's Disease.
While agreeing with Walker and Stanaway that eponyms entail
"pernicious" risks, I am a litle surprised that they seem both unfamiliar
with an eponym I would have believed to be reasonably common - common
enough to be cited in MedLine. They did not search using the term familiar
in textbooks over a long period. It has always been termed (in my
experience) "Addisonian" Pernicious Anaemia, and it emerges immediately in
MedLine if "Addisonian" is keyed in
Short Chase for an Older Goose
For me, bells ringing loudly in my head, the chase was just ten steps
to a shelf in my study where, for sentimental reasons, I keep the standard
multi-author medical textbook of the late 1950s - Price's Textbook of the
Practice of Medicine, 9th edition 1956, edited by Donald Hunter. Here, on
page 734, the section on pernicious aneaemia begins with the words
"Synonym - Addison's Anaemia". The distinguished author, Leslie J Witts,
preferred the term pernicious anaemia but still went on calling it
Addisonian - as did others (at least until the 12th edition of 1978),
hence the bells in my head.
From a grey head's perspective, the mistake made by the pharmaceutical
company in its patient information leaflet was not to use an eponym but to
confuse Addison's or Addisonian Anaemia with Addison's Disease.
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests