Ethan Trex
13 Medical Conditions Named After People
by Ethan Trex - March 23, 2011 - 4:11 PM

Note: Server migration week continues, so forgive us for reposting a few oldies/goodies. This article was originally published in 2009.

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Having a disease named after you is a decidedly mixed bag. On the one hand, your scientific developments are forever commemorated. On the other hand, though, you’re stuck with the knowledge that no patient will ever be happy upon hearing your name. Who are the scientists and doctors behind some of our most famous diseases and conditions, though? Here are a few of the physicians and their eponymous ailments.

1. Crohn’s disease

The inflammatory digestive disease could just have easily ended up with the name Ginzburg’s disease or Oppenheimer’s disease. In 1932, three New York physicians named Burrill Bernard Crohn, Leon Ginzburg, and Gordon Oppenheimer published a paper describing a new sort of intestinal inflammation. Since Crohn’s name was listed first alphabetically, the condition ended up bearing his name.

2. Salmonellosis

Yes, the salmonella menace that haunts undercooked chicken is named after a person. Daniel Elmer Salmon was a veterinary pathologist who ran a USDA microorganism research program during the late 19th century. Although Salmon didn’t actually discover the type of bacterium that now bears his name—famed epidemiologist Theobald Smith isolated the bacteria in 1885—he ran the research program in which the discovery occurred. Smith and his colleagues named the bacteria salmonella in honor of their boss.

3. Parkinson’s disease

James Parkinson was a busy fellow. While the English apothecary had a booming medical business, he also dabbled in geology, paleontology, and politics; Parkinson even published a three-volume scientific study of fossils. Following a late-18th-century foray into British politics where he advocated a number of social causes and found himself briefly ensnared in an alleged plot to assassinate King George III, Parkinson turned his attention to medicine. Parkinson did some research on gout and peritonitis, but it was his landmark 1817 study “An Essay on the Shaking Palsy” that affixed his name to Parkinson’s disease.

4. Huntington’s disease

George Huntington wasn’t the most prolific researcher, but he made his papers count. In 1872, a fresh-out-of-med-school Huntington published one of two research papers he would write in his life. In the paper, Huntington described the effects of the neurodegenerative disorder that now bears his name after examining several generations of family that all suffered from the genetic condition.

5. Alzheimer’s disease

In 1901, German neuropathologist Alois Alzheimer began observing an odd patient at a Frankfurt asylum. The 51-year-old woman, Mrs. Auguste Deter, had no short-term memory and behaved strangely. When Mrs. Deter died in 1906, Alzheimer began to dissect the patient’s brain, and he presented his findings that November in what was the first formal description of presenile dementia.

6. Tourette syndrome

Credit George Gilles de la Tourette for his modesty. When the French neurologist first described the illness that now bears his name in 1884, he didn’t name it after himself. Instead, he referred to the condition as “maladie des tics.” Tourette’s mentor and contemporary Jean-Martin Charcot renamed the illness after Tourette.

Tourette didn’t have such great luck with patients, though. In 1893, a deluded former patient shot the doctor in the head. The woman claimed that she lost her sanity after Tourette hypnotized her. Tourette survived the attack.

7. Hodgkin’s lymphoma

British pathologist Thomas Hodgkin first described the cancer that now bears his name while working at Guy’s Hospital in London in 1832. Hodgkin published the study “On Some Morbid Appearances of the Absorbent Glands and Spleen” that year, but the condition didn’t bear his name until a fellow physician, Samuel Wilks, rediscovered Hodgkin’s work.

8. Bright’s disease

The kidney disease bears the name of Richard Bright, an English physician and colleague of Hodgkin’s at Guy’s Hospital. Bright began looking into the causes of kidney trouble during the 1820s, and in 1827 he described an array of kidney ailments that eventually became known as Bright’s disease. Today, doctors understand many of the symptoms historically clumped together as Bright’s disease are in fact different maladies, so the term is rarely used.

9. Addison’s disease

Guy’s Hospital was apparently the place to work in the 19th century if you wanted to have a disease named after you. Thomas Addison, a colleague of Bright and Hodgkin at Guy’s Hospital, first described the adrenal disorder we call Addison’s disease in 1855. On top of this discovery, Addison also published an early study of appendicitis.

10. Tay-Sachs disease

Although both of their names are attached to this genetic disorder, Warren Tay and Bernard Sachs didn’t work together. In fact, they didn’t even work in the same country. Tay, a British opthalmologist, first described the disease’s characteristic red spot on the retina in 1881. In 1887 Bernard Sachs, a colleague of Burrill Crohn at Mount Sinai Hospital, described the cellular effects of the disease and its prevalence among Ashkenazi Jews.

11. Turner syndrome

The chromosomal disorder got its name from Oklahoma doctor Henry Turner, who first described the condition in 1938.

12. Klinefelter’s syndrome

The genetic condition in which males have an extra X chromosome bears the name of Harry Klinefelter, a young Boston endocrinologist who published a landmark study while working under the tutelage of endocrinology star Dr. Fuller Albright in 1942. Albright pushed his young protégé to be the lead author of the paper that described the condition, so the young Klinefelter’s name is forever associated with the syndrome.

13. Asperger’s syndrome

Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger first described the syndrome that now bears his name in 1944 after observing a group of children who suffered from what Asperger described as “autistic psychopathy.” (He called his patients “Little Professors.”) Interestingly, since Asperger’s research was all written in German, his contributions to the literature went unrecognized until much later. The term “Asperger’s syndrome” didn’t come into widespread usage until 1981.

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Comments (28)

  1. I’m surprised to see that Down Syndrome isn’t on the list. I learned quite a bit about it when my son was born. It’s an extra 21st chromosome, also called Trisomy 21. So my son has 47 chromosomes instead of the regular 46. My license plate holder says, “My kid has more chromosomes than your kid.” Hardly anyone gets the joke. : )

    posted by Hannibal Schlechter on 12-4-2009 at 1:22 pm

  2. Raynaud’s Disease is an uncommon but kind of interesting one from which I happen to suffer. Discovered by Maurice Raynaud. It causes numbness and loss of blood flow to the affected parts of the body (most commonly fingers and toes). I have primary Raynaud’s, or in other words, I’m “allergic” to cold.

    posted by Megan on 12-4-2009 at 1:38 pm

  3. I think it would be worse to be the patient of an unnamed disease.
    Imagine, you are in the doctor’s office, he studies the results of a few tests he gave you earlier. He then calls in a few other doctors. A long and hushed conversion ensues. After several hours your doctor turns to you and says, “Well Mr. Gehrig, I’ve got some good news and some bad news….”

    posted by TXCherokee on 12-4-2009 at 2:44 pm

  4. It is now practice to leave off the ‘s after diseases named after people, so it would be “Parkinson Disease.” I’m not sure why but they made a big stink about the change when I was in library school.

    posted by lisa on 12-4-2009 at 2:51 pm

  5. How about Hansen’s disease? G.H.A. Hansen discovered the bacterium that causes leprosy, so he got his name attached to it.

    posted by Eric on 12-4-2009 at 3:11 pm

  6. ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) is known in North America as Lou Gehrig’s disease (mentioned in TXCherokee’s humorous comment). But in France it is called Maladie de Charcot (Charcot’s disease), named after the doctor who did early work on it. This Charcot is, I believe, the same Charcot who was Tourette’s mentor (item #6 in the list).

    posted by Annon on 12-4-2009 at 5:16 pm

  7. Let’s not forget Dr. Jacques Lisfranc de St. Martin, the French cavalry surgeon who noticed a peculiar fracture of mid-foot that happened when Napoleonic cavalrymen fell from the saddle.

    posted by Chris on 12-4-2009 at 5:18 pm

  8. I think the only reason I recognize most of this is because of House.

    posted by sasha on 12-5-2009 at 6:28 pm

  9. Charcot foot is also its own interesting condition. I saw many people treated for it with shoe prosthetics in a former job. When there is major damage caused by variant neuropathy, the bones of the feet begin to weaken and break, causing the foot to cave in and almost turn into a rocker. The people that came in for the specialized shoes absolutely broke my heart.

    posted by nikki on 12-5-2009 at 8:39 pm

  10. Alzheimer’s came immediately to mind when I saw the headline. Then Parkinson’s.

    About half of these are new to me.

    posted by David @ SEO-writer on 12-6-2009 at 10:56 am

  11. Eric,
    While Hansen’s name was attached to leprosy for awhile, I believe it fell off.

    posted by Michael on 12-6-2009 at 4:04 pm

  12. I am currently recovering from a temporary condition called Bell’s Palsy, which was described in 1821 by Charles Bell.

    posted by John on 12-6-2009 at 4:48 pm

  13. I just want to thank you for putting Huntington’s Disease on the list. For as horrible a disease it is, there really aren’t enough people that know about it. So thank you.

    posted by Ashley on 12-7-2009 at 3:45 am

  14. Graves’ disease owes its name to the Irish doctor Robert James Graves ,[2] who described a case of goiter with exophthalmos in 1835.[3] However, the German Karl Adolph von Basedow independently reported the same constellation of symptoms in 1840.[4][5] As a result, on the European Continent, the terms Basedow’s syndrome[6], or Basedow’s disease[7] are more common than Graves’ disease.[6][8]

    posted by Amy Carmean on 12-8-2009 at 2:18 pm

  15. It is all good to know that all these are names that arrive from these.

    posted by Jean on 12-8-2009 at 3:07 pm

  16. I would have liked if Hirschsprung’s Disease was on the list.

    posted by Nayomi on 12-10-2009 at 7:35 pm

  17. When I younger (47), my brother convinced me that the dreaded disease Sausage Fingers was named for a prominent German physician.

    posted by Yahoo Serious on 3-23-2011 at 4:23 pm

  18. Like Sasha commented, I knew most of these from House also :)

    posted by Christin on 3-23-2011 at 5:31 pm

  19. @Ashley

    Huntiington’s Disease is the classic example professors give in genetics classes of an autosomal dominant genetic disorder as well as an example of a hereditary disease that persists in the human gene pool because symptoms usually don’t manifest until well after the person has has had children.
    While not as infamous as Alzemier’s and Parkinson’s, anyone who has taken so much as an AP biology class will have a pretty good chance of knowing what Huntingtons is- far more than I can say for most of the disease on the list.

    posted by Joman on 3-23-2011 at 5:51 pm

  20. Another one,Sjogren’s syndrome.
    (showgrins)A chronic autoimmune disease.
    Also mentioned on House.

    posted by Sharon on 3-23-2011 at 5:53 pm

  21. Let’s hear it for Hashimoto’s!!!

    Seriously, after sitting through pathophysiology classes I’m pretty sure there could be hundreds on this list.

    posted by LakeLover on 3-23-2011 at 5:58 pm

  22. Jean Lhermitte had no less than 8 medically relevant eponyms bearing his name:

    Lhermitte’s sign, Lhermitte’s peduncular hallucinosis, Lhermitte’s syndrome, Lhermitte-Cornil-Quesnel syndrome, Lhermitte-Duclos syndrome, Lhermitte-Lévy syndrome, Lhermitte-McAlpine syndrome & Lhermitte-Trelles syndrome.

    Lhermitte was a neuropsychiatrist. He was interested in both medicine and theology, which led to some interesting research on the topic of demon possession & stigmatization.

    posted by Lisa on 3-23-2011 at 6:41 pm

  23. Sherlock Holmes and Abed Nadir are two potential Asperger’s patients.

    posted by Ellie on 3-23-2011 at 9:24 pm

  24. Not every day I go to one of my favorite websites and see a disease I’ve had for 15 years. Go go Crohns! (I knew the name’s origin; I had to do a report about it for Biology class to make up for the month of school I missed in 10th grade.)

    posted by William on 3-24-2011 at 1:12 am

  25. Cokayne Syndrome is named for the British doctor who identified it in the 1930′s. You can find out more about it at the CS Network website. Cases of it have been found all over the world. Both parents must be a “carrier” for it to appear in a child.

    posted by linkscat on 3-24-2011 at 8:02 am

  26. Cockayne Syndrome – sorry about the mis-spelling

    posted by linkscat on 3-24-2011 at 8:03 am

  27. Kawasakis…. My son has it and it is NASTY!

    posted by Heather Bishop on 3-24-2011 at 10:14 am

  28. What about Lou Gherigs(?spelling) disease? I’m surprised that didn’t make the list.

    posted by Maria on 3-24-2011 at 11:13 pm

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