Medical Pioneers Who Had Conditions Named After Them

Being awarded an eponym is considered the standard in Western medicine and an honour bestowed on the doctors, scientists and researchers, who may have devoted a lifetime to the discovery, identification and treatment of ailments and conditions that affect the population. Below is a list of the medical conditions named after medical practitioners with a brief description of the disease and the doctors behind them.

1 Alzheimer’s Disease (Dr Aloysius Alzheimer)

The Condition: Alzheimer’s disease is a brain disorder that gets worse over time. It’s characterized by changes in the brain that lead to deposits of certain proteins. The disease causes the brain to shrink and brain cells to eventually die. It is the most common cause of dementia a gradual decline in memory, thinking, behavior and social skills. These changes affect a person’s ability to function.

The Doctor:

The German doctor who lends his name to the condition was born in Bavaria in 1864 and died of heart failure in Breslau, Prussia modern day Wroclaw in Poland in 1915, at the tender age of 51.

2 Asperger’s Syndrome (Dr Hans Asperger)

The Condition: Asperger’s syndrome is a term sometimes used to describe a developmental disorder that’s part of the autism spectrum disorder (ASD). People who have this type of ASD tend to have a hard time relating to others socially. They usually stick to a very specific routine, have a narrow set of interests, and act in repetitive ways such as flapping their hand.

The Doctor:

The Viennese pediatrician first described what we now know as Asperger’s syndrome in 1944 after observing a group of children who suffered from what he described as autistic psychopathy However, because his research was all written in German, his contribution to literature went unrecognized for decades. Even the eponym “Asperger’s syndrome” only came into widespread usage in 1981.

3 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (Dr Thomas Hodgkin)

The Condition: Hodgkin’s lymphoma (HL) is a cancer of the lymphatic system that generally develops in the lymph glands or nodes, causing them to get big commonly, the cancer develops in the neck, armpit or chest though it can develop in any part of the body.

The Doctor:

British pathologist Thomas Hodgkin was born in 1798 and is considered a pioneer in preventative medicine though he is best known for his account of what we now know as Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which was first published in 1832.

Born into a Quaker family in Middlesex, Dr Hodgkin died in Palestine 67 years later after contracting dysentery. He was buried in Jaffa.

4. Parkinson’s Disease (Dr James Parkinson)

The Condition: Parkinson’s disease is a progressive neurological disorder caused by a shortage of dopamine, a chemical that helps instructions from the brain cross from one nerve cell to another.

The Doctor:

Although Dr James Parkinson is most famous for his 1817 work, ‘An Essay on the Shaking Palsy’, he was also an English surgeon, chemist, geologist, and palaeontologist. And political activists. Born in London in April 1755, Dr Parkinson was the son of a doctor and chemist, who practised in Hoxton Square, London, and later succeeded his father in the practice. Apart from his scientific pursuits, he was also a strong advocate for the underprivileged and an outspoken critic of the government, writing under his name and the pseudonym “Old Hubert”. He died in London in 1824, at the age of 69, of a stroke.

5. Down Syndrome (Dr John Langdon Down)

The Condition: Also known as trisomy 21, Down syndrome is a genetic disorder caused by the presence of all or part of a third copy of chromosome 21. It is associated with delays to physical growth, characteristic facial features and mild to moderate intellectual disability.

The extra chromosome occurs by chance but the possibility of it occurring increases from less than 0.1% in 20-year-old mothers to 3% in those over the age of 45. It occurs in about one per 1000 babies born. It can be identified in pregnancy through prenatal screening.

The Doctor:

British doctor John Langdon Down first described the syndrome in 1866 but it wasn’t until 1957 that the genetic cause of the condition, an extra copy of chromosome 21, was discovered. Down was born on 18 November 1828 in Torpoint, England, to Hannah Haydon and Thomas Joseph Almond Down as the youngest of six children. He was raised in a religious family.
In 1866 in a paper entitled ‘Observations of an Ethic Classification of Idiots’ he put forward his theory that different conditions could be classified by ethnic characteristics.These included what he classified as a Mongolian type, which led to people with Down syndrome also being known by the offensive term “Mongoloids”.

Two years later he set up a private home for the “mentally subnormal” at Normansfield in England. Today this is known as the Langdon Down Centre and also houses the headquarters of the Down Syndrome Association. Crohn collaborated on disease research

6. Crohn’s Disease (Dr Burrill Bernard Crohn)

The condition: Crohn’s disease is an inflammatory bowel that affects parts of the digestive system that get swollen and have deep Scars called ulcers. It is usually found in the small or large intestine but it can develop anywhere along the digestive tract, including the mouth and the anus.
Symptoms include stomach cramps and diarrhea often causing weight loss.

The Doctor:

Although Dr Burrill Bernard Crohn is honoured by the eponym, he collaborated on the research with two others, Dr Leon Ginzburg and Dr Gordon Oppenheimer. It is thought the condition was named after him because their names appeared in alphabetical order on the paper they published in 1932 describing the features of the then-unknown condition. Dr Crohn, a Jewish American, himself enjoyed excellent health, almost living to the age of 100. Apart from being a renowned gastroenterologist, who consulted on high-profile patients, including President Dwight Eisenhower, Dr Crohn was also an accomplished painter.

7. Edwards’ Syndrome (Dr John Hilton Edwards)

The Condition: A serious genetic disorder, also known as trisomy 18, caused by an additional copy of chromosome 18 in some or all cells in the body. In many cases where it occurs, it causes miscarriage or stillbirth. Of babies who survive tobirth, half die within two weeks and only one in every five will survive to three months, though around one in every 12 survives beyond the first year. It affects around one in 3,000 to 6,000 live births and the risk increases with the mother’s age.

The Doctor:

Of all the featured doctors whose names have become eponyms, Dr John Hilton Edwards is the most contemporary, having only passed away in 2007. Born in London in 1928, Edwards was the first to report a description of multiple congenital malformations associated with the presence of an extra chromosome. He was elected to a fellowship of the Royal Society in 1979 and was a fellow of Keble College, Oxford, and a professor of Genetics at Oxford from 1979 to 1995. He died in Oxford in 2007.

8. Patau’s Syndrome (Dr Klaus Patau)

The Condition: Also Known as trisomy 13, Patau’s syndrome is a rare and serious genetic disorder caused by having an additional copy of chromosome 13 in all of the body’s cells. Patau severely disrupts development in the womb and in many cases results in miscarriage, stillbirth, or death shortly after birth. About 90% of babies are born at the mother’s age. It can be detected through prenatal screening

The Doctor:

Geneticist Klaus Patau was born in Germany in 1908 and graduated from the University of Berlin with a PhD in 1936, followed by a two-year stint in London before the war. He returned to Germany and worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Biology until he emigrated to the USA in 1948. He first reported the extra chromosome in trisomy 13 in 1960. He died in 1975.

9. Tourette Syndrome (George Gilles de la Tourette)

The Condition: Tourette Syndrome(TS). It is a condition of the nervous system. TS causes people to have “tics”. Tics are sudden twitches, movements, or sounds that people do repeatedly. People who have tics cannot stop their bodies from doing these things. For example, a person might keep blinking over and over. Or, a person might make a grunting sound unwillingly. Having tics is a little bit like having hiccups. Even though you might not want to hiccups, your body does it anyway. Sometimes people can stop themselves from doing a certain tic for a while, but it’s hard. Eventually, the person has to do the tic. Depending on the type of tics a person has, and how long the tics last, a person might be diagnosed with Tourette syndrome or another type of tic disorder.

The Doctor:

When the French neurologist, George Gilles de la Tourette, 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.

10. Tay-Sachs Disease (Warren Tay and Bernard Sachs)

The Condition: Tay-Sachs disease is a rare genetic disorder passed from parents to child. It’s caused by the absence of an enzyme that helps break down fatty substances. These fatty substances, called gangliosides, build up to toxic levels in the brain and spinal cord and affect the function of the nerve cells.

The Doctors:

Although both of their names are attached to this genetic disorder, Warren Tay and Bernard Sachs didn't work together. They didn’t even work in the same country. Tay, a British ophthalmologist, 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.