By any other name… In recent strips of the daily comics ‘Dustin’ , the namesake character is berating his studious younger sister, Megan: D: If you were a doctor and discovered a disease, would you name it after yourself? M: Of course I would. Then I’d be an eponym. Being an eponym would assure me a certain measure of immortality. Researchers like to say “Eponymity, not anonymity.” Sir Robert Jones broke the diaphysis of the fifth metatarsal in one of his feet 112 years ago, but even today it’s called a Jones fracture. D: Frankly, I don’t know why researchers would name diseases they discover after themselves. Why would I want my name associated with something unpleasant? If I ever identify some horrible affliction, I’m going to name it after someone I don’t like, at all. = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Thus, we not only have a Jones fracture, but also Alzheimer’s disease, Hodgkin’s Disease, Parkinson’s disease, etc.; there’s also a named disease that has nothing to do with its ‘discoverer’, but a remarkable athlete who died from the disease. Jean-Martin Charcot (1825 – ‘93) was a French neurologist and professor of anatomical pathology. He is associated with at least 15 medical eponyms and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (motor neurone disease). Charcot has been referred to as “the father of French neurology and one of the world’s pioneers of neurology”. He was the “foremost neurologist of late nineteenth-century France” and has been called “the Napoleon of the neuroses“. His work greatly influenced the developing fields of neurology and psychology; modern psychiatry owes much to the work of Charcot and his direct followers. He is just as famous for his students: Sigmund Freud, Joseph Babinski, Pierre Janet, William James, Pierre Marie, Albert Londe, Charles-Joseph Bouchard, Alfred Binet, Jean Leguirec, and Albert Pitres. Charcot bestowed the eponym for Tourette syndrome in honor of his student, Georges Gilles de la Tourette. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) - referred to as motor neurone disease (MND) in most British Commonwealth countries - is a debilitating disease with varied etiology characterized by rapidly progressive weakness, muscle atrophy, muscle spasticity, difficulty speaking (dysarthria), difficulty swallowing (dysphagia), and difficulty breathing (dyspnea). The motor neurone diseases are a group of neurological disorders that selectively affect motor neurons - the cells that control voluntary muscle activity - including speaking, walking, swallowing, and general movement of the body. They are generally progressive in nature, and cause increasingly debilitating disability and, eventually, death. ALS is the most common of the five motor neuron diseases. In the U. S. it is known as Lou Gehrig‘s disease. Following the practice of naming a disease or condition after its victim, wouldn’t we describe the cause of gunshot death for U. S. presidents a ‘Lincoln-Garfield-McKinley-Kennedy Trauma’? [Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Mohandas Gandhi could be similarly recognized.] If someone were stabbed multiple times, wouldn’t it be a ‘Caesar trauma? So… instead of remembering a legendary athlete for the disease that killed him, consider: Henry Louis Lou or Buster Gehrig (June 19, 1903 – June 2, 1941) was an American baseball first baseman who played 17 seasons (1923–39) in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the New York Yankees. Gehrig was renowned for his prowess as a hitter and for his durability, a trait which earned him his nickname The Iron Horse. He finished with a career batting average of .340, an on-base percentage of .447, and a slugging percentage of .632, and he tallied 493 home runs and 1,995 runs batted in (RBIs) from 8,001 times at bat. A seven-time All-Star and six-time World Series champion, he won the Triple Crown* in 1934 and was twice named the American Leagues Most Valuable Player. Gehrig was the first MLB player to have his uniform number retired, and he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939. * In Major League Baseball, a player earns the Triple Crown when he leads a league in three specific statistical categories. The Triple Crown generally refers to a batter who leads either the National or American league in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in (RBI) over a full regular season. The Triple Crown epitomizes three separate attributes of a good hitter: hitting for average, hitting for power, and producing runs. It has been accomplished 17 times, with Miguel Cabrera being the most recent to accomplish the feat in 2012, the first since Carl Yastrzemski in 1967.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 03:20:54 +0000
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