There has been a strong tradition in medicine and surgery to name ailments after the medical professional that first referred to or published on that ailment. Occasionally the physician named the condition after themselves which might be regarded as relatively arrogant and other occasions it was provided with a physician’s name by their peers in acknowledgement of the success, which may be regarded as an honour. Most recently there has been a tendency away from calling conditions after doctors.
There are many reasons for this tendency. Nowadays scientific studies are more likely to be completed by groups and not individuals working by themselves, therefore it is difficult to credit a condition to only one individual. From time to time previously credit for a condition has gone for the wrong person and the illness might have been explained by somebody else prior to when the one which gets the recognition.
A condition that is named after somebody doesn't refer to the particular pathology or the underpinning biological components with the disease process which can be much more benefit. For example, it is not too difficult to know what illnesses like acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (or AIDS) as well as whooping cough are just based on the actual name. If these kinds of problems had been named after individuals, it would certainly convey nothing with the underlying pathology. In several situations there can be several illnesses named after the same physician or the have the name. For instance, you can find 12 distinct conditions called after the neurosurgeon, Dr Cushing.
From time to time a illness that is named after a doctor has something regarding their past that it's no more correct to call the illness after them. One example is, there was a condition, Reiter’s syndrome that had been called after Dr Reiter who was subsequently found guilty of war crimes for his medical experiments performed at a Nazi concentration prison. The condition that has been named as Reiter’s syndrome is currently more generally named Reactive arthritis. Likewise, Wegener’s Granulomatosis had been named for Friedrich Wegener who was a Nazi doctor. The term for the disease is currently more generally known as granulomatosis with polyangiitis as soon as Dr Wegener's Nazi connections were made public.
One other example is Severs disease that is a painful disease of the calcaneus bone in children which is self-limiting. It was first written about by J Severs in 1912. It's not a disease, however the usage of this language is possibly harmful to kids. It is probably more correctly known as calcaneal apophysitis since the heel bone is actually called the calcaneus and the pathology is an inflammation of the apophysis (or growth plate).
The WHO has now produced guidelines on the naming of new diseases by having an emphasis on a best process not to name diseases after people or geographical regions to be able to prevent the impacts on those people and the areas and their economies and also to avoid stigmatization of people and parts. The very best procedures states that an illness name ought to consist of a generic descriptive phrase which can be according to the signs and symptoms the illness brings about plus more specific descriptive words as soon as robust information is found on the way the disease shows up or reacts.
