The Eponymic Route to Immortality

What’s in a Name? The Eponynsic Route to Immortality

‘4umber 47 November 21, 1983

In our day-to-day lives, we frequently ship, as well as in many areas of popular encounter places and things named after culture. Even in music we have the soxo - people. Streets, airports, and towns are phone, named for Adolphe Sax, the Bel- often named after individuals. So are gian instrument maker, and the sousa- commonly used machines, such as the phone, named for John Phdip Sousa, the diesei engine, and clothlng, such as the American bandmaster, And, oddly rnackintodt ruincoat. This form of nam- enough, Beethoven appears to have in- ing honors a person who makes some spired an engineering eponym, the Bee- contribution to our culture. The term tho ven exploder, a machine used for fir- for a person so honored is “eponym.” ing multiple detonators of explosives in Thus, Rudolf Diesel is the eponym of the tunneling and quarrying.s Yet one diesel engine. would be hard put to determine exactly The term eponym is derived from the how many eponyms each field can Greek words epi, meaning upon, and claim. Webster’s unabridged dictionary onyma, meaning name. 1 In addition to lists about 9,000 eponyms in all fields. designating the namesake of a word, The Eponyms Dictionaries Index (EDI), eponym has a second meaning—a term edited by James A. Ruffner, Wayne or phrase den”ved from a person’s State University Science Library, De- name. 2 By this definition, diesel engine troit, Michigan, lists 20,000 eponyms is also an eponym. The second usage overall, as well as 13,0C0 eponymized seems to be gaining ascendancy and persons.J clearly predominates in the literature The number of eponyms in the EDI is consulted for thk essay. It is this mean- so large because it includes many that ing for this homonymous word that is are no longer capitalized. When an ep- used here. onym is no longer capitalized, it’s a sign In the sciences, eponymy is a hal- that the term has been fully absorbed in- lowed tradkion. It often honors the dk- to everyday language. This is the ulti- coverer of a law or theorem, as in New- mate tribute to the person eponymized. ton’s law of gmvitation; the describer of But by the time it occurs, the link be- a new disease, as in A ddison’s pernicious tween word and person is usually lost. anemia; or the inventor of new equip- For example, how many dancers today ment, as in the Bunsen burner. Scientists realize that the inventor of their costume are far more frequently eponymized was Jules L&otard, a nineteenth-century than humanities scholars. According to trapeze artist? He said of the leotard, Cyril L. Beechmg, compiler of A Dic- “Do you want to be adored by the tionary of Eponyms,d painters and musi- ladtes?... Put on a more natural garb, cians are least often eponymized. which does not hide your best fea- Nevertheless, some eponyms are tures.”b (p. 168) Popular eponyms are found in almost every field of scholar- like popular trademarks in this respect.

384 When completely absorbed into the lan- Greek mythology has provided some guage, immortals soon become, as Jim- modern eponyms as well. In medicine, my Durante would say, “moralized.” the Ulysses syndrome 10 describes the L60tard, like most people who are phenomenon of a doctor subjecting a eponymized, is associated with only one healthy patient to a battery of unneces- eponym. But five or ten eponyms maybe sary diagnostic tests, because of idial created in the wake of an eminent scien- test results outside the “normal” range. tist. The record is held by a nineteenth- Like Ulysses, the patient ends up some- century French chemist named Georges what wome for wear, after much fruitless Deniges,J of whom I had never heard exploration. The Hermes syndrome, 1I until now, Although clearly not a house- coined in response to medical journal hold word, at least in the US, Deniges in- editorials on theft from medical li- spired 78 eponyms, primarily tests and braries, takes its name from the god of reagents, such as Deniges’s test for sele- thieves. nium and Deniges k benzoyl reagent. Literature, too, supplies us with scien- Better known scientists such as Albert tific eponyms. The Pick wickian syn- Einstein and Isaac Newton have been drome, 12 a type of breathing difficulty identified with only about 40 eponyms associated with obesity, is named after each. the portly character calIed “the fat boy” Many of the eponyms used today have in Charles Dickens’s Pick wick Papers. been introduced since the rise of modern The Jeky[l-and-Hyde syndrome, 13which science in the sixteenth and seventeenth describes dramatic changes in the be- centuries. But eponymy is an ancient havior of elderly patients, is named after practice. Some of the earliest recorded the leading character in Robert Louis eponyms date from the first and second Stevenson’s famous story. millennia BC, when the Assyrians Although, strictly speaking, eponymy named each calendar year after a high refers to terms named after persons, official.7 Historians have relied heavily geographic eponyms also occur in scien- on lits of these named years (eponym tific nomenclature. The Fmmingham lists) to reconstruct Assyrian history. study, a long-term investigation of the For example, kings usually gave their epidemiology of atherosclerotic d~ease, names to the first year of their reign. So takes its name from the study site, Fra- it was possible to estimate the length of a mingham, Massachusetts. 14 Similarly, reign intervening between two succes- Lyme disease, a form of arthritis caused sive kings’ names by counting the num- by tick-borne bacteria, was named for ber of names on the eponym list. The the town of Lyme, Connecticut, where number of names usually equals the the ficst cases occurred. 15Another vari- number of years in the reign of the first ation on the theme of eponymy is the king. Thus, the long reign of Sennacher- corporate eponym. An example is Le- ib, the Assyrian empire-builder men- gionnaires’ disease. This epidemic form tioned in the Old Testament for hk siege of pneumonia was named for the Ameri- of Jerusalem, was fixed between 704 and can Legion members who were among 681 BC.8 its first known victims. lb Incidentally, Simiiarly, in ancient Athens, the name naming a dkease for the patient rather of the archon, an official who held office than the doctor is unusual but not un- for one year, was used to designate each heard of. Hartnup k disease, 17a heredh calendar year.y The year 594 BC was tary metabolic disorder, and Mortimerk named after Solon, the great lawgiver. disease, la a skin condition, are among The Greeks also named places after the few so named. their heroes. 1 Thus, the Peloponnesus The vast majority of scienttilc ep- region takes its name from the mytho- onyms, however, are named after indi- logical figure Pelops, a grandson of vidual scientists. Perhaps the most epon- Zeus. ymized scientists are horticulturists and

385 botanists, whose names are routinely in- D.R. Lovett, University of Essex, Col- voked in naming plants, particularly chester, England .21 Clausius’s state- those they have identified. The genera ment, Helmh oltz’s equation, Einstein h Darlingtonia, Do wningia, Gmysia, and theory of relativity, and the Kelvin tem - Halesia all commemorate renowned bot- pemture scale all commemorate the anists. Beechmg asserts that eponymic work of giants in these fields. Many species of roses alone “would fill a vol- commonly used chemical methods are ume.”d (p. 8) Furthermore, almost every eponymic, including the Hofmann rear- common house and garden plant has an mngement, the Wittig reaction, and the eponymic name. Thus we have the dahi- Eschenmoser hydrolysis. Furthermore, ia, the forsythia, and the fuch~ia, which science honors early pioneers in elec- honor the botanists Anders Dahl, Wil- tricity and magnetics in naming such liam Forsyth, and Leonhard Fuchs, re- fundamental units as the volt, ohm, spectively. Eponyms also account for ampere, coulomb, farad, and oersted.zz such odd-sounding plant names as bou - Other fields, such as mechanical engi- gainviliea, cattleya, mfflesia, and zoysia. neering and economics, have their own In bacteriology the naming of species lists of eponyms. But medicine has a par- is also heavily eponymic. In fact, both ticularly rich eponymic tradition. I’ve the genus and species names of the or- already mentioned several eponymic ganism Rickett.sia pro wazeki honor indi- syndromes and diseases, The I[lustmted viduals. This organism, which causes Dictionary of Eponymic Syndromes and epidemic typhus, is named for the pa- Diseases and Their Synonyms~ lists thologist Howard Ricketts and the zool- about 9,000 more. Th~ was compiled by ogist Stanislas von Prowazek, whose my old friend Stanley Jablonski, Na- lives it claimed. 19 tional Library of Medicine, Washington, In addition, many names of minerals DC, who is now working on a new edi- are derived from proper names. A num- tion. A selection of highly cited papers ber of the minerals used by humankind associated with syndromes and diseases since antiquity have been named for included in the dictionary are listed in places. Bronze is a corrupted form of Table 1, Brundisium (now Brind~i) in southern In add~tion, many diagnostic tests, in- Italy, and copper a corrupted form of struments, and anatomical parts have Cyprus. But the tendency in the last eponymic names. Thus we have the several centuries has been to name new Quick test (for blood clotting), named minerals in honor of scientists. Thus we for the hematologist Armand Quick; have cordierite, named for its discover- Doyen h clamp (an intestinal occlusion er, the eighteenth-century French clamp), named for the nineteenth-cen- geologist Pierre Louis Cor&~er, and tury French surgeon Eugene-Louis smithsonite, named for the English Doyen; and Bowman k capsule (a struc- chemist and mineralogist, James Smith- ture in the kidney), named for the nine- son, founder of the Smithsonian Institu- teenth-century English anatomist, tion, Washington, DC.20 Cordiente is a WiMam Bowman. silicate of iron, magnesium, and alumi- Although medical terminology is re- num. Smithsonite is a white zinc car- plete with eponyms, in no other field is bonate. their use so hotly debated. In fact, in Eponyms are also abundant in mathe- 1955, the International Congress of matics and the “hard” sciences of phys- Anatomy at Pans adopted an official list ics and chemistry. There are so many of anatomical terms from which alf ep- that A Dictionary of Named Effects and onyms had been purged. zd Many anato- Laws in Chemistry, Physics and Mathe- mists and other doctors object to ep- matics has been compiled by Denis onyms because they aren’t descnptive.zs W .G. Ballentyne, Imperial College, Another objection is that a dkease often University of London, England, and outgrows its eponym. For example, Tay-

386 Tabfe 1! A selected hatof eponymic papers cited over 2tM times between 1%1 and 1983. Papers identified by ISP as Cisation Clamics m are followed by the isxue number and year of C@’ in which the claasic ap peared. A= citations from 1961101983. B= bibliographic data, cponym, and definition.

A B

209 Buskitt D. A sarcoma involving the jaws in African children. Bri). J. Surg. 46:218-23, 1958. 21/83/LS Brsrkitt’s lynrplsoma-Lymrphoma of the jaw and rctroperitoneal area 759 Earfe W R, Schlfliug E L, Stask T H, SsrarssN P, Brown M F & She.fton E. Production of malignancy in vitro. 4. The mouse fibroblast cultures and changes seen in the living ceUs. J. Nat. Cancer Inst. 4:16$212, 1943. 46/78 Earfe L flbrosarcoma-Transplantable fibrosarcoma produced from mouse tiaaue 328 Edwards J H, Hmndrm D G, Cusrermr A H, Crease V M & Wofff O H. A new triaomic syndrome. Lancet 1:787-90, 1960. Edwards’s synsJronre-Multiple xcvere birth defectx caused by an extra chromosome in the 16-18 ~OUfl 610 Frland C. Cell-free transm~]on in adult Swixs mice of a disease having the character of a leukemia. J. Exp. Med. 105:307-18, 1957, Frfend’s leukerrda-Tnmsplantable leukemia produced in mice 726 Goldbfatt H, Lynch J, Hand R F & Summervflfe W W. Studies on experimental hypertension, I. TIM production of persistent elevation of systolic blood prexsure by meana of renal iachemia. J. Exp. Med. 59347-79, 1934. Gofdbfatt’t h~rtenaion-Systolic hypertension prnduced by obstruction of renal arteries 295 Gordon R S. Exudative enteropathy: abnormal permeability of the gastrointestinal tract demonstrable with labelled polyvinylpyrrolidone. Lancef 1:325-6, 1959. 13/81/CP Gordon’s sbaaa-Group of diaorderx caused by hypoproteinemia due to leakage and intestinal malabsorption of proteirrs 315 Kanner L. Autistic d~turbances of affective contact, “New. Chi/d 2:217-50, 1943. 25/79/S&BS Karmer’s sprcfrome-Chifdhond autism 362 Patasr K, Smftb D W, ‘rfrermsmE, Irrbosn S L & Wagner H P. Multiple congenital anomaly caused by an extra autosome. Lancet 1:790-3, 1960. 48/78 Paean’s ayrrsfrome-Multiple s-evere birth defects caused by extra chromosome in the 13-15 group 278 Shy G M & Drager G A. A neurological syndrome associated with orthoatatic hypotension. Arch. Neuml. 2:511-27, 1960. Shy-Drager syndrome-Progressive neurological disorder that causes primary changes in the central nervous system 332 Sfpple J H. The association of pheochromocytoma with carcirroma of the thyroid gland. Amer. /. Med. 31:163-6, 1%1. Sfpple’a syndrnm+arcinoma of the thyroid 2S)7 S[efo 1 F & Leverrthsd ML. Amenorrhea associated with bilateral polycyxtic ovaries. Amer. J. Obstet. Gynecol. 29:181-91, 1935. Stefn-Leventhaf synrfrome-Syndrome characterized by pcdycystic ovaries accompanied by amenorrhea, sterihty, obesity, and hmutism 267 Wernser P. Genetic aapects of adenornatnais of endocrine glands. Amer. J. Med. 16:363-71, 1954. Wenrser’s ayndrtrme-Endocrine gland tumorx combined with Zol~mger-EIliirr syndrome, an association of gastric hyperaecretion, hyperacidlty, and recurrent peptic ulcer with pancreatic tumors 257 Zieve L. Jaundice, hyperfipemia and hemolytic anemia: a heretofore unrecognised ayrrdrome -iated with afcoholic fatty liver and cirrhnais. ,4 nn. Mern, Med. 48:471-%, 1958. 39/83/CP Zleve’s syndrome-Jaundice and hemolytic anemia aaaociated with alcohofic fatty liver and mild cirrhosis

Sachf r.fivease,originally a generic term and John S. OBrien, University of Cali- for a syndrome of dementia and blindness fornia, La Jolla, has become a Citation in infants, is now applied to only one van- C[a~~ic TM.2? (A Citation C[assic is One of ant among a family of diseases caused by the highly cited papers featured each dtiferent biochemical deficiencies,2G In- week in Current Contentsm. ) cidentally, the fmt paper identifying Critics of eponymy also argue that ep- such a biochemical deficiency, by Shin- onyms often memorialize the wrong taro Okada, Osaka University, Japan, people. Moiler-Barfo w disease, a form

387 of scurvy occurring in infants, was de- out to be several ddferent condd]ons, scribed by Francis Glisson about 200 then the eponym can be retired. But up years before J.O. L. Mollerof Germany fo that point, it has served its purpose. and Thomas Barlow of England pub- Like other facets of natural language, lished their descriptions of it in 186228 the eponym serves as a useful symbol un- and 1883,29 respectively. ~ And Saint til enough is known about the disease never wrote a paper describing .Wint’s that an accurate descriptive term can be triad, acombination ofhiatalhemia, di- coined. Even then, eponyms may be verficulosis, and gallstones.sl In addi- preferable to descriptive terms because tion, although their work wasn’t wrongly they are usually shorter. Why say osteo- attributed, some of the most important dystrophia chronica deformans hyper- figures in the history of medicine, such trophica, when you can say Paget k dis- as William Harvey, describer of thecir- ease? (Pagef’s disease is a deforming culatory system, have not been epony- bone inflammation that strikes patients mized.gz over age 40. ) But some view these very same weak- Although eponyms are often misat- nesses of eponyms as their strengths. It’s tributed, some think it better to credit true that eponyms don’t describe the the person who clearly established the thing they name. Descriptive terms, significance of a discovery, rather than however, can be misleading. H.E.M. the original dkcoverer. gl Without a Kay, Royal Marsden Hospital, London, champion, the discovery might have lan- England, gives the example of “acute guished in obscurity, in which case the Iymphoblastic leukemia.”sg Although original discoverer would have remained this descriptive name seemed appropri- unacknowledged anyway. Of course, a ate at first, it is now known that this con- double eponym naming both provides a dition doesn’t always involve the high simple compromise. whhe blood cell count that “leukemia” While it’s true that some great scien- implies. Also, no connection with lym- tists, such as Harvey, are not explicitly phoblasts has been proved. named in formal eponyms, their place in In another example, Roy D. history has hardly suffered. By contrast, Scti~ckel, University of Pennsylvania, probably few today remember Deniges, Philadelphia, notes that the role of chro- even with his 78 eponyms. Nevertheless, mosomes wasn’t understood when many eponyms assure at least a limited, tem- syndromes were first recognized.~ So porary measure of credit to many scien- the modern descriptive terms “triso- tists who might otherwise be completely my 21” and “monosomy X“ couldn’t forgotten. have been coined for the chromosomal Another advantage of eponyms is that disorders known as Do wn’s syndrome they enliven medical history. Behind and Turner’s syndrome. However, the each eponym is a story for a student or descriptive term “mongolism,” for practitioner to seek out. Mason G. Rob- Down’s syndrome, gained wide usage ertson, a physician in Savannah, Geor- even though it is inaccurate at best and gia, has called the eponym “one of the racist at worst. Turner’s syndrome, in last vestiges of humanism remaining in contrast, was always known by the ep- an increasingly numeralized and com- onym, which, as Schrnickel points out,~ puterized society. “35Although I heartily has served the medical community far agree that eponyms lend color to science better. history, I disagree with the pejorative Schmickel praises the eponym as “a reference to computerization. It is pre- neutral term that allows a concept to cisely the computer that has enabled evolve, free of any preconceived no- ISI” and others to immortalize or honor tions.”~ (p. 486) It doesn’t bias research scholars who have made signtilcant dis- in any particular direction. If a syn- coveries that were never eponymized or drome outgrows an eponym by turning otherwise recognized. Identifying Cita-

388 tion Classics is only one way we use the As suggested earlier, multlple ep- computer to honor such scholars. onyms may also commemorate both In spite of all the positive reasons for original and later describers. For exam- using eponyms, they do have some ple, as early as 1866 J.Z. Laurence and rather annoying features. For one thing, R .C. Moon reported cases of what is a disease may have more than one ep- now known as Laurence-Moon-Biedl onym. For example, Weil’s disease, an syndrome, a hereditary syndrome in- infectious disease transmitted by rats, is volving abnormal development .42 But also known as Fiedler’s disease, Lan- this report attracted little attention until douzyk disease, Mathieu k disease, and A. Biedl redescribed the syndrome in Vasilev k disease.~ Who is to say which 1922.~.dJ is the preferred term? And like other Presumably, multiple eponyms pro- forms of natural language, eponyms can vide a way of sharing credit fairly among be ambiguous. Percivalf Pott’s eponyms scientists. But they do so at the cost of could even be considered homographs. conciseness. Clearly, the quadruple These include Pott k disease, Pott i frac- eponym Charcot-Man”e- Tooth-Hoffman ture, Pott k gangrene, Pott k pamlysis, syndrome is more cumbersome than the and Pott kpuffy tumor.~ No doubt these descriptive term, “neuropathlc muscular eponyms are occasionally confused with atrophy. ” With the current trend toward each other. Even worse are the cases of team research, multiple eponymy could eponymy where only a number dktin- become even more awkward. What if guishes different diseases, as in Al- every member of a five- or six-person re- bright’s syndrome (l), A[bright’s syn- search team were included in an ep- drome (2), A1bright’s syndrome (3), and onym? An alternative might be to use A/bright’s syndrome (4).23 But is this any some kind of team name such as the Fra- more confusing than labeling histamine mingham study. TMs is somewhat akin antagonist receptors HI or H2? These to using a fictitious name for collective mnemonic designations are characteris- effort, as was used by the group known tically not very self-seeking. Some more as the pseudonymous French mathema- eponymously minded fellow than Sir tician, N. Bourbaki. James Black might have cafled them Inconsistent usage is another problem Blackl or Black2 receptors.JG with eponyms. For example, some au- Double and triple eponyms also exist, thors mistakenly put a hyphen between and these can be unwieldy. Sometimes a the two names of an eponym formed double eponym denotes a full name, as from a single individual’s full name, as in in the A ustin Flint murmur37in cardiolo- Austin-Flint. Others mistakenly omit the gy. Occasionally, it is a hyphenated last hyphen from a double eponym formed name, as in GiIbert-Dreyfus syn- from two different last names, as in drome,~ a form of abnormal sexual de- Chediak HigashL The use of the posses- velopment. More often, double and tri- sive “s” is another sticky point. The Jour- ple eponyms acknowledge researchers nal of the A men”can Medical Associa- who were co-workers, as in the Wein - tion (.TAMA) no longer uses the posses- berg-Himelfarb syndrome,Jq a congeni- sive for eponyms.~ The editors reason tal cardiac defect, or who worked inde- that the eponymized persons didn’t own pendently on the same discovery, as in the disease and in few cases did they suf- Chediak-Higashi syndrome. Thk heredi- fer it. Thus, this style gives us Hodgkin tary white blood cell disorder was de- disease and Menkes syndrome. Still, J’m scribed at about the same time by M.M. surprised that JAMA would abrogate in- Chedlak@ in France and O. Higashi in tellectual property rights! Many of the Japan.dl We would expect the papers current articles consulted for this essay associated with such a double eponym to do use the possessive form. It certainly be frequently cited together and to help seems more appropriate for nonclinical identify a research front, eponyms. In any science, an original

389 theory is an individual’s intellectual in- tific career. And Simon Gray published vention. Giffen’s paradox before Robert Giffen Despite the drawbacks of eponyms, was born. Furthermore, no reference to many hope to be eponymized. Robert K. what has come to be known as Giffen’s Merton has obsewed that “eponymity, paradox has been found anywhere in not anonymity, is the standard” of rec- Giffen’s writings. ognition in science.~z (p. 302) And, C.K. Stigler explains the prevalence of mis- Tashima, a Houston physician, has fa- attribution by pointing out that eponyms cetiously described the Tashima syn- are not bestowed by science historians drome ,45 a condition in which a physi- devoted to tracing the evolution of an cian searches for a new sign, disease, or idea. Rather, eponyms have typically syndrome to attach his or her name to. been bestowed by a community of scien- As Merton made clear in his 1957 pa- tists distant in time and place from the per, “Priorities in scientific discovery,” scientist being honored. According to in The Socioiogy of Science, eponymy is Stigler, this distancing adds to the “the most enduring and perhaps most prestige of eponyms by making it seem prestigious kind of recognition institu- as if they are bestowed objectively. tionalized in science.”zz (p, 3(2O)At the Stigler maintains that although eponyms top of the eponymic ladder he outlines don’t commemorate original discover- are the few major figures who have given ers, they still play a valuable role in the their names to whole epochs, such as reward system of science. The persons Newton, Darwin, and Freud. Then come they do honor usually have done some scientists whose names are associated work related to the dkcovery and have with fields, subfields, and disciplines, made important general contributions. such as Robert Boyle, the “father of Thus, eponymy is a reward for general chemistry, ” and Willard Gibbs, the scienttlc merit. “father of physical chemistry. ” The Articles by Mark M. Ravitch, Univer- lesser ranks of eponyms include laws, sity of Pittsburgh and Montefiore Hospi- theorems, hypotheses, constants, dis- tal, Pennsylvania, who has made a spe- eases, body parts, plants, etc. Below cial study of eponyms, tend to support eponyms come other scientific rewards, Stigler’s view.s~.4T,dg Ravitch contends such as medals, prizes, and member- that for most eponyms one or more of ships in honorary academies and soci- the following four statements is likely to eties. be true: the eponymized person wasn’t According to Merton, eponyms, as the first describer of the discovery; the part of the reward system of science, eponymized person didn’t correctly reward originality. Stephen M. Stigler, understand the dkcovery; the eponym’s University of Chicago, Illinois, holds a current meaning differs greatly from the complementary View.qb He believes that original idea; or the attribution has no eponyms do not reward the isolated hktorical basis whatsoever. achievement of an original discoverer, Whether or not Stigler’s law holds true because they are usually wrongly attrib- is a question for science hktorians. Per- uted. In fact, he has impishfy formulated haps an exception will help prove the Stig[er’s [aw of eponymy, which states rule! Consider Pott’s fracture. Surely that eponyms are never named after the Pott earned thk eponym legitimately. original discoverer. Besides facetiously After all, he described-not a patient’s pointing out that “St. Matthew did not fracture—but his own. He suffered this discover the Matthew effect,”% (p. 148) fracture of the lower leg bones when he he cites, among many others, the ex- was thrown from his horse.dg It is possi- amples of Laplace tmnsforms and Gif ble that someone previously described fen’s paradox. Apparently, Joseph La- such a fracture, but could it have been grange presented Laplace transforms be- exactly the same? Having suffered a fore Pierre Laplace ever began his scien- broken leg, I can testify that it seemed

390 painfully unique at the time. I tried un- lmowmg mu weu mat mere are excep- successfully to convince my daughter tions to general practice. In addition to Laura of this when she repeated this fol- this improvement in communication, ly. However, instead of a skateboard she the time interval Stigler describes for be- chose to use rollerskates. stowing eponyms has shrunk in today’s Suffering a unique injury or disease faster-paced science. yourself is a rather extreme way of estab- Consider the birth defect known as lishing your priority. A less risky way of Antley-Bixler syndrome, which involves getting around Stigler’s law might be multiple deformities. This eponym was simply to adopt Stigler’s own ironic prac- first used in a 1979 paperss by tice and eponymize yourself. Not sur- M. Michael Cohen, Dalhousie Universi- prisingly, this practice is often frowned ty, Nova Scotia, only four years after the upon. Recently, Peter Newmark, deputy 1975 report5G by Ray Antley and David editor of Nature, gently chided two Bixler, both of Indiana University-Pur- scientists for naming a virus after them- due University Medical Center, India- selves.~ Yet, as Kay has noted, self- napolis, Indiana. Contemporary search eponymy is the norm among taxono tools should have made readily available mists in many fields.ss He has urged any references to such a syndrome that medical practitioners to drop their mod- predated Antley and Bixler. esty and boldly name new discoveries Of course, contemporary search tools after themselves. are not inffllble. Even searchhg for I’ve had a hand in this game. Several papers on well-established eponyms pre- years ago I proclaimed Garfield’s law of sents its own special problems. The tra- concentmtions~ and Ga~ield h con- ditional indexing services deal with ep- stant. 52 Gas%eld’s law of concentration onyms in a vanet y of ways. If the ep- is not really a law but a principle. It as- onym is a commonly used term, it may serts that a small group of multidisciplin- be an authorized search term. Other- ary and high-impact specialty journals wise, it maybe cross-referenced with an account for a large percentage of refer- authorized search term. But sometimes ences and publications in all fields of sci- it’s neither. For example, Index Medicus ence. Garfield’s constant refers to the doesn’t use Sweet’s syndrome as either a average number of citations per cited subject heading or a cross-reference. paper in the annual Science Citation In- According to Clifford A. Bachrach, edi- dex” (MY). The constant might have tor of Index Medicus, the National Li- been forgotten had not Derek J. de Solla brary of Medicine doesn’t prefer de- Price reminded the world about it in dk- scriptive terms over eponymic terms in cussing Merton’s theory of cumulative selecting terms for its Medical Subject advantage .53 But only time will tell Headings (MeSH). Rather, selection re- whether my eponyms wilf surnve over flects common usage in the medical lit- the long term, and whether I’ll have suc- erature.57 It is estimated, however, that cessfully sidestepped Stigler’s law. Sam- less than two percent of MeSH terms are uel Bradford, beware!sd eponyms. Incidentally, I first met Cliif at To the extent that Stigler’s law holds Johns Hopkins University in 1951, where true, perhaps poor communication in we shared an interest in punched card earlier eras might partly explain it. Over machines. the long interval between a discovery You can, of course, do a title-word and the conferring of its eponymic search online or with the Perm uterm @ name, it was much easier for misattribu- Subject Index section of SCI. This ap- tion to occur. In the present era of rapid proach varies in effectiveness because worldwide communication, retrieval authors don’t always include eponyms in and dwemination services make it less the titles of papers. But one limited likely that discoveries are attributed to study of the medical literature indicated the wrong person or group. I say this that a surprising number of titles do in-

391 elude the relevant eponym .~f3 Jata S. ‘l”here’s no reason why searching by Ghosh, Wyeth International, Radnor, primordial reference should be liiited Pennsylvania, found that 72 percent of to eponymic searches. Stephen P. Pope, 2,435 papers on syndromes and diseases Broadgreen Hospital, Liverpool, En- listed in the j973 Index Medic us used ep- gland, explained recently in the British onyms in the titles. This finding is tenta- Medical Journai61how he keeps up with tively corroborated by searches of the literature of the interscalene brach~al ISI/BIOiUED@ data base for 1980-1983 plexus block by checking the primordial using as search terms the eponyms referencebz in each year’s SC1. He points Hodgkin’s disease and Cushing’s syn- out that later researchers are almost drome. These search terms yielded 1,107 bound to cite the primordial reference. papers with Hodgkin’s disease and 199 He feels that SCI has a considerable ad- papers with Cushing’s syndrome in their vantage over Index Medicus in that it al- titles. In contrast, a search using the lows thk type of searching. equivalent descriptive terms, /ympho- This discussion of primordial refer- gmnuioma and hyperadrenocortici.rm, ences reminds me of an as yet unfulfilled retrieved only 24 papers for each term. “promise” I have made on several occa- Nevertheless, use of eponyms in titles sions. I’ve often talked about an 1S1 Dic- vanes from disease to dkease. A search tionary of Pn”mordial References .63 In by the eponym Hansen k disease yielded this compilation, one would find the only 16 papers, whereas the descriptive primordial reference for eponymic as term leprosy yielded 685 papers. well as other important discoveries. This Another approach to searching the lit- is not as simple to do as you might imag- erature for eponymized topics is to use ine. The cases of misattribution and the Citation index section of SC1. There multiple attribution described here show you can find papers that have cited the how difficult it is to link the correct “primordialreference. “59The primordi- original published work with a discov- al reference is the paper that constitutes ery. And even if you determine the tech- the best starting point for a search. It is nically correct work, it may not be the often, but not necessarily, the first pub- one most commonly identified with the lished work on a concept. It may also be eponym or the discovery. a highly cited paper by someone other There are, of course, numerous dic- than the original discoverer, whose work tionaries and other reference works that has become more closely associated with supply references up to a point. Most the concept. In the early days of SCI, we relevant to thk discussion is Jablonski’s did a number of eponymic literature Riustmted Dictionary of Eponymic Syn- searches to demonstrate the unique dromes and Diseases and Their Syn- power of citation indexing. You may re- onyms,zs mentioned earlier. It supplies member Kwok k disease, named after the references associated with each ep- Robert H .M. Kwok, the physician who onym it lists. However, the editor hints first described the Chinese restaurant at difficulties in providing references by syndrome.@ This unusual name refers to noting that some of the eponyms were a set of symptoms that maybe caused by untraceable, and that the titles of some monosodium glutamate intolerance. of the references couldn’t be verified. When we did our search on Kwok’s dis- For example, no paper by Roth could be ease, we didn’t start by looking it up in identified for Roth k Iipomatosis. The the subject indexes. Instead, we dictionary lists only a 1954 paper by H. searched our SC1 files for citations to Bernard. And for Niemann-Pick dis- Kwok’s 1968 letter to the New England ease, the dlctionav lists a 1914 paper by Journal of Medicine, the first published Niemann, but the reference is starred to account of the syndrome. Thk primordl- indicate that it can’t be verified. al reference led us to a list of appropriate This is not the place to elaborate on citing papers. the full details of a comprehensive, dy-

392 namic dictionary of primordial terms or lead to incorrect citation, in which the citations. Suffice it to say that we already senior author rather than the actual first have several sources of primordial author is cited. Consider the case of papers to draw on. For example, we Eschenmoser hydrolysis. The correct could use our files of most-cited papers. primordial citation is F. Elsinger, This is one of our basic tools in identify- J. Schreiber, and A. Eschenmoser, ing Citation Classics. Another route to “Notiz iiber die Selektivitit der Spaltung primordial references is co-citation clus- von Carbonsaure-methylestern mit tering.~ In the course of developing the Lithiumjodid,” Helvetica Chimica A eta 1S1 Search Network, we have identified 43:113-8, 1960.6S However, Albert core papers for thousands of specialty Eschenmoser, Swiss Federal Institute of areas in all fields of science. These Technology, Zurich, is sometimes cited clusters of core papers and their associ- as the first author. The error is under- ated research front names can be hier- standable considering Eschenmoser’s archically classified and constitute a de- eminence. We anxiously await his com- tailed thesaurus for online searching. mentary on this paper, one of several Co-citation clustering also provides a classics he has written. Although, in thk tool for obtaining a comprehensive bibli- case, the error occurred about three per- ography on eponymic topics. In our Zn- cent of the time, there are other cases in dex to Scientific Revie ws ‘“ (ISR ‘“ ), re- which the percentage is higher. It drives view papers are assigned to one or more librarians and editors to distraction research front specialties. Suppose you when they try to verify such incorrect ci- want information on Kaposi k sarcoma. tations. If you look under Kaposi’s sarcoma in Whatever such disadvantages ep- the ISR Permuterm Subject Index, onyms may have, I believe they are out- you’ll fmd the names of authors who weighed by their benefits. Eponyms re- have written current reviews on this sub- mind us that science and scholarship are ject. The next step is to turn to the the work of dedicated people. They al- Source Index and look up the author. If low us to immortalize sometimes ob- the author’s paper is associated with a re- scure but deserving persons. It is clear search front, it will be so tagged. When that they represent a natural language you look up the appropriate number in way of expressing complex ideas and it is the Research Front Specialty Index, for this reason that they have often been you’ll fmd the research front specialty cited as a useful first approach to search- named, “Preventing infections in cancer ing with title-word and citation indexes, patients,” and a list of reviews citing core as well as with controlled vocabularies literature in this specialty. Since review where they are used. papers provide extremely wide coverage of a subject, each paper in itself should supply an extensive bibliography. Taken together, the collective bibliography that the group of reviews provides ***** should be quite thorough. Clearly, searching for papers associated with eponyms requires a special approach. The way these papers are cited may also vary from the norm. Many eponyms are associated with multiau- My thanks to Patn”cia Lawson and thored papers. Quite often, the “senior” Amy Stone for their help in the prepam- author is not the first author. Thii can tion of this essay. ?@,W ,$1

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