This information is over 2 years old. Information was current at time of publication.{"id":3734,"date":"2010-09-29T15:17:22","date_gmt":"2010-09-29T20:17:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hsls.pitt.edu\/updatereport\/?p=3734"},"modified":"2010-09-29T15:17:22","modified_gmt":"2010-09-29T20:17:22","slug":"the-men-behind-the-medical-eponyms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/info.hsls.pitt.edu\/updatereport\/the-men-behind-the-medical-eponyms\/","title":{"rendered":"The Men Behind the Medical Eponyms"},"content":{"rendered":"

The display in the Rare Books Room focuses on Percival Pott (1714-1788), a British surgeon and founder of orthopedy, who spent most of his working life at St. Bartholomew\u2019s Hospital in London. He first described spinal tuberculosis in 1779, known today as Pott\u2019s disease. He left his name on several other disorders such as Pott\u2019s cancer, Pott\u2019s fracture, and Pott\u2019s gangrene. His contributions to medicine are illustrated by beautiful 18th and 19th century editions of his surgical works.<\/p>\n

The exhibit in the Falk Library lobby highlights the men behind Bell\u2019s palsy, Huntington\u2019s disease, and Paget\u2019s disease. Charles Bell (1774-1842), a Scottish anatomist, neurologist and surgeon first described facial nerve paralysis in his influential paper \u201cOn the Nerves: Giving an Account of Some Experiments on their Structure and Functions, Which Lead to a New Arrangement of the System\u201d which appeared in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London<\/em> in 1821. George Huntington (1850-1916) was an American family practitioner whose vintage paper \u201cOn chorea\u201d appeared in The Medical and Surgical Reporter: A Weekly Journal<\/em> in 1872. Huntington\u2019s paper describes hereditary chorea, which became one of the classical descriptions of neurological disease.\u00a0 And then there\u2019s James Paget (1814-1899), a British surgeon and pathologist, who described a bone condition in \u201cOn a Form of Chronic Inflammation of Bones (Osteitis Deformans)\u201d in Medico-Chirurgical Transactions<\/em>, 1876.<\/p>\n

To learn more about the people linked to thousands of eponymous diseases, visit the online dictionary, Who Named It?<\/a><\/p>\n

~ Gosia Fort<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"