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

‘4umber 47 November 21, 1983

In our day-to-day lives, we frequentlyencounter places and things named afterpeople. Streets, airports, and towns areoften named after individuals. So arecommonly used machines, such as thediesei engine, and clothlng, such as thernackintodt ruincoat. This form of nam-ing honors a person who makes somecontribution to our culture. The termfor a person so honored is “eponym.”Thus, Rudolf Diesel is the eponym of thediesel engine.

The term eponym is derived from theGreek words epi, meaning upon, andonyma, meaning name. 1 In addition todesignating the namesake of a word,eponym has a second meaning—a termor phrase den”ved from a person’sname. 2 By this definition, diesel engineis also an eponym. The second usageseems to be gaining ascendancy andclearly predominates in the literatureconsulted for thk essay. It is this mean-ing for this homonymous word that isused here.

In the sciences, eponymy is a hal-lowed tradkion. It often honors the dk-coverer of a law or theorem, as in New-ton’s law of gmvitation; the describer ofa new disease, as in A ddison’s perniciousanemia; or the inventor of new equip-ment, as in the Bunsen burner. Scientistsare far more frequently eponymizedthan humanities scholars. According toCyril L. Beechmg, compiler of A Dic-tionary of Eponyms,d painters and musi-cians are least often eponymized.

Nevertheless, some eponyms arefound in almost every field of scholar-

ship, as well as in many areas of popularculture. Even in music we have the soxo -phone, named for Adolphe Sax, the Bel-gian instrument maker, and the sousa-phone, named for John Phdip Sousa, theAmerican bandmaster, And, oddlyenough, Beethoven appears to have in-spired an engineering eponym, the Bee-tho ven exploder, a machine used for fir-ing multiple detonators of explosives intunneling and quarrying.s Yet onewould be hard put to determine exactlyhow many eponyms each field canclaim. Webster’s unabridged dictionarylists about 9,000 eponyms in all fields.The Eponyms Dictionaries Index (EDI),edited by James A. Ruffner, WayneState University Science Library, De-troit, Michigan, lists 20,000 eponymsoverall, as well as 13,0C0 eponymizedpersons.J

The number of eponyms in the EDI isso large because it includes many thatare no longer capitalized. When an ep-onym is no longer capitalized, it’s a signthat the term has been fully absorbed in-to everyday language. This is the ulti-mate tribute to the person eponymized.But by the time it occurs, the link be-tween word and person is usually lost.For example, how many dancers todayrealize that the inventor of their costumewas Jules L&otard, a nineteenth-centurytrapeze artist? He said of the leotard,“Do you want to be adored by theladtes?... Put on a more natural garb,which does not hide your best fea-tures.”b (p. 168) Popular eponyms arelike popular trademarks in this respect.

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When completely absorbed into the lan-guage, immortals soon become, as Jim-my Durante would say, “moralized.”

L60tard, like most people who areeponymized, is associated with only oneeponym. But five or ten eponyms maybecreated in the wake of an eminent scien-tist. The record is held by a nineteenth-century French chemist named GeorgesDeniges,J of whom I had never hearduntil now, Although clearly not a house-hold word, at least in the US, Deniges in-spired 78 eponyms, primarily tests andreagents, such as Deniges’s test for sele-nium and Deniges k benzoyl reagent.Better known scientists such as AlbertEinstein and Isaac Newton have beenidentified with only about 40 eponymseach.

Many of the eponyms used today havebeen introduced since the rise of modernscience in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies. But eponymy is an ancientpractice. Some of the earliest recordedeponyms date from the first and secondmillennia BC, when the Assyriansnamed each calendar year after a highofficial.7 Historians have relied heavilyon lits of these named years (eponymlists) to reconstruct Assyrian history.For example, kings usually gave theirnames to the first year of their reign. Soit was possible to estimate the length of areign intervening between two succes-sive kings’ names by counting the num-ber of names on the eponym list. Thenumber of names usually equals thenumber of years in the reign of the firstking. Thus, the long reign of Sennacher-ib, the Assyrian empire-builder men-tioned in the Old Testament for hk siegeof Jerusalem, was fixed between 704 and681 BC.8

Simiiarly, in ancient Athens, the nameof the archon, an official who held officefor one year, was used to designate eachcalendar year.y The year 594 BC wasnamed after Solon, the great lawgiver.The Greeks also named places aftertheir heroes. 1 Thus, the Peloponnesusregion takes its name from the mytho-logical figure Pelops, a grandson ofZeus.

Greek mythology has provided somemodern eponyms as well. In medicine,the Ulysses syndrome 10 describes thephenomenon of a doctor subjecting ahealthy patient to a battery of unneces-sary diagnostic tests, because of idialtest results outside the “normal” range.Like Ulysses, the patient ends up some-what wome for wear, after much fruitlessexploration. The Hermes syndrome, 1Icoined in response to medical journaleditorials on theft from medical li-braries, takes its name from the god ofthieves.

Literature, too, supplies us with scien-tific eponyms. The Pick wickian syn-drome, 12 a type of breathing difficultyassociated with obesity, is named afterthe portly character calIed “the fat boy”in Charles Dickens’s Pick wick Papers.The Jeky[l-and-Hyde syndrome, 13whichdescribes dramatic changes in the be-havior of elderly patients, is named afterthe leading character in Robert LouisStevenson’s famous story.

Although, strictly speaking, eponymyrefers to terms named after persons,geographic eponyms also occur in scien-tific nomenclature. The Fmminghamstudy, a long-term investigation of theepidemiology of atherosclerotic d~ease,takes its name from the study site, Fra-mingham, Massachusetts. 14 Similarly,Lyme disease, a form of arthritis causedby tick-borne bacteria, was named forthe town of Lyme, Connecticut, wherethe ficst cases occurred. 15Another vari-ation on the theme of eponymy is thecorporate eponym. An example is Le-gionnaires’ disease. This epidemic formof pneumonia was named for the Ameri-can Legion members who were amongits first known victims. lb Incidentally,naming a dkease for the patient ratherthan the doctor is unusual but not un-heard of. Hartnup k disease, 17a heredhtary metabolic disorder, and Mortimerkdisease, la a skin condition, are amongthe few so named.

The vast majority of scienttilc ep-onyms, however, are named after indi-vidual scientists. Perhaps the most epon-ymized scientists are horticulturists and

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botanists, whose names are routinely in-voked in naming plants, particularlythose they have identified. The generaDarlingtonia, Do wningia, Gmysia, andHalesia all commemorate renowned bot-anists. Beechmg asserts that eponymicspecies of roses alone “would fill a vol-ume.”d (p. 8) Furthermore, almost everycommon house and garden plant has aneponymic name. Thus we have the dahi-ia, the forsythia, and the fuch~ia, whichhonor the botanists Anders Dahl, Wil-liam Forsyth, and Leonhard Fuchs, re-spectively. Eponyms also account forsuch odd-sounding plant names as bou -gainviliea, cattleya, mfflesia, and zoysia.

In bacteriology the naming of speciesis also heavily eponymic. In fact, boththe genus and species names of the or-ganism Rickett.sia pro wazeki honor indi-viduals. This organism, which causesepidemic typhus, is named for the pa-thologist Howard Ricketts and the zool-ogist Stanislas von Prowazek, whoselives it claimed. 19

In addition, many names of mineralsare derived from proper names. A num-ber of the minerals used by humankindsince antiquity have been named forplaces. Bronze is a corrupted form ofBrundisium (now Brind~i) in southernItaly, and copper a corrupted form ofCyprus. But the tendency in the lastseveral centuries has been to name newminerals in honor of scientists. Thus wehave cordierite, named for its discover-er, the eighteenth-century Frenchgeologist Pierre Louis Cor&~er, andsmithsonite, named for the Englishchemist and mineralogist, James Smith-son, founder of the Smithsonian Institu-tion, Washington, DC.20 Cordiente is asilicate of iron, magnesium, and alumi-num. Smithsonite is a white zinc car-bonate.

Eponyms are also abundant in mathe-matics and the “hard” sciences of phys-ics and chemistry. There are so manythat A Dictionary of Named Effects andLaws in Chemistry, Physics and Mathe-matics has been compiled by DenisW .G. Ballentyne, Imperial College,University of London, England, and

D.R. Lovett, University of Essex, Col-chester, England .21 Clausius’s state-ment, Helmh oltz’s equation, Einstein htheory of relativity, and the Kelvin tem -pemture scale all commemorate thework of giants in these fields. Manycommonly used chemical methods areeponymic, including the Hofmann rear-mngement, the Wittig reaction, and theEschenmoser hydrolysis. Furthermore,science honors early pioneers in elec-tricity and magnetics in naming suchfundamental units as the volt, ohm,ampere, coulomb, farad, and oersted.zz

Other fields, such as mechanical engi-neering and economics, have their ownlists of eponyms. But medicine has a par-ticularly rich eponymic tradition. I’vealready mentioned several eponymicsyndromes and diseases, The I[lustmtedDictionary of Eponymic Syndromes andDiseases and Their Synonyms~ lists

about 9,000 more. Th~ was compiled bymy old friend Stanley Jablonski, Na-tional Library of Medicine, Washington,DC, who is now working on a new edi-tion. A selection of highly cited papersassociated with syndromes and diseasesincluded in the dictionary are listed inTable 1,

In add~tion, many diagnostic tests, in-struments, and anatomical parts haveeponymic names. Thus we have theQuick test (for blood clotting), namedfor the hematologist Armand Quick;Doyen h clamp (an intestinal occlusionclamp), named for the nineteenth-cen-tury French surgeon Eugene-LouisDoyen; and Bowman k capsule (a struc-ture in the kidney), named for the nine-teenth-century English anatomist,WiMam Bowman.

Although medical terminology is re-plete with eponyms, in no other field istheir use so hotly debated. In fact, in1955, the International Congress ofAnatomy at Pans adopted an official listof anatomical terms from which alf ep-onyms had been purged. zd Many anato-mists and other doctors object to ep-onyms because they aren’t descnptive.zsAnother objection is that a dkease oftenoutgrows its eponym. For example, Tay-

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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 appeared. 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 ofmalignancy 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 the16-18 ~OUfl

610 Frland C. Cell-free transm~]on in adult Swixs mice of a disease having the character of aleukemia. 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 tractdemonstrable with labelled polyvinylpyrrolidone. Lancef 1:325-6, 1959. 13/81/CP

Gordon’s sbaaa-Group of diaorderx caused by hypoproteinemia due to leakage andintestinal malabsorption of proteirrs

315 Kanner L. Autistic d~turbances of affective contact, “New. Chi/d 2:217-50, 1943. 25/79/S&BSKarmer’s sprcfrome-Chifdhond autism

362 Patasr K, Smftb D W, ‘rfrermsm E, Irrbosn S L & Wagner H P. Multiple congenital anomaly causedby 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

group278 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 inthe 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 withpancreatic 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 andmild 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 Citationin 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 eachdtiferent 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 wrongtaro Okada, Osaka University, Japan, people. Moiler-Barfo w disease, a form

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of scurvy occurring in infants, was de-scribed by Francis Glisson about 200years before J.O. L. Mollerof Germanyand Thomas Barlow of England pub-lished their descriptions of it in 186228and 1883,29 respectively. ~ And Saintnever wrote a paper describing .Wint’striad, acombination ofhiatalhemia, di-verficulosis, and gallstones.sl In addi-tion, although their work wasn’t wronglyattributed, some of the most importantfigures in the history of medicine, suchas William Harvey, describer of thecir-culatory system, have not been epony-mized.gz

But some view these very same weak-nesses of eponyms as their strengths. It’strue that eponyms don’t describe thething they name. Descriptive terms,however, can be misleading. H.E.M.Kay, Royal Marsden Hospital, London,England, gives the example of “acuteIymphoblastic leukemia.”sg Althoughthis descriptive name seemed appropri-ate at first, it is now known that this con-dition doesn’t always involve the highwhhe blood cell count that “leukemia”implies. Also, no connection with lym-phoblasts has been proved.

In another example, Roy D.Scti~ckel, University of Pennsylvania,Philadelphia, notes that the role of chro-mosomes wasn’t understood when manysyndromes were first recognized.~ Sothe modern descriptive terms “triso-my 21” and “monosomy X“ couldn’thave been coined for the chromosomaldisorders known as Do wn’s syndromeand Turner’s syndrome. However, thedescriptive term “mongolism,” forDown’s syndrome, gained wide usageeven though it is inaccurate at best andracist at worst. Turner’s syndrome, incontrast, was always known by the ep-onym, which, as Schrnickel points out,~has served the medical community farbetter.

Schmickel praises the eponym as “aneutral term that allows a concept toevolve, free of any preconceived no-tions.”~ (p. 486) It doesn’t bias researchin any particular direction. If a syn-drome outgrows an eponym by turning

out to be several ddferent condd]ons,then the eponym can be retired. But upfo that point, it has served its purpose.Like other facets of natural language,the eponym serves as a useful symbol un-til enough is known about the diseasethat an accurate descriptive term can becoined. Even then, eponyms may bepreferable to descriptive terms becausethey are usually shorter. Why say osteo-dystrophia chronica deformans hyper-trophica, when you can say Paget k dis-ease? (Pagef’s disease is a deformingbone inflammation that strikes patientsover age 40. )

Although eponyms are often misat-tributed, some think it better to creditthe person who clearly established thesignificance of a discovery, rather thanthe original dkcoverer. gl Without achampion, the discovery might have lan-guished in obscurity, in which case theoriginal discoverer would have remainedunacknowledged anyway. Of course, adouble eponym naming both provides asimple compromise.

While it’s true that some great scien-tists, such as Harvey, are not explicitlynamed in formal eponyms, their place inhistory has hardly suffered. By contrast,probably few today remember Deniges,even with his 78 eponyms. Nevertheless,eponyms assure at least a limited, tem-porary measure of credit to many scien-tists who might otherwise be completelyforgotten.

Another advantage of eponyms is thatthey enliven medical history. Behindeach eponym is a story for a student orpractitioner to seek out. Mason G. Rob-ertson, a physician in Savannah, Geor-gia, has called the eponym “one of thelast vestiges of humanism remaining inan increasingly numeralized and com-puterized society. “35 Although I heartilyagree that eponyms lend color to sciencehistory, I disagree with the pejorativereference to computerization. It is pre-cisely the computer that has enabledISI” and others to immortalize or honorscholars who have made signtilcant dis-coveries that were never eponymized orotherwise recognized. Identifying Cita-

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tion Classics is only one way we use thecomputer to honor such scholars.

In spite of all the positive reasons forusing eponyms, they do have somerather annoying features. For one thing,a disease may have more than one ep-onym. For example, Weil’s disease, aninfectious disease transmitted by rats, isalso known as Fiedler’s disease, Lan-douzyk disease, Mathieu k disease, andVasilev k disease.~ Who is to say whichis the preferred term? And like otherforms of natural language, eponyms canbe ambiguous. Percivalf Pott’s eponymscould even be considered homographs.These include Pott k disease, Pott i frac-ture, Pott k gangrene, Pott k pamlysis,and Pott kpuffy tumor.~ No doubt theseeponyms are occasionally confused witheach other. Even worse are the cases ofeponymy where only a number dktin-guishes different diseases, as in Al-bright’s syndrome (l), A[bright’s syn-drome (2), A1bright’s syndrome (3), andA/bright’s syndrome (4).23 But is this anymore confusing than labeling histamineantagonist receptors HI or H2? Thesemnemonic designations are characteris-tically not very self-seeking. Some moreeponymously minded fellow than SirJames Black might have cafled themBlackl or Black2 receptors.JG

Double and triple eponyms also exist,and these can be unwieldy. Sometimes adouble eponym denotes a full name, asin the A ustin Flint murmur37in cardiolo-gy. Occasionally, it is a hyphenated lastname, as in GiIbert-Dreyfus syn-drome,~ a form of abnormal sexual de-velopment. More often, double and tri-ple eponyms acknowledge researcherswho were co-workers, as in the Wein -berg-Himelfarb syndrome,Jq a congeni-tal cardiac defect, or who worked inde-pendently on the same discovery, as inChediak-Higashi syndrome. Thk heredi-tary white blood cell disorder was de-scribed at about the same time by M.M.Chedlak@ in France and O. Higashi inJapan.dl We would expect the papersassociated with such a double eponym tobe frequently cited together and to helpidentify a research front,

As suggested earlier, multlple ep-onyms may also commemorate bothoriginal and later describers. For exam-ple, as early as 1866 J.Z. Laurence andR .C. Moon reported cases of what isnow known as Laurence-Moon-Biedlsyndrome, a hereditary syndrome in-volving abnormal development .42 Butthis report attracted little attention untilA. Biedl redescribed the syndrome in1922.~.dJ

Presumably, multiple eponyms pro-vide a way of sharing credit fairly amongscientists. But they do so at the cost ofconciseness. Clearly, the quadrupleeponym Charcot-Man”e- Tooth-Hoffmansyndrome is more cumbersome than thedescriptive term, “neuropathlc muscularatrophy. ” With the current trend towardteam research, multiple eponymy couldbecome even more awkward. What ifevery member of a five- or six-person re-search team were included in an ep-onym? An alternative might be to usesome kind of team name such as the Fra-mingham study. TMs is somewhat akinto using a fictitious name for collectiveeffort, as was used by the group knownas the pseudonymous French mathema-tician, N. Bourbaki.

Inconsistent usage is another problemwith eponyms. For example, some au-thors mistakenly put a hyphen betweenthe two names of an eponym formedfrom a single individual’s full name, as inAustin-Flint. Others mistakenly omit thehyphen from a double eponym formedfrom two different last names, as inChediak HigashL The use of the posses-sive “s” is another sticky point. The Jour-nal of the A men”can Medical Associa-tion (.TAMA) no longer uses the posses-sive for eponyms.~ The editors reasonthat the eponymized persons didn’t ownthe disease and in few cases did they suf-fer it. Thus, this style gives us Hodgkindisease and Menkes syndrome. Still, J’msurprised that JAMA would abrogate in-tellectual property rights! Many of thecurrent articles consulted for this essaydo use the possessive form. It certainlyseems more appropriate for nonclinicaleponyms. In any science, an original

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theory is an individual’s intellectual in-vention.

Despite the drawbacks of eponyms,many hope to be eponymized. Robert K.Merton has obsewed that “eponymity,not anonymity, is the standard” of rec-ognition in science.~z (p. 302) And, C.K.Tashima, a Houston physician, has fa-cetiously described the Tashima syn-drome ,45 a condition in which a physi-cian searches for a new sign, disease, orsyndrome to attach his or her name to.

As Merton made clear in his 1957 pa-per, “Priorities in scientific discovery,”in The Socioiogy of Science, eponymy is“the most enduring and perhaps mostprestigious kind of recognition institu-tionalized in science.”zz (p, 3(2O)At thetop of the eponymic ladder he outlinesare the few major figures who have giventheir names to whole epochs, such asNewton, Darwin, and Freud. Then comescientists whose names are associatedwith fields, subfields, and disciplines,such as Robert Boyle, the “father ofchemistry, ” and Willard Gibbs, the“father of physical chemistry. ” Thelesser ranks of eponyms include laws,theorems, hypotheses, constants, dis-eases, body parts, plants, etc. Beloweponyms come other scientific rewards,such as medals, prizes, and member-ships in honorary academies and soci-eties.

According to Merton, eponyms, aspart of the reward system of science,reward originality. Stephen M. Stigler,University of Chicago, Illinois, holds acomplementary View.qb He believes thateponyms do not reward the isolatedachievement of an original discoverer,because they are usually wrongly attrib-uted. In fact, he has impishfy formulatedStig[er’s [aw of eponymy, which statesthat eponyms are never named after theoriginal discoverer. Besides facetiouslypointing out that “St. Matthew did notdiscover the Matthew effect,”% (p. 148)he cites, among many others, the ex-amples of Laplace tmnsforms and Giffen’s paradox. Apparently, Joseph La-grange presented Laplace transforms be-fore Pierre Laplace ever began his scien-

tific career. And Simon Gray publishedGiffen’s paradox before Robert Giffenwas born. Furthermore, no reference towhat has come to be known as Giffen’sparadox has been found anywhere inGiffen’s writings.

Stigler explains the prevalence of mis-attribution by pointing out that eponymsare not bestowed by science historiansdevoted to tracing the evolution of anidea. Rather, eponyms have typicallybeen bestowed by a community of scien-tists distant in time and place from thescientist being honored. According toStigler, this distancing adds to theprestige of eponyms by making it seemas if they are bestowed objectively.Stigler maintains that although eponymsdon’t commemorate original discover-ers, they still play a valuable role in thereward system of science. The personsthey do honor usually have done somework related to the dkcovery and havemade important general contributions.Thus, eponymy is a reward for generalscienttlc merit.

Articles by Mark M. Ravitch, Univer-sity of Pittsburgh and Montefiore Hospi-tal, Pennsylvania, who has made a spe-cial study of eponyms, tend to supportStigler’s view.s~.4T,dg Ravitch contendsthat for most eponyms one or more ofthe following four statements is likely tobe true: the eponymized person wasn’tthe first describer of the discovery; theeponymized person didn’t correctlyunderstand the dkcovery; the eponym’scurrent meaning differs greatly from theoriginal idea; or the attribution has nohktorical basis whatsoever.

Whether or not Stigler’s law holds trueis a question for science hktorians. Per-haps an exception will help prove therule! Consider Pott’s fracture. SurelyPott earned thk eponym legitimately.After all, he described-not a patient’sfracture—but his own. He suffered thisfracture of the lower leg bones when hewas thrown from his horse.dg It is possi-ble that someone previously describedsuch a fracture, but could it have beenexactly the same? Having suffered abroken leg, I can testify that it seemed

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painfully unique at the time. I tried un-successfully to convince my daughterLaura of this when she repeated this fol-ly. However, instead of a skateboard shechose to use rollerskates.

Suffering a unique injury or diseaseyourself is a rather extreme way of estab-lishing your priority. A less risky way ofgetting around Stigler’s law might besimply to adopt Stigler’s own ironic prac-tice and eponymize yourself. Not sur-prisingly, this practice is often frownedupon. Recently, Peter Newmark, deputyeditor of Nature, gently chided twoscientists for naming a virus after them-selves.~ Yet, as Kay has noted, self-eponymy is the norm among taxonomists in many fields.ss He has urgedmedical practitioners to drop their mod-esty and boldly name new discoveriesafter themselves.

I’ve had a hand in this game. Severalyears ago I proclaimed Garfield’s law ofconcentmtions~ and Ga~ield h con-stant. 52 Gas%eld’s law of concentrationis not really a law but a principle. It as-serts that a small group of multidisciplin-ary and high-impact specialty journalsaccount for a large percentage of refer-ences and publications in all fields of sci-ence. Garfield’s constant refers to theaverage number of citations per citedpaper in the annual Science Citation In-dex” (MY). The constant might havebeen forgotten had not Derek J. de SollaPrice reminded the world about it in dk-cussing Merton’s theory of cumulativeadvantage .53 But only time will tellwhether my eponyms wilf surnve overthe long term, and whether I’ll have suc-cessfully sidestepped Stigler’s law. Sam-uel Bradford, beware!sd

To the extent that Stigler’s law holdstrue, perhaps poor communication inearlier eras might partly explain it. Overthe long interval between a discoveryand the conferring of its eponymicname, it was much easier for misattribu-tion to occur. In the present era of rapidworldwide communication, retrievaland dwemination services make it lesslikely that discoveries are attributed tothe wrong person or group. I say this

lmowmg mu weu mat mere are excep-tions to general practice. In addition tothis improvement in communication,the time interval Stigler describes for be-stowing eponyms has shrunk in today’sfaster-paced science.

Consider the birth defect known asAntley-Bixler syndrome, which involvesmultiple deformities. This eponym wasfirst used in a 1979 paperss byM. Michael Cohen, Dalhousie Universi-ty, Nova Scotia, only four years after the1975 report5G by Ray Antley and DavidBixler, both of Indiana University-Pur-due University Medical Center, India-napolis, Indiana. Contemporary searchtools should have made readily availableany references to such a syndrome thatpredated Antley and Bixler.

Of course, contemporary search toolsare not inffllble. Even searchhg forpapers on well-established eponyms pre-sents its own special problems. The tra-ditional indexing services deal with ep-onyms in a vanet y of ways. If the ep-onym is a commonly used term, it maybe an authorized search term. Other-wise, it maybe cross-referenced with anauthorized search term. But sometimesit’s neither. For example, Index Medicusdoesn’t use Sweet’s syndrome as either asubject heading or a cross-reference.According to Clifford A. Bachrach, edi-tor of Index Medicus, the National Li-brary of Medicine doesn’t prefer de-scriptive terms over eponymic terms inselecting terms for its Medical SubjectHeadings (MeSH). Rather, selection re-flects common usage in the medical lit-erature.57 It is estimated, however, thatless than two percent of MeSH terms areeponyms. Incidentally, I first met Cliif atJohns Hopkins University in 1951, wherewe shared an interest in punched cardmachines.

You can, of course, do a title-wordsearch online or with the Perm uterm @Subject Index section of SCI. This ap-proach varies in effectiveness becauseauthors don’t always include eponyms inthe titles of papers. But one limitedstudy of the medical literature indicatedthat a surprising number of titles do in-

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elude the relevant eponym .~f3 Jata S.Ghosh, Wyeth International, Radnor,Pennsylvania, found that 72 percent of2,435 papers on syndromes and diseaseslisted in the j973 Index Medic us used ep-onyms in the titles. This finding is tenta-tively corroborated by searches of theISI/BIOiUED@ data base for 1980-1983using as search terms the eponymsHodgkin’s disease and Cushing’s syn-drome. These search terms yielded 1,107papers with Hodgkin’s disease and 199papers with Cushing’s syndrome in theirtitles. In contrast, a search using theequivalent descriptive terms, /ympho-gmnuioma and hyperadrenocortici.rm,retrieved only 24 papers for each term.Nevertheless, use of eponyms in titlesvanes from disease to dkease. A searchby the eponym Hansen k disease yieldedonly 16 papers, whereas the descriptiveterm leprosy yielded 685 papers.

Another approach to searching the lit-erature for eponymized topics is to usethe Citation index section of SC1. Thereyou can find papers that have cited the“primordialreference. “59 The primordi-al reference is the paper that constitutesthe best starting point for a search. It isoften, but not necessarily, the first pub-lished work on a concept. It may also bea highly cited paper by someone otherthan the original discoverer, whose workhas become more closely associated withthe concept. In the early days of SCI, wedid a number of eponymic literaturesearches to demonstrate the uniquepower of citation indexing. You may re-member Kwok k disease, named afterRobert H .M. Kwok, the physician whofirst described the Chinese restaurantsyndrome.@ This unusual name refers toa set of symptoms that maybe caused bymonosodium glutamate intolerance.When we did our search on Kwok’s dis-ease, we didn’t start by looking it up inthe subject indexes. Instead, wesearched our SC1 files for citations toKwok’s 1968 letter to the New EnglandJournal of Medicine, the first publishedaccount of the syndrome. Thk primordl-al reference led us to a list of appropriateciting papers.

‘l”here’s no reason why searching byprimordial reference should be liiitedto eponymic searches. Stephen P. Pope,Broadgreen Hospital, Liverpool, En-gland, explained recently in the BritishMedical Journai61how he keeps up withliterature of the interscalene brach~alplexus block by checking the primordialreferencebz in each year’s SC1. He pointsout that later researchers are almostbound to cite the primordial reference.He feels that SCI has a considerable ad-vantage over Index Medicus in that it al-lows thk type of searching.

This discussion of primordial refer-ences reminds me of an as yet unfulfilled“promise” I have made on several occa-sions. I’ve often talked about an 1S1 Dic-tionary of Pn”mordial References .63 Inthis compilation, one would find theprimordial reference for eponymic aswell as other important discoveries. Thisis not as simple to do as you might imag-ine. The cases of misattribution andmultiple attribution described here showhow difficult it is to link the correctoriginal published work with a discov-ery. And even if you determine the tech-nically correct work, it may not be theone most commonly identified with theeponym or the discovery.

There are, of course, numerous dic-tionaries and other reference works thatsupply references up to a point. Mostrelevant to thk discussion is Jablonski’sRiustmted Dictionary of Eponymic Syn-dromes and Diseases and Their Syn-onyms,zs mentioned earlier. It suppliesthe references associated with each ep-onym it lists. However, the editor hintsat difficulties in providing references bynoting that some of the eponyms wereuntraceable, and that the titles of someof the references couldn’t be verified.For example, no paper by Roth could beidentified for Roth k Iipomatosis. Thedictionary lists only a 1954 paper by H.Bernard. And for Niemann-Pick dis-ease, the dlctionav lists a 1914 paper byNiemann, but the reference is starred toindicate that it can’t be verified.

This is not the place to elaborate onthe full details of a comprehensive, dy-

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namic dictionary of primordial terms orcitations. Suffice it to say that we alreadyhave several sources of primordialpapers to draw on. For example, wecould use our files of most-cited papers.This is one of our basic tools in identify-ing Citation Classics. Another route toprimordial references is co-citation clus-tering.~ In the course of developing the1S1 Search Network, we have identifiedcore papers for thousands of specialtyareas in all fields of science. Theseclusters of core papers and their associ-ated research front names can be hier-archically classified and constitute a de-tailed thesaurus for online searching.

Co-citation clustering also provides atool for obtaining a comprehensive bibli-ography on eponymic topics. In our Zn-dex to Scientific Revie ws ‘“ (ISR ‘“ ), re-view papers are assigned to one or moreresearch front specialties. Suppose youwant information on Kaposi k sarcoma.If you look under Kaposi’s sarcoma inthe ISR Permuterm Subject Index,you’ll fmd the names of authors whohave written current reviews on this sub-ject. The next step is to turn to theSource Index and look up the author. Ifthe author’s paper is associated with a re-search front, it will be so tagged. Whenyou look up the appropriate number inthe Research Front Specialty Index,you’ll fmd the research front specialtynamed, “Preventing infections in cancerpatients,” and a list of reviews citing coreliterature in this specialty. Since reviewpapers provide extremely wide coverageof a subject, each paper in itself shouldsupply an extensive bibliography. Takentogether, the collective bibliographythat the group of reviews providesshould be quite thorough.

Clearly, searching for papers associat-ed with eponyms requires a special ap-proach. The way these papers are citedmay also vary from the norm. Many ep-onyms are associated with multiau-thored papers. Quite often, the “senior”author is not the first author. Thii can

lead to incorrect citation, in which thesenior author rather than the actual firstauthor is cited. Consider the case ofEschenmoser hydrolysis. The correct

primordial citation is F. Elsinger,J. Schreiber, and A. Eschenmoser,“Notiz iiber die Selektivitit der Spaltungvon Carbonsaure-methylestern mitLithiumjodid,” Helvetica Chimica A eta43:113-8, 1960.6S However, AlbertEschenmoser, Swiss Federal Institute ofTechnology, Zurich, is sometimes citedas the first author. The error is under-standable considering Eschenmoser’seminence. We anxiously await his com-mentary on this paper, one of severalclassics he has written. Although, in thk

case, the error occurred about three per-cent of the time, there are other cases inwhich the percentage is higher. It driveslibrarians and editors to distractionwhen they try to verify such incorrect ci-tations.

Whatever such disadvantages ep-onyms may have, I believe they are out-weighed by their benefits. Eponyms re-mind us that science and scholarship arethe work of dedicated people. They al-low us to immortalize sometimes ob-scure but deserving persons. It is clearthat they represent a natural languageway of expressing complex ideas and it isfor this reason that they have often beencited as a useful first approach to search-ing with title-word and citation indexes,as well as with controlled vocabularieswhere they are used.

*****

My thanks to Patn”cia Lawson andAmy Stone for their help in the prepam-tion of this essay. ?@,W ,$1

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