Most of the time, diseases are named after their discoverer to commemorate his dedication toward finding the root cause of the disease. Working with these pathogenic and violent diseases is a big task and finding the root cause is much bigger. There are hundreds of diseases named after people. Here is the list of 13 such diseases that are named after their discoverer.
1. Crohn’s disease
Crohn got the first choice among his fellow researchers to have this inflammatory disease to be named after. The disease was discovered in 1932 by three NY based physicians. However, Burill Bernard Crohn was the first author of the paper and thus the disease was named after him.
2. Salmonellosis
Daniel Salmon never thought that his name would be associated with the deadly Salmonella that causes the Salmonellosis. Theobald Smith who was in the research team of Daniel Elmer Salmon in the year 1885 discovered the Salmonella. However, the teammates decided to honor the boss and named that pathogen after his name.
3. Parkinson’s disease
Parkinson was a learned fellow who was master of multiple languages and various streams of science. He was active in politics and his name figured in a group of people alleged to be behind the assassination plot of King George III. However, after that brief turmoil, his focus shifted to medicine where he published a paper on Shaking Palsy that was named after him in 1817 as Parkinson’s disease.
4. Huntington’s disease
George Huntington was an average researcher with excellent reputation. In 1872, Huntington graduated from medical school and published a paper on a specific neurodegenerative hereditary disorder. The disease is named after him.
5. Alzheimer’s disease
This disease created quite a furor when film makers made some classics out it. However, the disease got its name from the Alois Alzheimer who was studying a patient with memory disorder in a Frankfurt asylum. Alzheimer dissected the patient’s brain after her death and presented the serious disease that is now named after him.
6. Tourette syndrome
Tourette never thought that the neurodegenerative disorder will be named after him. He named it Maladie Des Tics, but the Supervisor of Tourette thought otherwise and named that hard-pronounced disease as Tourette syndrome. Tourette was never successful in treating this disease and got even shot in his head by a suffering patient. However, he survived and so is his name after the disease.
7. Hodgkin’s lymphoma
Thomas Hodgkin of Britain first identified the lymphoma in 1832 in his studies on spleen and glands. The disease was categorized as cancerous melanoma but Samuel Wilks rediscovered the disease and named it after the original discoverer.
8. Bright’s disease
The disease is no eye disease. The disease was actually named after Richard Bright who discovered this kidney disease in 1927. The disease was later found to be bunch of smaller diseases, so the name is rarely used nowadays.
9. Addison’s disease
Thomas Addison was colleague of Bright and Hodgkins. He discovered the Addison’s disease in 1855. The disease is an Adrenal gland disorder. The Guy’s hospital has a big place in medical history as founder hospital of so many diseases.
10. Tay-Sachs disease
In 1881, Warren Tay was a British Ophthalmologist, who first discovered the disease with red spots on eye’s retina. Bernard Sachs, who in 1887 found the root cause of the disease, further researched the disease. The medical community however decided to give commemoration to both Tay and Sachs for their useful contribution and named the disease after both of them.
11. Turner syndrome
Turner Syndrome is a genetic chromosomal disorder. In the year 1938, Henry Turner first identified the disease and found the root cause behind it. Later, the condition was named after him for his useful contribution in identifying the disorder.
12. Klinefelter’s syndrome
Harry Klinefelter, an endocrinologist from Boston identified the genetic disorder of men having a pair of X chromosomes with Y chromosome. Later the disease was named after him with the efforts of his mentor Dr. Fuller Albright.
13. Asperger’s syndrome
Autism is a serious disease among children. However, the founder of the disease, Hans Asperger never got any recognition as his work was mostly in German. The recognition came in 1981 when the work was redrafted and published in English. He studied nearly 400 children to identify the disease.
