Medicine is as much defined by diseases as by the people who named them. Neurology particularly has a proud history of eponymous disorders which I discussed in my other neurology blog, Neurochecklists Updates, with the title 45 neurological disorders with unusual EPONYMS in neurochecklists. In many cases, it is a no brainer that Benjamin Duchenne described Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Charle’s Bell is linked to Bell’s palsy, Guido Werdnig and Johann Hoffmann have Werdnig-Hoffmann disease named after them. Similarly, Sergei Korsakoff described Korsakoff’s psychosis, Adolf Wellenberg defined Wellenberg’s syndrome, and it is Augusta Dejerine Klumpke who discerned Klumpke’s paralysis. The same applies to neurological clinical signs, with Moritz Romberg and Romberg’s sign, Henreich Rinne and Rinne’s test, Joseph Babinski and Babinski sign, and Joseph Brudzinski with Brudzinki’s sign.
Yes, it could become rather tiresome. But not when it comes to diseases which, for some reason, never had any names attached to them. Whilst we can celebrate Huntington, Alzheimer, Parkinson, and Friedreich, who defined narcolepsy and delirium tremens? This blog is therefore a chance to celebrate the lesser known history of neurology, and to inject some fairness into the name game. Here then are 25 non-eponymous neurological diseases and the people who discovered, fully described, or named them.
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Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
Jean-Martin Charcot

Aphantasia
Francis Galton (and Adam Zeman)

Chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP)
Peter J Dyck

Corticobasal degeneration (CBD)

Epilepsy
Hippocrates

Essential tremor
Pietro Burresi

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD)
Arnold Pick

Inclusion body myositis (IBM)

Meningitis
Vladimir Kernig and Jozef Brudzinski

Migraine
Aretaeus of Cappadocia

Multiple sclerosis (MS)
Jean-Martin Charcot

Multiple system atrophy (MSA)
Milton Shy and Glen Drager

Myasthenia gravis (MG)
Samuel Wilks

Myotonic dystrophy
Hans Gustav Wilhelm Steinert![]()

Neurofibromatosis
Friedreich Daniel von Recklighausen

Narcolepsy
Jean-Baptiste-Edouard Gélineau

Poliomyelitis
Michael Underwood

Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP)
John Steele, John Richardson, and Jerzy Olszewski

Restless legs syndrome (RLS)
Karl Axel Ekbom

Stiff person syndrome (SPS)
Frederick Moersch and Henry Woltmann

Synesthesia
Georg Sachs and Gustav Feschner

Stroke
Hippocrates

Tabes dorsalis
Moritz Romberg

Trigeminal neuralgia
John Fothergill

Tuberous sclerosis
Désiré-Magloire Bourneville

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