Neurology is as much defined by its diseases as by the people who named them. In many cases, it is a no brainer that Benjamin Duchenne described Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and that Charle’s Bell is linked to Bell’s palsy. Similarly, it goes without saying that Guido Werdnig and Johann Hoffmann defined Werdnig-Hoffmann disease, and that Sergei Korsakoff depicted Korsakoff’s psychosis. The same goes for Adolf Wallenberg and Wallenberg’s syndrome, and Augusta Dejerine Klumpke with Klumpke’s paralysis. 

But whilst we celebrate George Huntington, Alois Alzheimer, and James Parkinson for the syndromes that bear their names, we must remember that many diseases never got labelled with the names of their discoverers. Who, for example, defined narcolepsy and delirium tremens? This blog post is therefore an ode to the faceless and nameless neurology icons whose contributions are at risk of being forgotten in the mist of time. To inject some fairness into the naming game, here are 25 non-eponymous neurological diseases and the people who discovered, defined, or named them.

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Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)

Jean-Martin Charcot

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Aphantasia

Francis Galton and Adam Zeman

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Chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP)

Peter J Dyck

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Corticobasal degeneration (CBD)

WRG Gibb, PJ Luthert, and C David Marsden

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Epilepsy

Hippocrates

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Essential tremor

Pietro Burresi

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Frontotemporal dementia (FTD)

Arnold Pick

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Inclusion body myositis (IBM)

E J Yunis and F J Samaha

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Meningitis

Vladimir Kernig and Jozef Brudzinski

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Migraine

Aretaeus of Cappadocia

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Multiple sclerosis (MS)

Jean-Martin Charcot

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Multiple system atrophy (MSA)

Milton Shy and Glen Drager

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Myasthenia gravis (MG)

Samuel Wilks

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Myotonic dystrophy

Hans Gustav Wilhelm Steinert

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Neurofibromatosis

Friedrich Daniel von Recklighausen

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Narcolepsy

Jean-Baptiste-Edouard Gélineau

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Poliomyelitis

Michael Underwood

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Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP)

John Steele, John Richardson, and Jerzy Olszewski

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Restless legs syndrome (RLS)

Karl Axel Ekbom

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Stiff person syndrome (SPS)

Frederick Moersch and Henry Woltmann

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Synaesthesia

Georg Sachs and Gustav Feschner

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Stroke

Hippocrates

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Tabes dorsalis

Moritz Romberg

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Trigeminal neuralgia

John Fothergill

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Tuberous sclerosis

Désiré-Magloire Bourneville

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Let us then celebrate the pioneers…eponymous and anonymous alike.

 

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To explore these disease further…

Go online at Neurochecklists.com

 

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