Doctors are calling for a rethink on the use of medical eponyms, pointing out the common naming convention has glorified problematic historical figures, while failing to acknowledge the contributions of women and cultural medical practices.

Writing in the Medical Journal of Australia [link here], gastroenterologist Dr Diana Lewis and hepatology fellow Dr Leya Nedumanni from Northern Health in Melbourne have outlined key arguments against the continued use of eponyms.

They said one of the main issues that encompassed most medical eponyms was that using one name misled people into believing medical discoveries were the product of a single individual while neglecting the broader team that contributed.

This might threaten the values of collaboration and collegiality, they added.

The authors gave the example of Crohn’s disease, which was named after Dr Burrill Crohn but was first described in an article co-authored by two additional medical practitioners, Dr Gordon Oppenheimer and Dr Leon Ginzburg.

Eponyms also reinforced the lack of representation of women in medicine because they did not recognise the scientific achievements of women or inaccurately credited them to men. Women accounted for less than 4% of medical eponyms, of which several were compound names shared with men, the authors said.

Further, of the men recognised by eponyms, some were complicit in unethical acts including crimes against humanity during the Nazi era, warranting name changes.

They gave the example of Wegener granulomatosis being replaced with granulomatosis with polyangiitis, due to Friedrich Wegener’s associations with the Nazi Party.

“The liberal use of medical eponymous terms also places users at risk of inadvertently contributing to the persistence of colonialism and intersectional discrimination in medicine. About 97% of the 3484 medical eponyms identified in a cross-sectional analysis celebrate European or North American physicians, highlighting the Eurocentric skewing of medical terminology,” the doctors wrote.

This was despite about 40% of pharmacological agents used in practice hailing from the traditional knowledge of non-Western cultures, they added.

“The failure to acknowledge accomplishments of cultural medical practices that often predated and potentially inspired those of conventional medicine is not uncommon, and some eponyms may reflect this,” they said.

There were also practical implications. Multiple entities being named after the same individual could be confusing, such as Charcot joint, Charcot disease and Charcot triad of acute cholangitis named after French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot.

There was also the the risk of complicating communication with patients.

Instead, the authors argued that medical nomenclature should ideally describe the pathophysiological processes or clinical criteria of the entity being named.

“This could not only help dissociate medical terminology from the contentious milieu in which several eponyms came to existence, but potentially also facilitate more precise communication between clinicians and with patients,” they said.