An oration on the classification and nomenclature of diseases, with remarks on diseases due to treatment / by H.D. Rolleston, M.D., F.R.C.P., senior physician to St. George's Hospital; physician, Victoria Hospital for Children.

  • Rolleston, Humphry Davy, Sir, 1862-1944
Date:
[1909]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: An oration on the classification and nomenclature of diseases, with remarks on diseases due to treatment / by H.D. Rolleston, M.D., F.R.C.P., senior physician to St. George's Hospital; physician, Victoria Hospital for Children. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    “ Bright’s disease ” to those medical diseases of the kidney which are regarded as nephritis—namely, acute nephritis, the large white and the contracted white kidney, and to exclude from the category the red granular kidney and the lardaceous kidney. Reference to Bright’s paper and plates in Yol. I. of the ‘ ‘ Reports of Medical Cases ” (1827) shows that with the forms of nephritis just mentioned he included the red granular kidney and, though the words lardaceous or amyloid are not used, the lardaceous kidney. When the original author’s name comes to be applied to a condition different from that which he described, it is in most instances time to abandon the patronymic and to employ some suitable synonym if this is ready to hand. It must, however, be admitted that there is ■something to be said for the use in certain circumstances of the describer’s name for incomplete examples of the disease which he described in its most characteristic form ; for example, Graves’s disease is a much more satisfactory label for an incomplete case than exophthalmic goitre, qualified, to make the description accurate, by the words “ without any exophthalmos or goitre. ” In some instances the original descriptive title is altogether too cumbrous for ordinary practice, and as a result there is an almost irresistible temptation to substitute “Marie’s disease” for “hypertrophic pulmonary osteo-arthropathy,” and ‘ ‘ Raynaud’s disease ” for ‘1 local asphyxia and sym¬ metrical gangrene of the extremities.” This is a point worthy of due consideration by those who have occasion to de¬ scribe a new syndrome. Had it not been for Ord’s suggestion of “ myxcedema ” for “a cretinoid state supervening in adult life in women,” “Gull’s disease,” which indeed was put forward by Professor Osier in the third edition of his text-book (1898), would probably be in daily use. The adopted name for this disease indeed illustrates another advantage of using the discoverer’s name—viz., that it does not commit us to a hypothesis of the disease which may or may not prove to be correct. For “ myxoedema ” implies an excess of mucin in the tissues which is not constant through¬ out the disease. It might be urged in favour of employing the discoverer’s name for diseases, the exact nature of which is not yet clear, that it is a more or less provisional epithet pending exact knowledge, and that in course of time the name will be changed. To some extent this is comftig about ; the medical diseases of the kidney are as often spoken of as forms of nephritis as of Bright’s disease, and “ lymphadenoma ” is now the official name of Hodgkin’s disease. Whilst admitting the established examples of diseases named after their describers, there is a considerable reluct¬ ance to confer this honour widely. In some instances the plunge has been made by admirers in a country other than that which produced the prophet; thus we owe the title “Addison’s disease” to Trousseau, and that of “Stokes-