Medical Eponyms
Medical eponyms are medical terms named after a person or place associated with it.
For instance:
- Ebola virus is named after a river in Zaire where an outbreak of Ebola occurred in 1976.
- Alzheimer disease is named after Dr. Alzheimer, the physician associated with identifying the disease.
There are medical eponyms for diseases, conditions, physical signs, tendons, reflexes, palsies, cysts, contractures, and many others. Some have estimated there are more than 8,000.
The modern trend is to use the non-possessive form of eponyms as in Crohn disease instead of Crohn’s disease. The “d” in disease remains lower case. The crossword answers are in the non-possessive form.
Use this crossword as a review of the more common eponymous terms currently used in medical language.
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