A Note from History: Inventors of New Laboratory and Pathology Terms

Some of those who invented medical terms were well-known physicians and medical scientists but many of them were, and still remain, obscure contributors. Beyond that, the two dozen entries selected for inclusion in this article affirm that the time-honored statement, that in history there is no beginning, is inaccurate. Reginald H. Fitz (1843–1913), a Boston physician, was the first to give a complete description of the symptoms and the pathology of inflammation of the appendix. He replaced the centuries-old term “coarctation of the appendix ” with “appendicitis” [1]. In a long and detailed paper, he reported a series of 25 cases with a recommendation (that is followed even today) that appendectomy should be carried out within 24 hr if symptoms had not subsided. The word “arteriosclerosis ” was first used by Jean G. Lobstein (1777–1835), a professor of surgery and principal orthopedic surgeon at Strasburg [2]. He also introduced the term “osteo-genesis imperfecta.” A short-lived Scottish physician, Alan Burns (1781–1813), described several green tumors of the head and neck region [3]. He called them “chloro-sarcoma, ” which was renamed “chloroma ” in 1853 by A. King. Although Aurelius Celsus (25 BC–AD 50), a Roman physician, is credited with naming anal and perineal tubercles “condyloma, ” it was Gabriele Fallopius (1523–1562), an Italian anatomist–of Fallopian tube fame–who was the first to distinguish syphilitic “condyloma lata ” and non-syphilitic “condyloma acuminata ” in 1563 [4]. Max Sänger (1853–1903), a Prague gyne-cologist, named abdominal fibrous tumors “desmoid tumor ” in 1884. [5]. Later, desmoid tumors were divided into abdominal and extra-abdominal forms. “Echinococcus ” was named in 1808 by Karl A. Rudolphi (1771–1832), a Dutch helminthologist-physician [6]