Who named it? (Part two) December 11, 2006

Did you know that…

• Johann Friedrich Meckel (Meckel’s diverticulum) eventually became paranoid, retired at the age of 50 years and spent the last two years of his life as a recluse.
• Charles McBurney (McBurney’s point) published numerous papers and was a keen hunter and fisherman. He died of a coronary thrombosis while on a hunting trip.
• Albert Neisser (Neisseria) was a diabetic and fell and broke his femur a few years before his death, never recovering his health completely. He suffered with renal calculi and after having colic and cystitis had the stone removed from his bladder in Berlin.
• Ruggero Oddi (Oddi’s sphincter) sought employment as a physician in the Belgian colonial medical service and spent a brief time in the Belgian Congo, during which time his mental condition became more unbalanced, partly as a result of his using narcotics.
• Sir James Paget (Paget’s disease) was a noble and sympathetic personality, enjoying the greatest respect and love. His best known work is the catalogue of the pathological museum of the Royal College of Surgeons.
• George Nicholas Papanicolaou (Papanicolaou’s stain) began the study of sex chromosomes in guinea pigs. It occurred to him that guinea pigs, like humans, must have a menstrual cycle, even though no bleeding had been observed. If so, one should be able to obtain the necessary information from the vaginal secretions. Thus what was probably the first Pap smear — from a guinea pig.
• James Parkinson (Parkinson’s disease), in 1812, assisted his son, who was a surgeon, with the first description of a case of appendicitis in English, and the first instance in which perforation was shown to be the cause of death.