John Benjamin Murphy

John Murphy

John Benjamin Murphy (1857 - 1916) American physician and pioneer surgeon, noted particularly for his contributions to abdominal surgery. William James Mayo, co-founder of the Mayo clinic called him "the surgical genius of our generation." Murphy's live clinical lectures in surgery attracted worldwide audience. He is also known for contributing many eponymous terms to medicine such as Murphy's sign (tenderness in the right hypochondrium on inspiration, felt when the hand is placed over the gallbladder area, indicative of acute cholecystits), Murphy's punch (tenderness on gentle tapping in the costovertebral angle over the renal area at the back in cases of perinephric abscess), Murphy's button (a mechanical device for intestinal anastomosis), and Murphy's drip (device used to administer fluids by proctoclysis in patients with peritonitis). He was one of the first surgeons to actively manage cases of appendicitis by surgery. He is also credited with the first to successfully suture the femoral artery and pioneered bone grafting techniques.

Bernhard Riedel

Bernhard Riedel

Bernhard Moritz Carl Ludwig Riedel (1846 - 1916) German surgeon and pioneer in the surgical treatment of appendicitis and cholecystitis. He was the first surgeon to perform choledochoduodenostomy, which is the anastomosis of the common bile duct to the duodenum. His name is associated with Riedel's thyroiditis (ligneous thryroiditis, struma fibromatosis, or invasive fibrous thyroiditis) which is a rare chronic inflammation of the thyroid gland, resulting in replacement with fibrous tissue, causing difficulty in swallowing and breathing, but mostly with euthyroid status. Riedel's lobe is a tongue shaped hepatic process often found over the gallbladder in cases of chronic cholecytitis. Riedel's tumor is an infrequently used term for chronic pancreatitis. In his old age, he underwent amputation of one of his legs due to atherosclerotic complications, but that didn't stop him from being actively involved in medical activities.

William Allen Sturge

William Allen Sturge

William Allen Sturge (1850 - 1919) British physician and archeologist, who was one of the doctors who first described Sturge-Weber syndrome (also known as encephalotrigeminal angimatosis), a rare congenital nervous and skin disorder, associated with port-wine stains, glaucoma, seizures, mental retardation, and ipsilateral leptomeningeal angioma. His first wife, Emily Bowell, was one of the first women physicians of England. After her death, he married one his nurses. Sturge was a keen collector of archeological specimens, and the later part of his life after retiring from medicine was devoted to archeology. William Allen Sturge had no children.

Ferdinand-Jean Darier

Ferdinand Darier

Ferdinand-Jean Darier (1856 - 1938) French pathologist and dermatologist, considered "the father of modern dermatology in France". His name is associated with many dermatological diseases such as follicular keratosis (an autosomal dominant genetically inherited disease of the skin, also called Darier's disease) and Darier's sign, which is the appearance of  itchy, red & swollen skin lesions after stroking of an area of skin, in subjects suffering from urticaria pigmentosa or systemic mastocytosis. In later age, Darier retired to a small village on the outskirts of Paris and was mayor of the place for ten years. He wrote classic textbooks on dermatology and was involved as the editor of the most famous encyclopedia on dermatology in the french language.

Nikolaus Friedreich

Nikolaus Friedreich

Nikolaus Friedreich (1825 - 1882) French physician and pathologist, whose father and grandfather were also well known doctors in their time. Friedreich is particularly noted for his contributions to neurology, where he was the first to describe a progressive hereditary condition affecting the spinal cord and peripheral nerves, causing ataxia, now known as Friedreich's ataxia. His name is also associated with Friedreich's foot, or pes cavus (high arched foot) as is more commonly known. He also described Friedreich's sign, which is the sudden collapse of previously distended cervical veins during diastole, as a result of adherent pericardium. Along with the anatomist Leopold Auerbach (of the Auerbach's plexus fame) he described the Friedreich-Auerbach disease, a congenital hypertrohic disorder affecting the tongue, ears and facial features.

Dennis Parsons Burkitt

Dennis Burkitt

Dennis Parsons Burkitt (1911 - 1993) Irish surgeon, most famous for his description of the eponymous Burkitt's Lymphoma, which he did when he was working as a surgeon in rural Africa. As a child, Burkitt lost his right eye in an accident, and was later denied employment as a surgeon for this reason. He was also a devout christian and had missionary leanings for his desire to work in Africa. Later in life, he settled in Britain, and made his second significant contribution to medicine by associating the lack of adequate fiber in the diet with many modern diseases such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease. His popular book on the subject, Don't Forget Fiber in Your Diet became an international bestseller.

Alois Alzheimer

Alois Alzheimer

Alois Alzheimer (1864 - 1915) German psychiatrist and neuropathologist, credited with the first known description of presenile dementia, which his famous colleague Emil Kraepelin, would later name as Alzheimer's disease. Franz Nissl, another noted German and neuropathologist, was his close collaborator and friend in many of his research activities. Alzheimer also gave a detail description of the histopathological changes involved in general paralysis of the insane, before the causative organism of syphilis was discovered. Alzheimer's descriptions of histopathology in presenile dementia are unparalleled, and so thorough that even to this day his criteria for diagnosis of Alzheimer's stand valid. Alzhemier's prototype patient for the eponymous disease was a woman named Auguste Deter, who was admitted to the hospital where he worked, and died five years later at the age of 56. Autopsy studies on her brain were responsible for the first detailed description of the changes involved in the disease, particularly the presence of senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles.