The women behind the names: Dermatology eponyms named after women☆

Eponymous conditions are common in medicine, making it an interesting area of study to discover the people responsible for describing diseases and their characteristics. Diseases are not only named after the researcherswho identified thembut sometimes the patients themselves. Eponyms are slowly being dropped from dermatology as improvements in our understanding lead to improvements in nomenclature and classification. This article will discuss some of the women who are immortalized in dermatology textbooks by the diseases that bear their names. We have concentrated on dermatology conditions and so have not included such famous physicians and researchers as Cornelia de Lange, Jacqueline Noonan, or Mary Frances Lyon.