The synthetic genitive in medical eponyms: Is it doomed to extinction?

Eponyms, which can be broadly defined as words that are based on or derived from the names of persons, are perhaps more prevalent in the terminology of medicine than in that of any other discipline. The English language has several ways of forming eponyms. Some of these are exemplified by Bell’s palsy, the organ of Corti, the Krebs cycle, and addisonian anemia. Until recently, eponyms containing synthetic genitives (formed on the pattern proper noun + apostrophe + s) were the most numerous in medical English. The language is presently undergoing a change, not entirely spontaneous, in which eponyms of this “possessive” type are being replaced by variants containing proper nouns in uninflected form (Bell palsy). As I will show, this construction consists of adjective (substantival adjunct) + principal noun rather than unmarked genitive + principal noun.