Isidor Fischer's ‘Geographical Names in Medical Terminology’

Isidor Fischer (1869–1943) was in his time an eminent gynaecologist and medical historian. He lived and worked in Vienna and taught at the University there. Probably his most notable historical publication is his Biographisches Lexikon der hervorragenden Ärzte der letzte fünfzig Jahre, Berlin and Vienna, 1932–33, a continuation of Hirsch's standard biographical dictionary. The first volume of a supplement and continuation (including an entry for Fischer himself) appeared in 2002. He also wrote, among other works, a history of obstetrics in Vienna. Like so many others, his career was ruined by the Nazi occupation of Austria. The Geschichte der Gesellschaft der Ärzte in Wien, which he had compiled for the Society's centenary, was published in 1938, but with his name suppressed. Fischer himself went into exile in England, settled in Bristol, and continued with his historical researches as far as he was able. Like the other great exiled Viennese medical historian, Max Neuburger (1868–1955), who found refuge at the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, he now wrote only in English. One of his earlier publications was Der Eigennamen in Krankheitsterminologie, 1931, a dictionary of medical eponyms based on personal names. (The Wellcome Library's copy, presented in 1954 by Leslie Morton, had previously belonged to Fischer's assistant, Dr Hedwig Pollak and contains typescript corrections.) After settling in England, Fischer spent much of his time working on a companion volume, covering geographical eponyms, mainly in the libraries of the British Museum, Royal College of Surgeons and Royal Society of Medicine. In the course of this research he made Leslie Morton's acquaintance, perhaps at one of these libraries, which Leslie was also visiting for his work on Garrison-Morton, or at St Thomas's, where Leslie was then Librarian. Leslie inherited his typescript and planned to complete it for publication, at first in collaboration with Dr Pollak. Not surprisingly, he had other things to occupy his time, even when he was nominally retired—retirement with him was almost a contradiction in terms—but he never gave up the idea. He presented the original typescript to the Wellcome Library in 1975, but continued to work on his own revised version to the end of his life. It is hoped that it may yet be brought to publication. The dictionary covers a wide variety of names from Aden Fever (a variety of Dengue Fever) to Mal de Zousfana (a disease of dromedaries in Algeria). There are diseases which take their names from continents (e.g. American trypanosomiasis) in contrast to precisely localized names, such as Morbus Naronianus, from the Neretva river in former Yugoslavia, Devonshire colic, and Lassa fever. Some names are still in common currency, others had only a brief fashion, perhaps prompted by a particular epidemic. Salonika fever, for example, was particularly associated with the World War I campaign in the area. Syphilis, of course, has been given a variety of names associating it with the different countries blamed for its origin.