Barnaby J. Feder

See the article in its original context from January 25, 1988, Section D, Page 1Buy Reprints TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.

What’s in a disease’s name? Long-hidden shame, perhaps. In most cases, as with lung cancer or heart failure, names are not much more than thumbnail descriptions. But for a few common illnesses like Alzheimer’s disease and for hundreds of rarer ones, doctors and patients often use names honoring the first doctor to publicize the illness or its symptoms. Some doctors have criticized that as a source of confusion. Different names are used in different countries in some cases.

THE MEDIA BUSINESS See the article in its original context from March 29, 1991, Section D, Page 4Buy Reprints TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.