[Aran-Duchenne? Duchenne-Aran? The quarrel around progressive muscular atrophy]

A description of progressive muscular atrophy, the first item in neuro-muscular nosography, figures in the memoir published by F.A. Aran in 1850. There, all the essential features of the disease can be found: its usual onset at the distal end of the upper limbs, its slowly progressive worsening, with muscular atrophy sparing certain muscles or muscular fascicles, its peculiar "claw hand", its muscular "fasciculations" and cramps, with untouched sensitivity. After praising Aran's "beautiful description", G.B. Duchenne de Boulogne subsequently persisted in claiming paternity, untiringly referring to a memoir on "muscular atrophy with fatty transformation" said to have been submitted to the Académie des Sciences in 1849. There is no trace of this memoir, and while it is true that the "localized electrisation" technique was applied by Duchenne to all the patients in Aran's memoir, and that he was the sole author of two of his observations, it is Aran who must be credited with the clinical description, the synthetic presentation and the appellation of "progressive muscular atrophy". Initially, this term covered a number of disparate facts which were later identified and put in their proper nosological place, even though this dismemberment left standing what Charcot called "Duchenne-Aran disease" before the Aran-Duchenne denomination prevailed. This denomination is now customary, and rightly so.