[Eponyms in musculoskeletal radiology: stories of bones, persons, and civilizations]

Eponyms reflect the history of medicine, of disease, and of physicians, but eponyms also reflect the history of the societies in which these physicians lived. Both loved and hated, eponyms are at the center of an interminable debate about whether they should continue to be used or whether they should disappear, and this debate has become more intense since some scientific societies have purged their terminologies of eponyms related to Nazism. Eponyms abound in conventional musculoskeletal radiology. In this article, rather than attempt an exhaustive review of all these eponyms, we take a few representative examples to illustrate the contributions of eponyms to medicine and the history of medicine.