Commentary: One Perspective: This one will leave you all choked up

By John Kominicki The Daily Record Newswire I have a genetic condition that causes the pigment in my eyes to flake off in little pieces that slide down the inside of my eye and puddle around an outtake duct. If not treated with daily drops, my eye pressure would spike dangerously, damaging the optic nerve and making me look like a founding member of the Marty Feldman Fan Club. The little trail of pigment particles is called the Krukenberg Spindle, after Friedrich E. Krukenberg, the esteemed German physician. Krukenberg discovered the condition after he had dilated a patient's eyes, filled them with a thick, yellowy fluid that resembles melted gummy bears and started blasting them with a stabbing, laserlike blue light. Or at least that's how my doctor does it. Krukenberg practiced in the early part of the last century, when there were many, many medical conditions still undiscovered and very few people looking for them. Stumble upon one, in other words, and they named it after you. As a result, Krukenberg is also remembered for Krukenberg's Syndrome, a gynecological condition we will not get into here, and Krukenberg's Bodies, which, as far as I know, does not describe his surgical outcomes. Friedrich's brother Hermann, an orthopedic surgeon, is remembered for Krukenberg's Arm and the Krukenberg Method, plus a prosthetic device called Krukenberg's Chopstick. Another brother, Georg-Heinrich, also a doctor, was an underachiever who is remembered for nothing. In fact, he's lucky I even mentioned him. Friedrich and Hermann are further distinguished by the fact that they've been able to remain associated with their varied syndromes and devices, despite medicine's relentless march. Take Adams-Stokes Syndrome, a condition that causes the patient to slump into unconsciousness because of a lagging heart rhythm. It was named after a pair of Irish doctors, Robert Adams and William Stokes, but Thomas Spens, a Scotsman, and Giovanni Battista Morgagni, an Italian pathologist, also described the condition separately. Rather than call it Morgagni-Adams-Stokes-Spens Disease - and risk losing the patient while you did -- it's now known simply as heart block. Some researchers simply never get their name connected, or they see their discovery swallowed up by the lexicon. Henri Parinaud, for example, worked tirelessly to isolate subacute regional lymphadenitis, only to see it catch on as Cat Scratch Fever. For which Ted Nugent is eternally grateful. Doctors' names are also stripped from a discovery when the medical community determines the conditions or cures were misdiagnosed or, in a few cases, represent an outright sham. Such is the story of Henry Heimlich and the under-the-ribs maneuver that has purportedly saved hundreds of people who bit off more than they could chew. Heimlich, a native of New Rochelle, got his undergraduate and medical degrees at Cornell, where he was a drum major in the university's Big Red Marching Band. After school, he married Jane Murray, the daughter of ballroom dancing legend Arthur Murray, then moved on to Ohio. Heimlich first described the anti-choking maneuver in a medical journal article in 1974, and scant weeks later it was used to save the life of Irene Bogachus, a Spokane restaurant patron who was choking on the chicken special. In short order, illustrated guides to the Heimlich Maneuver were posted in restaurants across the nation. Ditto for cocktail lounges that serve big olives. Heimlich's problem was he couldn't quit while ahead. He quickly started promoting the technique as a cure-all for everything from asthma to cystic fibrosis. His assertion that the maneuver could save near-drowning victims brought a speedy scolding from the medical community, which argued that it was more likely to end a life than reclaim one. A Heimlich colleague, Dr. Edward Patrick, also chimed in to say he was an uncredited co-developer of the maneuver who had been stiffed out of his 15 minutes in the limelight. By 2006, the American chapters of the Red Cross and Heart Association had stopped promoting the Heimlich method entirely and returned to the previous standard of repeated pats on the back. Which is why Shriners never die of choking. Heimlich's research in malariotherapy - intentionally infecting cancer and Lyme disease patients with malaria - brought much swifter rebuke from the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control. Even so, the Cincinnati-based Heimlich Institute has reportedly conducted malariotherapy trials on Ethiopian HIV patients. Human rights organizations have called the therapy "atrocious." One of Heimlich's three sons, Peter, has spent years trying to debunk the ideas promoted by his father and his colleagues, whom the son's website describes as a "motley crew of hacks, quacks and narco-doctors." He calls his father's career a "wide-ranging, unseen 50-year history of fraud." That must make the family reunions difficult. If there's a lesson in all of this, it comes from the Krukenbergs: Be innovative, but do it in a time when people aren't asking a lot of questions. Then die. Published: Thu, Jun 2, 2011