West & West syndrome--a historical sketch about the eponymous doctor, his work and his family

Abstract

The British surgeon William James West has not left a tremendous literary or scientific work as many of his contemporaries did. For this reason only a little has been known about him and the fate of his family for decades, even though the eponym was created in the 1960s. Only in 1990 was a first biography published and later on supplemented. If his son had not suffered from the syndrome, which later on was named after him, he would not have published the first description of the West syndrome in The Lancet in 1841. Possibly we would be talking about Newnham's syndrome, because 8 years later he published a detailed report on this subject. There is, however, a second aspect concerning the pioneering activity of West, i.e. his advocating of ovariotomy in its early days. To judge the importance of this feat correctly, it is necessary to keep in mind that his former pupil and practice-partner Gorham in 1874 obviously tried to exaggerate the role of West in ovariotomy. Nevertheless, it is worth keeping the memory of William James West and his son James Edwin alive, as happened at the International Symposium on West Syndrome and Other Infantile Epileptic Encephalopathies at Tokyo, 9-11 February in 2001, and by other occasions.