Grey Matter Etymology and the neuron(e)

Abstract

‘Neuron’ or ‘neurone’? While it is often assumed that these different spellings reflect usage of American versus British English, there are also inconsistencies within these cultural boundaries. Mehta et al. review historical, etymological and linguistic evidence concerning the spelling of ‘neuron(e)’ and conclude that the only correct spelling is ‘neuron’.

Figure 1

Thomas Willis (1621–75) and the introduction of the prefix ‘neuro-’ into medical terminology. (A) Text from Cerebri Anatome: cui accessit Nervorum Descriptio et Usus (1664, p. 229) in which Thomas Willis first sets out his intention to discuss ‘neurologie’. (B) The definitions of ‘nerve’ and ‘neurologie’ used by Samuel Pordage in the table of hard words appended to his translation of Willis’s two treatises, The Anatomy of the Brain and The Description and use of the Nerves (1681): from original copies of each (Willis, 1664, 1681).

Figure 2

The first drawing of a neuron as the nerve cell and its processes. These were published in 1865, in posthumous work by Otto Friedrich Karl Deiters (1834–63). In the centre, he depicts the cell body with its nucleus; (b) represents the multiple dendrites and (a) represents the single axon (Deiters, 1865).

Figure 3

Alexander Hill (1856–1929), anatomist and surgeon, and Master of Downing College, Cambridge (1888–1907). Sadly, little is known about his academic, medical or personal life, and it remains a mystery how and why he was involved in neurology. Image courtesy of Downing College Archives, originating from a book of press cuttings from The Times, 2 February 1902, about his appointment as Bursar (ref. DCPP/STE/1/1).

Figure 4

Heinrich Waldeyer (1836–1921). Born into a family of aristocratic extraction and originally intending to study music and mathematics, Waldeyer was attracted to medicine and, after professorships in Breslau and Strasbourg, he worked in Berlin on human and comparative anatomy earning a reputation, by 1891, as a scientist, administrator and public figure (Shepherd, 1991).