Wilms

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A malignant tumour of the kidney that occurs mainly in young children and is named after the German surgeon who first described it
2. A cancerous growth arising in the kidney, diagnosed most often in children under the age of five
3. A malignant kidney tumour, most commonly found in infants and young children, that is treated with surgery and chemotherapy

Etymology: Wilms' tumour is named after Max Wilms (1867–1918), a German surgeon at Strasbourg, who described the condition in 1899 in his monograph on mixed tumours of the kidney. Before his work, doctors had seen the cancer as a rare curiosity, and he gathered enough cases to show it was a distinct disease of young children, usually diagnosed before the age of five. The word "Wilms" is simply the surname, used in the possessive form "Wilms' tumour" and, in American usage, often as "Wilms tumor." Its eponym preserves his name in medical shorthand, so "Wilms" alone now stands for the tumour itself.