Eponymous, Anonymous: Queen Anne’s Sign and the Misnaming of a Symptom

Tracing the historical origins of an eponymous medical sign can be fraught with dilemmas, particularly when the evidence for the naming comes from portraiture. Laterally truncated eyebrows, a sign of hypothyroidism, came to be associated with Anne of Denmark (1574-1619), James I's Queen Consort, likely because a contemporaneous portrait of her by Paul van Somer shows a woman with fair and abbreviated brows. Extant medical information on Anne, however, does not support a diagnosis of hypothyroidism, nor does her very active queenship point to such an affliction. Nonetheless, some authorities continue to employ the label, invoking Queen Anne's painted likeness as proof that she was goitrous and manifested the characteristically shortened eyebrows of those with a deficiency of thyroid activity.