The wow-effect of visual art; works of art that inspired the naming of diseases

Medicine and art are significantly different areas of human activity. Nevertheless, there are overlaps, and there is a mutual inspiration. Paintings and drawings were the first opportunities for the pictorial documentation of diseases before the development of photography. While iconodiagnosis, a retrospective medical diagnosis carried out on a work of art depicting a human person, has gained increasing interest, we discuss the impact of visual arts on the definition of medical terms in dermatology and neurology/psychiatry. The following disorders are discussed under artistic and medical aspects: Mona Lisa syndrome, Brueghel syndrome, Struwwelpeter syndrome with two different meanings, Puppet Children syndrome, and Ambras syndrome. These examples of eponyms are of interest in the history of medicine when illuminating the complex interactions between visual art and the art of medicine.