An essay on the shaking palsy

Two hundred years ago at the age of 62, James Parkinson wrote a 66 page treatise entitled An Essay on the Shaking Palsy. He believed that he had identified a new ‘medical species’ that had ‘not yet obtained a place in the classification of nosologists’ (Parkinson, 1817). As a young apothecary Parkinson had attended a course of evening lectures given by the eminent surgeon-anatomist, John Hunter and taken copious shorthand notes. Long after Hunter’s death, Dr John Parkinson collated his father’s notes and published them under the title of Hunterian Reminiscences, Being the Substance of a Course of Lectures on the Principles and Practice of Surgery Delivered by the Late Mr John Hunter. In one of the transcripts the following case is reported: