History of Neurology: Parkinson’s Disease Before James Parkinson

Every neurologist knows that James Parkinson (1755-1824) published An Essay on the Shaking Palsy in 1817. In this work, Parkinson described six personally observed cases, although three were only seen in passing, what Professor Andrew Lees has evocatively termed “street watch methodology”, an experience which may be familiar to many neurologists even today. The eponym of Parkinson’s disease was promoted later in the nineteenth century (1877) by Jean-Martin Charcot [1]. A question long asked is whether Parkinson was describing a new disease in 1817, or whether he was simply the first to crystallise the clinical gestalt which we now recognise as “Parkinson’s disease” (PD).