An Essay on a Shaking Palsy

"This is the first full medical description of Parkinson’s disease. James Parkinson was what was called a ‘surgeon apothecary,’ which is a bit like a GP today—except that apothecaries could only dispense medicine, not prescribe it. There were no neurologists in Parkinson’s day, only physicians. During his lifetime, Parkinson was better known for his contributions to palaeontology than for his medical writings. He was also a social reformer and sympathiser of the French Revolution. If he had been alive today he would have been a dedicated supporter of Jeremy Corbyn. I always like to think that his interest in the natural world, which is how I also came into medicine, helped him to become a good doctor—to record very accurately and observe very precisely what he was seeing. He demonstrated that fully established neurological syndromes can be recognised without the need for a neurological examination—let alone a brain scan. “Neurology has a false reputation of being a very difficult area of medicine requiring high intelligence. That’s a myth. But it does take many years of apprenticeship to become a competent neurologist” One of the things I learned from reading and re-reading this book is how to write a good abstract (or foreword). Parkinson manages to encapsulate in two sentences his novel findings. The modesty with which his landmark findings were described is also wonderfully refreshing in this era of hype and spin in medical research. His sole purpose for writing up his findings was to encourage the eminent anatomists of the day to determine the lesion in the brain responsible for the shaking palsy in the hope that this would lead to remedial treatment. I learnt that medical taxonomy is not carved in stone and that as medical knowledge increases it is bound to change. All neuroscientists in training should read this book. It reminds you that to be a neuroscientist you need to be a ‘noticer.’"