Before the month of
April is over I wanted to give a nod to James Parkinson, the eponymous
“discoverer” of the disease.
In April 1817, 200
years ago this month, Parkinson published An Essay on the Shaking Palsy, the first description of the disease as a
medical condition. Despite its
historical significance, it doesn’t make pleasant reading. It makes me appreciate how lucky we are that
at least there are some ways today of moderating the symptoms even though science
is currently unable to halt the progression of the disease.
Parkinson was a
surgeon but also a geologist and palaeontologist and, in his early years, something of a political
activist. He had a
medical practice in what is now Hackney in London’s East End.
He would have been a
child of the Enlightenment and was a contemporary of such leading British
scientific figures as James Watt (father of the steam engine which powered
the industrial revolution), Humphry Davy (chemist who discovered elements such
as sodium, potassium and calcium) and Edward Jenner (inventor of the first
vaccine).
It seems unfortunate that
his name is associated with a disease that, 200 years on, is still poorly
understood, incurable and affects over ten million people worldwide. In contrast, Jenner’s vaccine led to the
complete global eradication of smallpox, a horrific and frequently deadly disease. It is said that Jenner thereby saved more lives than any other person
in all of human history.
But I have no doubt
Parkinson was a good man, fighting for causes such as universal suffrage and publishing
many scientific papers. Probably he
would have been surprised that the disease he first identified is still
incurable.
Which reminds me: this
week I unexpectedly got a confirmation for an appointment in September with a new
professor; let’s call him Professor J. I
phoned the hospital thinking there was some mistake but it turns out that, in
addition to my next appointment with The (original) Professor I am to see this
new specialist in both hereditary movement disorders and clinical trials for
Parkinson’s.
So perhaps I am being
put forward for some study that just maybe could lead to a cure.
And surely a cure is what James Parkinson would have wanted most.
And surely a cure is what James Parkinson would have wanted most.
