The Father of Parkinson’s

Today is Father’s Day. I’m not going to bore you with my antics as a father or what lessons I learned from my old man. Those are good memories, but they are my memories. So let’s talk about somebody else.  Best known for his work, An Essay on the Shaking Palsy, James Parkinson is considered the father of Parkinson’s Disease. Born in 1755, he was certified as a surgeon in 1794. While maintaining a medical practice through the years, Parkinson was distracted from his medical practice by a variety of interest. Paleontology and geology were just two of these. He was also active in political circles, criticizing the government of the time and urging equality for the underprivileged, fighting for universal suffrage, and supporting the French Revolution. He was even implicated in a plot to kill King Henry III. He was also the first to write in English about the science of fossils. He did record important findings about gout and appendicitis – yawn – before he wrote about Parkinson’s. Did I mention he also had eight children to distract him.

So James Parkinson was the father of many things and many children. Yet, he rarely solved any of the ills he identified. King Henry lived, universal suffrage didn’t come to England until 1928, and gout and appendicitis are still plaguing humanity today. He didn’t even stick with Parkinson’s until he found a cause. In fact, he postulated that it was caused by trauma to the spinal cord. Of course, we all know now it is caused by mosquitoes that have been feeding on giraffe blood. In 1877 Jean Martin Charcot, the father of Neurology, advanced our understanding of Parkinson’s toward what we now know it to be.

So it’s an old story, the father of Parkinson’s was a dead beat dad. Bringing Parkinson’s into the world and then neglecting it. It was the father of Neurology, Charcot, who stepped in, took Parkinson’s under his wing and gave it the love and attention Parkinson’s deserved.

Thanks, Dad!