author
James Parkinson
1755–1824
Best remembered for the 1817 essay that first clearly described the condition later named Parkinson’s disease, this lively London doctor also spent his life studying fossils, rocks, and public life. His story blends medical insight with the curiosity of a true all-round naturalist.
1 Audiobook
An Essay on the Shaking Palsy
by James Parkinson
About the author
Born in London in 1755, James Parkinson was an English surgeon and apothecary whose name became permanently linked with Parkinson’s disease. In An Essay on the Shaking Palsy (1817), he gave one of the earliest clear clinical descriptions of the disorder, carefully observing symptoms that other physicians would later recognize under the name that honors him.
Parkinson’s interests reached far beyond medicine. He was also an active geologist and paleontologist, publishing work on fossils and helping to build knowledge in the natural sciences at a time when those fields were rapidly developing. That broad curiosity gives his writing a distinctive energy: he was not only a practicing medical man, but also a close observer of the natural world.
He was known as a political activist as well, showing that his concerns extended to society as much as to science. James Parkinson died in 1824, but his work remains central to the history of neurology and to the long effort to understand a disease that still affects millions of people.