ABSTRACT
Parkinson’s disease was first described in a medical context in 1817 by James Parkinson, a general practitioner in London. Numerous essays have been written about Parkinson himself and the early history of Parkinson’s disease (Paralysis agitans), or the shaking palsy. Rather than repeat or resynthesize such prior studies, this introductory chapter focuses on a number of historical visual documents with descriptive legends. Some of these are available in prior publications, but the entire collection has not been presented before. As a group, they present materials from the 19th century and will serve as a base, on which the subsequent chapters that cover progress of the twentieth and budding twenty-first centuries are built. In 2005, as part of the Movement Disorder Society annual international congress, an extensive history exhibit was developed. Interested readers can access the core of this exhibit (1).
