ABSTRACT
Anticholinergic drugs were the first class of medications found to be an effective treatment for Parkinson’s disease (PD). Ordenstein, a student of Charcot, is recognized as having first demonstrated the efficacy of an anticholinergic agent in PD-in this case a naturally occurring belladonna alkaloid (1,2). The pharmacology of these agents was not well understood until 1947, when acetylcholine was identified as a neurotransmitter in the brain (3). Nonetheless, anticholinergic medications, including the later identified synthetic compounds, remained the mainstay of therapy for PD until the introduction of levodopa in the 1960s. Despite the rapidly expanding repertoire of available medical and surgical approaches for the treatment of PD, anticholinergic drugs still have a place in the management of this condition.
