ABSTRACT
Symptoms suggestive of Parkinson's disease (PD) have been described for many centuries, having been found in Egyptian papyrus and Sanskrit texts and other documents in ancient times. It is difficult to understand this contribution by James Parkinson and the subsequent evolution of his ideas without awareness of the concepts of neurological disorder used at the time. James Parkinson was a man of eclectic interests. Unfortunately, over the next 45 years, Parkinson's treatise on the shaking palsy received little attention in England. It was not until the 1860s that Parkinson's treatise really came to light, when the French neurologists Trousseau and then Charcot and Vulpian, working at the Salpetriere in Paris, further elucidated the clinical features of the condition. The cause of Parkinson's disease was unclear, but another student of Charcot's, Edouard Brissaud, favoured the 'locus niger' as a site for the condition, based on cases in the literature and other pathological findings.
