ABSTRACT
When was the first description of restless legs syndrome (RLS)? Montaigne, the great French essayist, wrote about restlessness of the legs, sometimes aroused by sermons in church, ‘‘so that though I was seated, I was never settled’’ (1). Montaigne seems to catch the core feeling of RLS-the ‘‘never settled.’’ Montaigne wrote that, ‘‘it may have been said of me from my infancy that I had either folly or quicksilver inmy feet, somuch stirring and unsettledness there is in them,wherever they are placed.’’ But Montaigne recognized an even earlier sufferer, the third century B.C. Greek stoic philosopher, Chrysippus, who, at a dinner party, was said to have legs that moved about as if drunk (2).
