Editorial

<span class="paragraphSection">In this issue Andrew Lees looks back 200 years to the publication of <span style="font-style:italic;">An Essay on the Shaking Palsy</span> by James Parkinson, surgeon, apothecary, palaeontologist and pamphleteer. The disease named after him is probably the oldest eponymous neurological disorder after Sydenham’s chorea. It goes by the same name in almost all languages, thanks in large part to Jean-Marie Charcot who preferred the eponym to paralysis agitans. James Parkinson is also credited, together with his son John, with the first description of appendicitis in the English language. Less well known is a passable description of meningitis in a publication entitled <span style="font-style:italic;">Town and Country Friend and Physician, Or an Affectionate Address on the Preservation of Health, and on the Removal of Disease at its First Appearance</span> (Philadelphia, 1803): ‘Know then, that in the head is contained <span style="font-style:italic;">THE BRAIN</span>, from which proceed the nerves, which are distributed over the body, and on which every sense, and all power of motion depend. If pain in the head, lightheadedness, fever, redness of the eyes, and impatience at viewing much light, or hearing loud noises, succeed to shiverings, <span style="text-transform:lowercase;font-variant:small-caps;">inflammation of the brain or it’s membranes may be feared to exist</span>. This must be followed with death in a very few days, if not opposed by the exertions of some skilful person.’ These exertions, sadly, are no more than ‘Bleeding profusely, blisters, the strictest regimen and proper medicines’. Parkinson does not specify what medicines count as proper, although stresses that they should be ‘employed, with that degree of firmness and decision, as cannot be hoped for, but where they are directed by a person of real skill, and where the attendants are impressed with the danger of the smallest deviation from orders’.</span>

from #AlexandrosSfakianakis via Alexandros G.Sfakianakis on Inoreader http://ift.tt/2m1sc8V
via IFTTT