James Parkinson was an apothecary and surgeon working at the end of the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth. Cherry Lewis tells his story in The Enlightened Mr Parkinson and details how he came to identify the symptoms of the disease which was eventually named after him.
This book is not about Parkinson’s disease itself but about how Mr Parkinson came to identify a number of symptoms, including the shaking which is a well known effect of this condition, and to show that they were part of the same disease, as well as outlining its progression. This was pioneering work because up until then the symptoms were assumed to be individual conditions and an association had not been made between them. The work that Mr Parkinson did forms the bedrock of what we now understand to be one disease and which we have named after him.
Parkinson was one of those people of his time who dabbled in many things. He was a political radical and wrote anti-government pamphlets. He was involved in early vaccination and worked with Edward Jenner. He had a fascination with fossils and his book on the subject spread that interest widely. He was interested in science, social justice and medicine, and because of his class and the times in which he lived he had the time and means to pursue these interests, to the benefit of the medical world as a whole.
This is an interesting and unusual biography which requires no understanding of disease and science to understand. I had had no idea about anything to do with Parkinson’s life and, of course, the book gives us a lot of information about life and medicine at the time. I enjoyed it.
Anne Is Reading 