31 Facts About James Parkinson

James Parkinson was an English surgeon, apothecary, geologist, palaeontologist and political activist.

James Parkinson is best known for his 1817 work An Essay on the Shaking Palsy, in which he was the first to describe "paralysis agitans", a condition that would later be renamed Parkinson's disease by Jean-Martin Charcot.

James Parkinson was the son of John Parkinson, an apothecary and surgeon practising in Hoxton Square in London, and the oldest of five siblings, including his brother William and his sister Mary Sedgwick.

In 1784 Parkinson was approved by the City of London Corporation as a surgeon.

James Parkinson was a strong advocate for the underprivileged, and an outspoken critic of the Pitt government.

James Parkinson's early career was marked by his being involved in a variety of social and revolutionary causes, and some historians think he most likely was a strong proponent for the French Revolution.

James Parkinson published nearly 20 political pamphlets in the post-French Revolution period, while Britain was in political chaos.

James Parkinson called for representation of the people in the House of Commons, the institution of annual parliaments.

James Parkinson was a member of several secret political societies, including the London Corresponding Society and the Society for Constitutional Information.

James Parkinson refused to testify regarding his part in the Popgun Plot until he was certain he would not be forced to incriminate himself.

James Parkinson turned away from his tumultuous political career, and between 1799 and 1807 published several medical works, including a work on gout in 1805.

James Parkinson was responsible for early writings on ruptured appendix.

James Parkinson was interested in improving the general health and well-being of the population.

James Parkinson wrote several medical doctrines that revealed a zeal for the health and welfare of the people similar to that expressed in his political activism.

James Parkinson was a crusader for legal protection for the mentally ill, as well as their doctors and families.

In 1812, James Parkinson assisted his son with the first described case of appendicitis in English, and the first instance in which perforation was shown to be the cause of death.

James Parkinson believed that any worthwhile surgeon should know shorthand, at which he was adept.

James Parkinson was the first person to systematically describe six individuals with symptoms of the disease that bears his name.

James Parkinson referred to the disease that would later bear his name as paralysis agitans, or shaking palsy.

James Parkinson distinguished between resting tremors and the tremors with motion.

James Parkinson erroneously suggested that the tremors in these patients were due to lesions in the cervical spinal cord.

James Parkinson began collecting specimens and drawings of fossils in the latter part of the 18th century.

James Parkinson took his children and friends on excursions to collect and observe fossil plants and animals.

James Parkinson illustrated each volume and his daughter Emma coloured some of the plates.

In 1822, James Parkinson published the shorter "Outlines of Oryctology: an Introduction to the Study of Fossil Organic Remains, especially of those found in British Strata".

James Parkinson contributed several papers to William Nicholson's "A Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry and the Arts", and in the first, second, and fifth volumes of the "Geological Society's Transactions".

James Parkinson wrote a single volume Outlines of Oryctology in 1822, a more popular work.

James Parkinson belonged to a school of thought, catastrophism, that concerned itself with the belief that the Earth's geology and biosphere were shaped by recent large-scale cataclysms.

James Parkinson cited the Noachian deluge of Genesis as an example, and he firmly believed that creation and extinction were processes guided by the hand of God.

James Parkinson died on 21 December 1824, after a stroke that interfered with his speech.

James Parkinson bequeathed his houses in Langthorne to his sons and wife, and his apothecary's shop to his son John.