History is messy. We often think medical breakthroughs happen in a sterile lab with a "Eureka!" moment and a flash of light, but the reality of how was Parkinson’s disease discovered is way more about a guy watching people walk down the street in London.
James Parkinson wasn't a world-renowned neurologist. He was a general practitioner. A neighborhood doctor. In 1817, he published a thin, 66-page pamphlet titled An Essay on the Shaking Palsy. It didn't make him famous overnight. In fact, it was largely ignored for decades. He didn't even use a microscope or run blood tests because, honestly, those things didn't really exist in the way we use them now. He just used his eyes. He watched six specific people. Some were his patients; others were just folks he saw regularly in his neighborhood.
He noticed something specific. It wasn't just "old people shaking." It was a pattern.
The Observations That Changed Everything
Before James Parkinson, if you had a tremor, people just called it "palsy." It was a catch-all term that meant almost nothing. It was like saying someone has "the blues." It described a symptom but ignored the cause.
Parkinson saw through that.
He described a very specific "propulsive" gait. You know that look where someone seems to be leaning forward, trying to catch up with their own center of gravity? He caught that. He noted the "festination"—that hurried, shuffling step. He also noticed that while their limbs shook at rest, the shaking often stopped when they actually reached for something. That distinction is huge. It's the difference between Parkinson’s and an essential tremor, and he nailed it just by being observant.
Interestingly, he missed something big. He thought the senses and the intellect remained totally "uninjured." We know now that isn't true. Cognitive changes and sensory issues are a massive part of the disease for many people. But for 1817? His clinical description was terrifyingly accurate.
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Why It Took 60 Years to Get a Name
If you went to a doctor in 1840 and said you had "Parkinson’s Disease," they’d have no idea what you were talking about.
The name didn't stick until a French neurologist named Jean-Martin Charcot entered the picture. Charcot is basically the father of modern neurology. He worked at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, which was basically a giant warehouse for the chronically ill. Around 1860, he started digging through old medical literature and found Parkinson’s essay.
Charcot was impressed. He realized that "Shaking Palsy" was a bad name because not everyone with the disease actually shakes. Some people are just rigid. They have "bradykinesia," or extreme slowness of movement.
Charcot insisted on calling it Maladie de Parkinson. He wanted to honor the man who first spotted the pattern. It’s kinda cool when you think about it—a legendary French scientist giving credit to an obscure English GP sixty years after the fact.
The Brain Chemistry: The 20th Century Leap
Even after Charcot named it, nobody knew why it happened. They could see the symptoms, but the brain remained a black box.
That changed in the early 1900s. A pathologist named Frederic Lewy found these weird protein clumps in the brain cells of deceased patients. We call them Lewy Bodies now. They are the hallmark of the disease. But the real "Aha!" moment regarding brain chemistry didn't happen until the late 1950s.
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Enter Arvid Carlsson.
Carlsson discovered that dopamine wasn't just a precursor to other chemicals; it was a neurotransmitter in its own right. It was a messenger. He found that it was concentrated in the basal ganglia—the part of the brain that controls movement. He realized that if you take away the dopamine, the movement stops.
This was the bridge. This was the moment we moved from just "watching people shake" to understanding the molecular machinery that was failing. Carlsson eventually won a Nobel Prize for this, and rightfully so. It led directly to the development of L-DOPA, which remains the gold standard for treatment today.
What Most People Get Wrong About the Discovery
People think Parkinson discovered a cure. He didn't. He didn't even discover a cause.
He discovered a syndrome.
There’s a nuance here that gets lost. He identified a cluster of symptoms that always appeared together. That’s the first step in any medical discovery. You have to define the enemy before you can fight it.
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Another misconception? That this is a "new" disease caused by modern pollution or industrialization. While environmental factors definitely play a role, descriptions of Parkinson-like symptoms show up in ancient Egyptian papyruses and in the Ayurveda, the ancient Indian system of medicine, where it was called Kampavata.
James Parkinson didn't "invent" the disease. He just gave us the language to talk about it.
The Actionable Path Forward
If you are looking into the history of Parkinson's because you or a loved one is experiencing symptoms, don't get lost in the 1800s. Focus on the tools we have now that James Parkinson couldn't have dreamed of.
Prioritize a Movement Disorder Specialist
Don't just see a general neurologist. Movement disorder specialists are neurologists who have done extra fellowships specifically in Parkinson’s and tremors. They can spot the nuances Charcot and Parkinson wrote about with much higher accuracy.
The "Pre-Motor" Signs Matter
History shows us that the tremor is often the last thing to show up. Research now points to "prodromal" symptoms that happen years before the shaking starts:
- A sudden loss of sense of smell (anosmia).
- Acting out dreams vividly in your sleep (REM Sleep Behavior Disorder).
- Chronic, unexplained constipation.
- Very small, cramped handwriting (micrographia).
Exercise is Evidence-Based Medicine
While Arvid Carlsson gave us the chemistry, modern physical therapy has given us the mechanics. Intense exercise—specifically things like boxing, dancing, or cycling—has been shown to actually promote neuroplasticity. It’s not just about "staying fit"; it’s about forcing the brain to find new pathways around the dopamine deficit.
Get Involved in Research
We are currently in the middle of a massive shift in how the disease is diagnosed. The "Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative" (PPMI) is a landmark study looking for biomarkers. This is the next phase of the discovery—finding a way to diagnose the disease through a skin biopsy or a blood test before the first tremor even appears.
The story of how Parkinson’s was discovered isn't over. We are currently writing the chapter on how it gets stopped.