James Parkinson is a household name today, but not for the work that made him a celebrity in his own lifetime. His genius and insatiable curiosity in the field of geology and paleontology made him a giant in his own time of the 18th century, while his discovery of the disease that now bears his name was barely noticed.
Born on April 11, 1755, at 1 Hoxton Square, parish of St. Leonard, Shoreditch, just north of London, England, James was the eldest of three brothers, sons of John and Mary Parkinson. John was a well-known and appreciated apothecary and family doctor who practiced for many years in Hoxton. During James’ apprenticeship as an apothecary and assistant surgeon to his father, he married Mary Dale, a young woman also from Shoreditch, well versed in medicine and geology. Seven children were born from this marriage. James’s second son, John William Keys Parkinson, followed the family tradition, joining his father James in medical practice, a role very similar to that of today’s general practitioner, so for many years they both cared for patients, rich and poor, in their family home in Hoxton, located in one of the poorest districts of London.
The Disease
During his years as a surgeon, he was interested in various subjects within medicine, but the main work of this British doctor was an essay on what he called trembling or shaking paralysis. Indeed, 207 years ago, in 1817, Parkinson published a 66-page pamphlet entitled: “An Essay on the Shaking Palsy,” which contains the first detailed clinical description of shaking palsy, which is now known as Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson was the first to accurately describe the symptoms of the disease that today bears his name. However, the value of this essay was not fully recognized during his lifetime.
As he traveled throughout England to practice medicine and continued to make precise observations and conduct interviews with patients, Parkinson drafted the basis for his synthesis and description of tremor paralysis, where he effectively recognized the progressive nature of the disease. Parkinson observed certain conditions for this paralysis throughout his career, but it was as a result of detailed observation of his patients, especially their hands and arms, that he developed a complete description of the illness. This work – Parkinson’s only contribution to neuroscience – became a classic of medical literature because, for the first time, it described paralysis agitans or shaking paralysis as a distinct disease.
His description was remarkably accurate: “Involuntary tremulous motion, with lessened muscular power, in parts not in action and even when supported; with a propensity to bend the trunk forwards, and to pass from a walking to a running pace: the senses and intellects being uninjured.”
This paragraph has stood the test of time, attesting to Parkinson’s keen sense of observation and his power to merge various neurological symptoms into a single clinical entity. At that time however, Parkinson wrongly predicted that these tremors could be due to damage to the cervical spinal cord; it is now known that it is a chronic neurodegenerative disorder.
Parkinson’s essay was largely ignored until a famous French neurologist, Jean-Martin Charcot, who worked at the Salpêtrière Hospital of Paris, rediscovered it 50 years later. Based on clinical observations, Charcot proposed changing the terms “trembling/shaking paralysis” to “Parkinson’s disease.” English neurologists were slow to accept the new term, though, which today seems so familiar to all of us.
The Famous Oricthologist
Despite the lack of impact of his work on the disease that would come to bear his name, Parkinson hardly suffered in obscurity. He achieved fame and renown in his lifetime from his accomplishments in a branch of geology called today paleontology, which was then known as “oricthology,” a term derived from the Greek word “oryktos,” meaning “unearthed,” and which progressively expanded its meaning to encompass the study of minerals, rocks and fossils.
In 1785, Parkinson had the opportunity to attend lectures given by the famous Scottish surgeon and geologist John Hunter. Above Hunter’s conference room were two other floors housing his spectacular natural history collection, which included nearly 3,000 fossils. Parkinson later recalled how from the moment he saw that “splendid and beautifully illustrative collection,” he began to amass his own fossils and minerals. Parkinson, like many 18th-century doctors, became an insatiable collector – a passion that would dominate the rest of his life. The specimens he collected, and others he exchanged or bought from various collectors around the world, became the nucleus of a very popular museum, installed in his home in Hoxton (the museum included a collection of medals and coins).
By 1804, Parkinson was almost 50 years old and had been collecting fossils for approximately the prior 20 years, when he decided to publish: “Organic Remains of a Former World. An examination of the mineralized remains of the vegetables and animals of the antediluvian world.” Two later volumes followed. Finally, the “Organic Remains” treatise spanned 1,146 pages and was accompanied by 42 plates comprising 700 figures, almost all taken from specimens from Parkinson’s collection. These volumes contained detailed observations on the fossils and a series of striking plates hand-drawn by Parkinson, many of them colored by his daughter.
He received great international renown during his lifetime for his geological and paleontological knowledge, where his work, “Organic Remains of a Former World,” proved to be a very popular book in England and Europe. His growing recognition and popularity allowed him to be part of the group of 13 scientists who in 1807 founded the Geological Society of London, the oldest geological society in the world. He was the only founding member of the society with a real interest in fossils (everyone else was interested in mineralogy). Described as “not only the best but almost the only fossil specialist of his time,” it was Parkinson who passionately defended the ideas of geologist William Smith within the Geological Society. Parkinson lamented that the members of this society did not understand the true meaning of fossils and how they could be used to understand and decipher geology and stratigraphy, starting from the understanding that different sets of fossils could be used to correlate rocks in different regions.
Parkinson was also a founding member of the Medical and Surgical Society of London, and in 1823, he was awarded the first Gold Medal of the Royal College of Surgeons in consideration of “his useful labors for the promotion of natural knowledge, particularly expressed by his splendid work on Organic Remains,” as well as by his prolific contribution to orichtology, which he affectionately called his favorite science.
His Masterpiece
The first volume of James Parkinson’s “Organic Remains of a Former World” was published on June 1, 1804, and two others followed in 1808 and 1811. “Organic Remains” soon became the preferred textbook on the subject of paleontology. Its publication was considered a memorable event in the history of British paleontology, as he wrote this treatise, dividing it into a series of letters or chapters, using an epistolary style to facilitate the dissemination of knowledge and the understanding of complex scientific notions, aimed at all types of audiences with the hope of enticing wide interest in the wonders of nature.
As he grew in experience, the subsequent volumes portrayed a scientist more concerned with a singular pressing question, which Leonardo da Vinci had already asked himself more than 300 years prior: How were fossils turned into rock?
Attempting to answer this question, Parkinson studied his specimens with a magnifying glass, in polished sections, and even by illuminating very thin sections under a microscope, much as we would do today. He also performed chemical experiments on fossils, hoping to find evidence of the original animal. Somewhat ironically, this practice kept him so busy that he had little time to go into the field to look for new fossils.
In “Organic Remains of a Former World,” Parkinson discussed the history of paleontology, fossil preservation and the creationist theory, focusing on describing individual fossil specimens and reference to earlier descriptions or modern comparisons. In this three-volume treatise, his work added incredibly extensive descriptions of fossils, including reptiles, mammals, echinoderms, mollusks, insects and plants, all lavishly illustrated. Parkinson had a good grasp of the fundamental facts of geology as they were understood at the time, and fossils helped him understand even better. Through the knowledge that fossils gave him, Parkinson described the formation of oil and coal and the fossilization of wood and plants.
Parkinson was a believer in the principles of catastrophism, as described by French naturalist George Cuvier, who postulated that the modern Earth had been shaped by sudden, violent and cataclysmic events in the past. In particular, and like most scientists of the time, Parkinson firmly believed in the Great Flood described in the Bible, in which God controlled the creation and extinction of living beings. However, his scientific mind could not reconcile these beliefs with the concept of geological time. He could not conceive in his mind that all of creation could have been accomplished by God in just seven days, so he argued in his work; perhaps as a way to smooth over this incongruity, that each day described by the Bible was an allegorical representation of much longer periods on a geological scale.
Because of the increasing difficulty of identifying and classifying so many of his rare and beautiful specimens, Parkinson began to undertake the herculean work of detailed descriptions, but not before encountering several problems.
Firstly, there was no terminology to describe this new science. The word “geology” was not yet widely used, and the word “fossil” was used for almost anything extracted from the Earth, including minerals and archaeological artifacts. Also, the word “paleontology” would not begin to be coined until around 1822.
Additionally, there was the thorny problem of reconciling the age of fossils with religious beliefs. In the latter, Parkinson was aware of the advice given by the geologist John Hunter, who used the term “many thousands of centuries” when referring to the age of fossils.
In 1822, Parkinson published, “Elements of Orycthology: An Introduction to the Study of Fossil Organic Remains, especially those found in British Strata,” a textbook intended for students interested in fossils and their connection with the formation of our planet. He also contributed several articles to A Journal of Natural Philosophy, as well as to Chemistry and the Arts, all between 1809 and 1812, as well as the first, second and fifth volumes of the Geological Society’s Transactions between 1811 and 1815. In the first volume, he published, “Observations on some of the strata in the neighborhood of London, and the fossil remains contained in them,” in which he highlighted again that the study of fossils was a very important branch of geological research and concluded, for example, that its use allowed establishing stratigraphic continuity between France and England – a deduction highly advanced for his time.
The Antediluvian Paradigm
In Parkinson’s time, the prevailing theory stated that fossils were remains of animals and plants, but it had not yet been possible to explain how remains of marine creatures could be found in the interior of continents, far above sea level or on top of the mountains. Furthermore, while some fossils were relatively easy to identify, being almost identical to their modern counterparts, others had no analogs in the world today, which was worrying in the minds of scientists. At that time, scientific thought was quite confusing by the fact that religion continued to be the center of understanding of the world.
An example of the conflict between geological evidence and religious conceptions was expressed by Parkinson in the conclusions of Volume I of “Organic Remains of a Former World,” in which he summarized the following:
“During the progress of our inquiries, one fact was discovered, which demands our attention. During the numerous explorations of the strata containing the remains of organisms that existed in the world before the flood, not a single antediluvian piece of art has been found. This circumstance alone constitutes an argument against the eternity of man’s existence. If humanity existed eternally, the number of human beings existing at the time of the flood would have been so great, and their extent over the face of the earth would have been so general, that their weapons, utensils and furniture must necessarily have been frequently discovered among antediluvian remains. This circumstance, however, it must be admitted, appears to prove that since none of the remains of man’s labors have been discovered, we are without proof of the existence of any human beings, at the time of the flood; and therefore we have more reason to suppose that man had not been created at the period at which this event occurred, in which all species, excepting a few individuals, were destroyed.”
In this way, Parkinson contradicts the common literal reading of the book of Genesis, in which it is narrated that in the 40 days of the flood, every living being – every man, every beast, bird and reptile – was erased from the face of the Earth.
Another interesting idea to highlight, contradicting somehow the religious ideas of the time, is found in the preface of Volume III of “Organic Remains of a Former World,” in which in summary it reads:
“Many have been led to doubt the total extinction of some species, and the creation of others, as circumstances which would be incompatible with the power and wisdom of the Almighty, who would have formed a creation so complete at first, as to have required no subsequent changes … the extinction of species is something that occurs even in our days, as shown by the discovery of dead shells on the island of Saint Helena, differing from any known recent or fossil shells. The small remaining number of some species such as the Dodo bird and the sloths, seems also to give some support to this opinion.”
Death
Parkinson died of a stroke at the age of 69 on Dec. 21, 1824, at 3 Pleasant Row, Kingsland Road, Hoxton. He bequeathed his house in Langthorne to his children and his wife, and his pharmacy to his son, John William Keys, who continued to practice medicine in the family home for 12 more years, until he moved from Hoxton Square. Parkinson, his father John and his son John William were buried in the churchyard of St. Leonard’s Church, Shoreditch. The exact location of his grave is unknown, and his body might lie in the crypt of the church or an unknown location in its cemetery.
After Parkinson’s death, his famous collection of fossils was auctioned by his wife Mary in 1827 and dispersed around the world. Part of his collection was sold at auction and purchased by George W. Featherstonhaugh, a British-American geologist and geographer. The specimens were taken to America; where some years later, they were destroyed by a fire that consumed the museum in which they were located. However, another part of Parkinson’s collection was eventually acquired by the University of Oxford and Cambridge, as well as the British Museum of Natural History, where some of the specimens are still displayed in the geology section.
At the time of his death in 1824, geology was just entering its golden age, when collecting and describing fossils became the passion of the entire nation. But it was Parkinson who advanced paleontology from the realm of pure collection for the sake of curiosity to a real science, insisting, as he so often did, that fossils could provide information about the formation of the Earth in a way that nothing else could.
The Legacy of James Parkinson
James William Keys Parkinson was an archetypal figure of the late 18th and early 19th centuries in England, with a multiplicity of facets. First as an apothecary and surgeon, then as a political activist, then as a writer of popular medicine, and a respected academic collaborator also in medicine; all while he worked as a devoted and appreciated parish doctor, as well as a noted amateur chemist, and if this were not enough, he also became a famous and renowned paleontologist.
The World Health Organization established World Parkinson’s Day in 1997, celebrating it each year on April 11, the date of birth of James W. K. Parkinson. In addition to the disease of the same name, Parkinson’s has received tribute with the names of numerous fossils and living organisms, among which we can mention: the ammonite Parkinsonia parkinsoni (see accompanying photo), the nautiloid Paraturia parkinsoni, the crinoid Apiocrinus parkinsoni, the mollusk Perissoptera parkinsoni, the sea urchin Tripneustes parkinsoni, the gastropod Turbo parkinsoni, the tree Nipa parkinsoni, the turtle Puppigerus parkinsonii, and the bird Procellaria parkinsoni. The task of the new generations of scientists is not to forget the great men, who, with their vast and multifaceted contributions, promoted the progress of sciences.