1. Parkinson identified the disease in a pamphlet entitled An Essay On The Shaking Palsy published 200 years ago in 1817.
2. In 1876 French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot renamed it Parkinson’s disease.
3. Parkinson was also a noted paleontologist with one of the largest fossil collections in the world.
4. He was one of the first to suggest that fossils were the remains of ancient extinct creatures.
5. His three-volume Organic Remains Of A Former World was the most complete account of fossils of its time.
6. In 1812 he wrote, with his son John, a paper containing the earliest account of appendicitis.
7. Parkinson was also very good at shorthand which he thought every surgeon should practise.
8. He was wrong about the causes of Parkinson’s disease which he thought was due to a lesion of the upper spinal cord.
9. His recommended treatment was applications of mustard plaster to the back of the neck.
10. He campaigned for radical social reform under the name “Old Hubert” and in 1794 was supposedly involved in the “Pop-Gun” plot to kill George III
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