Medicine
Parkinson turned away from his tumultuous political career, and between 1799 and 1807 published a number of medical works, including a work on gout in 1805. He was also responsible for the earliest writings on the subject of peritonitis in English medical literature.
Parkinson was the first person to systematically describe 6 individuals with symptoms of the disease that bears his name. He did not formally examine these patients but observed them on daily walks, and in some cases obtained from them their disease-symptom histories by simple inquiry. It was Jean Martin Charcot who coined the term "Parkinson's disease" over 60 years later.
Parkinson was also interested in improving the general health and well-being of the population. He wrote several medical doctrines that exposed a similar zeal for the health and welfare of the people that was expressed by his political activism. He was a crusader for legal protection for the mentally ill, as well as their doctors and families.
In 1812 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.
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Famous quotes containing the word medicine:
“I have noticed that doctors who fail in the practice of medicine have a tendency to seek one another’s company and aid in consultation. A doctor who cannot take out your appendix properly will recommend you to a doctor who will be unable to remove your tonsils with success.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“For this invention of yours will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn it, by causing them to neglect their memory, inasmuch as, from their confidence in writing, they will recollect by the external aid of foreign symbols, and not by the internal use of their own faculties. Your discovery, therefore, is a medicine not for memory, but for recollection,—for recalling to, not for keeping in mind.”
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