shaking palsy (Parkinson’s disease)

The name physician James Parkinson, who was the first to identify the disease that now bears his name, gave to the symptoms he described in his 1817 paper “Essay on the Shaking Palsy,” which presented the first published case studies of Parkinson’s disease. Shaking refers to the tremors that characterize Parkinson’s disease. Palsy is an archaic term for paralysis, a reference to the bradykinesia (slowed muscle response and movement) and akinesia (lack of muscle response and movement) that are hallmark symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. At the time Parkinson published his observations, there were no treatments for the disease so its course was rapidly debilitating and inevitably fatal.