Volume 28, Number 21 & 22 · January 21, 1982
Calling Dr. Cooper
By P.B. Medawar
The Vital Probe: My Life as a Brain Surgeon
by I.S. Cooper
Norton, 346 pp., $15.95
In a work that is still regarded as a classic of clarity of writing and astuteness of observation, James Parkinson (1775-1824) was the first to describe 'an evil from the domination of which the victim had no prospect of escape.' This was paralysis agitans, the shaking palsy that Charcot renamed 'Parkinson's disease.' It is marked by a wide variety of motor disorders of which the most conspicuous is uncontrollable tremor, sometimes accompanied by local muscular rigidity and by a characteristic rigidity of the muscles of facial expression leading to the set expression known as the 'parkinsonian mask.' For well over a hundred years the disease remained a complete mystery so far as concerned interpretation and treatment.
Review, 5423 words
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