Two hundred years after the publication, of "An Essay on the Shaking Palsy", this indisputable landmark in our understanding of the nature of Parkinson's disease still remains. What is frequently overlooked, however, is the originality of James Parkinson's ideas about how clinical observations could be segregated into diagnostic entities. Parkinson was a surgeon apothecary with wide ranging int...

Occupational medicine and specialist health and safety practice in the 21st century are changing rapidly. ‘Modern’ occupational diseases—psychological stress, non-specific musculoskeletal disorders, the subtle psycho-social interactions between motivation and perception of disability— absorb most of our time and professional energy. It is easy to forget that the workplace hazards that were fami...

The Manchester urban area evolved rapidly in the early 19th century from a series of small towns to a major industrial conurbation with huge material flows and worldwide trade connections. A combination of the availability of nearby coalfields, canals, and free trade, which encouraged entrepreneurial enterprise, made Manchester into the ‘shock’ city of the industrial revolution. Rapid nucleated...

The purpose of this study was to present the evolution of views on epilepsy as a disease and symptom during the 19th and the 20th century. A thorough study of texts, medical books, and reports along with a review of the available literature in PubMed was undertaken. The 19th century is marked by the works of the French medical school and of John Hughlings Jackson who set the research on epileps...

The stethoscope is currently at the crossroads. For two centuries now, the stethoscope has been a central part of examining the thorax. Nevertheless, this omnipresent tool of the medical profession (‘conversation piece’) is at the heart of the debate over how diagnostic medicine should be practised. At the moment, there are many divergent views on the value of using the stethoscope as a primary...