Hallmarks of Clinical Aspects of Parkinson's Disease Through Centuries.

James Parkinson published a treatise "An Essay on The Shaking Palsy" in 1817. However, there is historical evidence that there were rudimentary descriptions of the disease long before Parkinson brought it to light. Later day physicians have added to the spectrum of the motor aspects of the disease over the last 200 years and the gamut of its clinical presentation is now known to be more ubiquitous than what was supposed earlier. In the 1960s, atypical Parkinsonism is identified as a distinct and separate entity, and after the introduction of levodopa in clinical practice, a variety of late motor complications have been described. Various stages of disability and motor scales have been devised which have helped in identifying and classifying the degree of severity of the disease. However, such impeccable was the original description that virtually little could be modified and later works have only added to the original text.