Beans, roots, and leaves: a history of the chemical therapy of Parkinsonism

Parkinsonism of various types has long been a debilitating and cruel affliction for significant numbers of people, and even today the cure remains elusive. The present volume explores the colorful and sometimes alarming history of the attempts to provide at least some relief from the symptoms of this disorder, commencing with interesting reports from ancient India and medieval Europe and continuing until the present time. Especial attention is devoted to L-DOPA therapy, still the leading pharmacological approach to the disorder more than forty years after its first application, and its place in the development of neurochemistry. But the employment of solanaceous plant alkaloid-based therapies, which dominated antiparkinsonian therapy until the mid-20th century, and the broad range of other approaches which found varying degrees of popularity, including those stimulated by the encephalitis epidemic which appeared in Europe during the First World War, are also discussed. The author concludes that antiparkinsonian therapy was never 'irrational', but was rather always determined by prevailing medical, pharmacological and scientific paradigms, so that its history is inextricably linked with experimental and clinical developments in these fields.

First sentence: Parkinson indicated in the pamphlet on the disorder named for him that he was by no means describing a new disease, but rather one which had until his time been neglected.

Year

2003

Language

English

Publisher

Tectum Verlag

Editions

1

Pages

902

ISBN

9783828884960

Data source: Wikidata