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JAMES PARKINSON AND WILLIAM J. LITTLE
596 person could take because interested or for any other reason, courses that could be biased for mycologists, the medically qualified, or laboratory assistants, and even for some specialised topics within such general groupings. This is not the place to suggest details of the courses themselves. One generalisation is that little effective training can be accomplished in under a month or six weeks, and another that lectures should take second place to comprehensively planned demonstrations and practical classes. If any one medical school decided to give medical mycology the attention it merits and to meet the demand which is there, a service to graduates of other medical schools in the country should be envisaged. Perhaps arrangements for medical mycology could be included in the proposals announced by the Minister of Health for regrouping London’s postgraduate teaching hospitals.’ If so, it is not too early to plan for such a development. G. C. AINSWORTH
other countries. To the mycologist be a medical counterpart-a pathologist for preference. This partnership needs modest technical support, and many of the facilities found in a standard department of bacteriology. Contacts with clinicians (especially those specialising in dermatology and tropical medicine) must be ensured, and liaison with the veterinary profession not forgotten. In other countries some of the medical mycology units which offer instructional courses have diagnostic or other advisory duties, some have not. Most have, and all should have, resources for postgraduates to study for higher degrees and research. (That there should be opportunity for research by the permanent staff goes without saying.) The medical undergraduate curriculum is already overcrowded, and on the wide view mycoses have not the importance for detailed treatment at that stage. What seems to be most needed is the offer of recurring courses to introduce mycologists or medical graduates or others to the study of medical mycology-courses that any suitably
already learnt from there
qualified
must
7. See Lancet,
PARKINSON AND WILLIAM J. LITTLE
JAMES
LAST week saw the unveiling of plaques erected on London houses to commemorate London Hospital men whose names are widely known through the diseases called after them. Parkinson’s disease was described 144 years ago and Little’s disease exactly 100 years ago.
(1755-1824)
James Parkinson was the son of John Parkinson, a doctor living at 1, Hoxton Square, Shoreditch, then a residential district with
lovely gardens.
A search of London
Hospital
records, by Dr. Arthur Morris,1 has shown that James was for six months a pupil of Richard Grindall, F.R.S., assistant surgeon to The London, after which he
practised as family doctor
a
in his father’s house at Hoxton Square. He was a pupil also of John Hunter. He is remembered today for his classic description which came out in his Essay on the Shaking Palsy in 1817. Parkinson was a
radical, a reformer, a political agitator, and pamphleteer, member of a secret society (the London Corresponding Society) he got into trouble with Authority. His most important contributions outside medicine are his works on fossil remains and especially his book Organic Remains of a Former World (1804) in three volumes. Many fossils are called after him, for example Parkinsorzia parkínsoni, which is a species of ammonite. His main contribution to geology sprang from his wide reading and many personal contacts; for his particular gift was the collation of information.
and
as a
The home in which Parkinson was born was demolished forty years ago, and the plaque appears on the
some
1.
Lancet, 1955, i, 760.
pp.
34, 57.
furniture factory of Lewis Woolf & Sons. It was unveiled by Dr. Robert Tringham, a great-great-grandson, who practises in Norwich.
Before Our Time
JAMES PARKINSON
July 1, 1961,
WILLIAM JOHN LITTLE (1810-94) Dr. Little was born in Aldgate at the Red Lion Inn, Red Lion Street (later renamed Leman Street), where his father was landlord, and he was a student at The London Hospital. In 1836, stimulated by an interest in his own deformity, he visited Hanover to inquire into the value of Stromeyer’s claims for subcutaneous tenotomy. He saw Stromeyer’s work and was appar-
ently operated on by Stromeyer for his talipes equinovarus.
was
The result
satisfactory
and Little wrote an M.D. thesis for Berlin on talipes. This was the first monograph on tenotomy ever published. In 1839 Little became assistant physician to The London Hospital. His most famous work, OM the Deformities of the Human Frame, was published in 1853. A hundred years ago, in 1861, his paper " On the Influence of Abnormal Parturition, Difficult Labours, Premature Birth, Asphyxia Neonatorum, on the Mental and Physical Condition of the Child, especially in Relation to Deformities " appeared in the Transactions of the Obstetrical Societv of London. This was the first investigation into the cause of spastic rigidity of the limbs of newborn children. It led to the use all over the world of the term Little’s disease or spastic diplegia for a group of disabilities beginning at birth. Little became the founder of British orthopaedic surgery and established the first orthop2adic hospital for the study and treatment of disabilities of the limbs and spine. The Orthopaedic Infirmary was opened in Bloomsbury Square in 1840.
The plaque appears on the Old Red Lion, a building of later date. The unveiling was performed by the senior member of the Little family, his grandson, Admiral Sir D. H. Charles Little, G.C.B.
other countries. To the mycologist be a medical counterpart-a pathologist for preference. This partnership needs modest technical support, and many of the facilities found in a standard department of bacteriology. Contacts with clinicians (especially those specialising in dermatology and tropical medicine) must be ensured, and liaison with the veterinary profession not forgotten. In other countries some of the medical mycology units which offer instructional courses have diagnostic or other advisory duties, some have not. Most have, and all should have, resources for postgraduates to study for higher degrees and research. (That there should be opportunity for research by the permanent staff goes without saying.) The medical undergraduate curriculum is already overcrowded, and on the wide view mycoses have not the importance for detailed treatment at that stage. What seems to be most needed is the offer of recurring courses to introduce mycologists or medical graduates or others to the study of medical mycology-courses that any suitably
already learnt from there
qualified
must
7. See Lancet,
PARKINSON AND WILLIAM J. LITTLE
JAMES
LAST week saw the unveiling of plaques erected on London houses to commemorate London Hospital men whose names are widely known through the diseases called after them. Parkinson’s disease was described 144 years ago and Little’s disease exactly 100 years ago.
(1755-1824)
James Parkinson was the son of John Parkinson, a doctor living at 1, Hoxton Square, Shoreditch, then a residential district with
lovely gardens.
A search of London
Hospital
records, by Dr. Arthur Morris,1 has shown that James was for six months a pupil of Richard Grindall, F.R.S., assistant surgeon to The London, after which he
practised as family doctor
a
in his father’s house at Hoxton Square. He was a pupil also of John Hunter. He is remembered today for his classic description which came out in his Essay on the Shaking Palsy in 1817. Parkinson was a
radical, a reformer, a political agitator, and pamphleteer, member of a secret society (the London Corresponding Society) he got into trouble with Authority. His most important contributions outside medicine are his works on fossil remains and especially his book Organic Remains of a Former World (1804) in three volumes. Many fossils are called after him, for example Parkinsorzia parkínsoni, which is a species of ammonite. His main contribution to geology sprang from his wide reading and many personal contacts; for his particular gift was the collation of information.
and
as a
The home in which Parkinson was born was demolished forty years ago, and the plaque appears on the
some
1.
Lancet, 1955, i, 760.
pp.
34, 57.
furniture factory of Lewis Woolf & Sons. It was unveiled by Dr. Robert Tringham, a great-great-grandson, who practises in Norwich.
Before Our Time
JAMES PARKINSON
July 1, 1961,
WILLIAM JOHN LITTLE (1810-94) Dr. Little was born in Aldgate at the Red Lion Inn, Red Lion Street (later renamed Leman Street), where his father was landlord, and he was a student at The London Hospital. In 1836, stimulated by an interest in his own deformity, he visited Hanover to inquire into the value of Stromeyer’s claims for subcutaneous tenotomy. He saw Stromeyer’s work and was appar-
ently operated on by Stromeyer for his talipes equinovarus.
was
The result
satisfactory
and Little wrote an M.D. thesis for Berlin on talipes. This was the first monograph on tenotomy ever published. In 1839 Little became assistant physician to The London Hospital. His most famous work, OM the Deformities of the Human Frame, was published in 1853. A hundred years ago, in 1861, his paper " On the Influence of Abnormal Parturition, Difficult Labours, Premature Birth, Asphyxia Neonatorum, on the Mental and Physical Condition of the Child, especially in Relation to Deformities " appeared in the Transactions of the Obstetrical Societv of London. This was the first investigation into the cause of spastic rigidity of the limbs of newborn children. It led to the use all over the world of the term Little’s disease or spastic diplegia for a group of disabilities beginning at birth. Little became the founder of British orthopaedic surgery and established the first orthop2adic hospital for the study and treatment of disabilities of the limbs and spine. The Orthopaedic Infirmary was opened in Bloomsbury Square in 1840.
The plaque appears on the Old Red Lion, a building of later date. The unveiling was performed by the senior member of the Little family, his grandson, Admiral Sir D. H. Charles Little, G.C.B.