Parkinson’s Awareness Month

Damien Ihrig, MA, MLIS
Curator, John Martin Rare Book Room

April is Parkinson's Awareness Month. To help with the cause, we highlight the work of Jean-Martin Charcot in this month's newsletter.  Parkinson's Disease is a neurological movement disorder affecting brain cells that produce the chemical dopamine. This hits close to home for me, as I have close relatives who have struggled with Parkinson's. I am sure many of you have similar stories.

We know a lot about Parkinson's and are learning more every day. Observations of Parkinsonian symptoms can be found in several ancient writings, including Galen. In 1817, an English doctor, John Parkinson, wrote about several cases of what was then known as paralysis agitans or shaking palsy. Several early neurologists studied and wrote about the illness, including Sr. William Richard Gowers and Jean-Martin Charcot.

Arguably, Charcot was the 19th-century neurologist who did the most to help understand the disease at the time. And it was Charcot who lobbied to name it “maladie de Parkinson” after Dr. Parkinson, recognizing his early work describing the disease.

Stay well and happy reading!

April 14 at 7:00 PM (central) – The John Martin Rare Book Room Presents & Iowa Bibliophiles
The Roots of Medicine
Zoom link

As winter fades in Iowa and the landscape begins the welcome return to various shades of green, our thoughts turn to nature and the plants that sustain us. Plants and their by-products have a long history in medicine, predating the written record. Ancient medical philosophers, including Hippocrates and Galen, wrote of the medicinal “virtues” of plants that influenced Western medical practice for more than a thousand years. Some of the most striking illustrated early printed works are medicinal plant books, referred to as herbals.

To increase the visibility of these rare books and foster inclusion of history of medicine materials in curricula across campus, librarians from the Hardin Library for the Health Sciences at the University of Iowa proposed to create a medicinal garden with an accompanying digital exhibit. Serendipitously, the College of Pharmacy planned a medicinal garden of their own for their planned new building. Joining forces with representatives from the College of Pharmacy, a local gardening group, and a horticulture expert from Iowa State University, they created The Roots of Medicine project. The Roots of Medicine combines images and information from rare herbal works in the John Martin Rare Book Room (JMRBR), modern, cutting-edge medical research, and digital technology to present an augmented garden walk through history. Damien Ihrig, Curator for the JMRBR, and Hardin Librarians Matt Regan, MA, MLIS, and Chris Childs, MS will present on the formation of the project, a demonstration of the technology, and the individual books used in the project.

Book of the Month

JEAN MARTIN CHARCOT (1825-1893). Lectures on the diseases of the nervous system : delivered at La Salpêtrière. Translation of Leçons sur les maladies du système nerveaux, faites à la Salpêtrière. Three volumes. Printed by The New Sydenham Society in London, 1877-1881. Translated into English by George Sigerson (the third volume is credited to Thomas Savill). 325 pages (vol. 1), 325 pages (Vol. 2), and 399 pages (Vol. 3 - with several unnumbered pages of color illustrations). All volumes are 22 cm tall.

This month's selection is an English translation of a collection of lectures given by one of the greatest neurologists of their time. Jean-Martin Charcot was a prodigious teacher and writer, and part of a famed French neurological tradition. He helped establish modern neurology and, among other accomplishments, created a more systematic neurological examination. He created a neurology clinic at the famous French hospital, Pitié-Salpêtrière. Charcot also taught many of the students who are considered the founders of modern neurology and psychiatry, including Georges Gilles de la Tourette, Alfred Binet, and Sigmund Freud.

He was born in Paris and eventually trained with Duchenne de Boulogne, himself a famous neurologist following in the footsteps of Galvani and his work on electrophysiology.

This course of lectures at the Salpêtrière constitutes one of the classic textbooks in the field of neurology and is his greatest work. This is the first series of lectures on nervous disorders. The three-volume English version presented here was translated and published from 1877 to 1881 by the Irish physician George Sigerson. The books are well-worn, an indication of their heavy use in the library system. The brown, cloth covers are somewhat tattered and the spine to volume 1 will require a little conservation TLC to fully reattach the spine piece. Overall, though, the books are in good shape, especially the paper. With proper care and handling, these are still available to researchers of all ages interested in the history of neurology and neurological diseases.

We have many works by Charcot, including the original Leçons sur les maladies du système nerveaux, faites à la Salpêtrière. If you are interested in seeing these or other items mentioned in this or earlier newsletters, please contact Damien Ihrig at damien-ihrig@uiowa.edu to arrange a visit in person or over Zoom.