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A Surgeon for All Seasons Cles, Broadsheets and Pamphlets, Often Under the Pseudonym Old Hubert

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A Surgeon for All Seasons Cles, Broadsheets and Pamphlets, Often Under the Pseudonym Old Hubert tenements and factories as the Industrial Revolution gathered pace. London’s water and air became grossly contaminated, and overcrowding provided ideal conditions for diseases such as tuberculosis. Open fires, combustible clothing and dangerous manual work meant that fractures, lacerations, burns and hernias were common. The conditions Parkinson saw as he travelled on his rounds, often stricken with gout, might well have stirred his social and political awakening. He lived in turbulent times, marked by the Seven Years War, the War of American Inde- pendence and the Napoleonic Wars. High taxes to pay for these military adventures coincided with civilian unrest, influenced by the French Revolution of 1789. Parkinson became increasingly radical, advocating votes for all (at a time when approximately 2% of Britons were enfranchised), parliamentary reform, education of the poor and unfettered discussion of politics and religion. In 1792, he joined the London Corresponding Soci- MEDICAL HISTORY ety, which campaigned for parliamentary reform and promoted representation of all men. Parkinson became adroit at the social media of his age — producing periodical arti- A surgeon for all seasons cles, broadsheets and pamphlets, often under the pseudonym Old Hubert. Tilli Tansey extols a biography of the radical who gave In 1794, the radicalized Parkinson was his name to Parkinson’s disease. caught up in the Popgun Plot. The conspiracy seems to have been ‘fake news’, concocted by the authorities to justify restrictive legisla- arkinson’s disease is the second most Parkinson lived tion. Summoned to Whitehall to be exam- common neurodegenerative con- in the same house in ined, with Prime Minister William Pitt (the dition in the world, with 6 million Hoxton, east London, Younger) leading the questioning, Parkinson Ppeople affected. But who was Parkinson? In for most of his life. He admitted to writing inflammatory — even a splendid new book, historian of geology practised medicine seditious — pamphlets, but was never Cherry Lewis introduces us to a fascinat- there with his father, arrested. How he escaped is not clear. ing, multifaceted Enlightenment figure: and then his son, in a Next, Parkinson turned his talents to books the intellectually curious, politically active business that would on geology and general medical advice. As a and socially concerned London surgeon- span at least four gen- young apothecary, he had attended anatomi- apothecary James Parkinson (1755–1824). erations. In a seven- The Enlightened cal lectures by the celebrated surgeon John The Enlightened Mr. Parkinson reveals a year apprenticeship, Mr. Parkinson: Hunter, who, like many medics, collected man involved in endeavours as varied as the he learned to make The Pioneering fossils and encouraged their study. Parkinson Life of a Forgotten founding of the Geological Society and the medicines, diagnose English Surgeon started his own collection. In 1807, he was alleged Popgun Plot to assassinate George III. ailments and purge, CHERRY LEWIS invited to join like-minded individuals such Perhaps his most extraordinary accomplish- bleed and blister his Icon: 2017. as chemist Humphrey Davy and physician ment was the prescient 1817 monograph An patients, mostly lower- William Babington in founding the Geolog- Essay on the Shaking Palsy — the first exten- middle-class but with a smattering of the rich. ical Society. Struggling to reconcile biblical sive description of the disorder that would be He then spent six months as a surgical dresser authority with the fossil record, which sug- named after him. As Lewis reveals, the path to at what is now the Royal London Hospital. gested the existence of animal life hundreds this historic discovery was long and winding. During Parkinson’s lifetime, Lewis shows, of thousands of years before humanity, he Hoxton’s open fields disappeared beneath embraced the theory of Swiss naturalist NEW IN Drones and the Future of Armed Conflict: Ethical, Legal, and Strategic Implications PAPERBACK Eds David Cortright, Rachel Fairhurst & Kristen Wall (Univ. Chicago Press, 2017) This cogent and compelling edited volume on the burgeoning use of drones Highlights of this in warfare takes a hard look at issues such as accountability, even as it praises season’s releases. the technology. Contributors highlight the questionable efficacy and ethics surrounding the deployment of drones, particularly in Pakistan, and stress the need for international guidelines on their use. 28 | NATURE | VOL 544 | 6 APRIL 2017©2017 Mac millan Publishers Li mited, part of Spri nger Nature. All ri ghts reserved. BOOKS & ARTS COMMENT Jean-André de Luc that geological history ENERGY was a sequence of seven vast periods, each corresponding to a day of creation. In his medical work, Parkinson contin- ued to demonstrate a concern for social Muscle, steam justice. His 1799 book Medical Admoni- tions was intended to help poor families to recognize disease and understand when to pay for medical advice. In the following and combustion years, cheaper, condensed versions found a ready market with an increasingly lit- erate working class. Parkinson became Roger Fouquet applauds Vaclav Smil’s vast survey of involved with local issues of late-eight- the technologies powering human progress. eenth-century medicine: child labour, asylums and vaccination. His investiga- tion of the horrific conditions endured aclav Smil’s Energy and Civilization role of hunting in by destitute children working in facto- is a monumental history of how the extinction of the ries brought about local improvements, humanity has harnessed muscle, mammoths. 30 years before any national legislation. Vsteam and combustion to build palaces and From the fifth mil- He was also one of the first people in skyscrapers, light the night and land on the lennium bc to the London to offer smallpox vaccinations Moon. Want to learn about the number of middle of the second (he gave a dissecting microscope to his labourers needed to build Egypt’s pyramids of millennium ad, civili- friend Edward Jenner, who pioneered the Giza, or US inventor Thomas Edison’s battles zations such as those of procedure). Less successfully, he served with Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse ancient Egypt, Rome as a medical attendant to a private asy- to electrify homes and cities, or the upscaling Energy and and China through lum. At a trial in 1810, he was involved of power stations and blast furnaces in the Civilization: A to medieval and in a notorious false commitment of a twentieth century? Look no further. History Renaissance Europe VACLAV SMIL sane woman, for which he was widely Admired by Microsoft founder and MIT Press: 2017. collectively invented criticized. That experience prompted a philanthropist Bill Gates, Smil is a prolific technologies reliant book the following year — Mad-houses: writer on energy and environmental issues, on muscle power, wind and water, along with Observations on the Act for Regulating with a penchant for history. This is especially increasingly refined wheels and pulleys. Smil Mad-houses. Many of its suggestions for valuable today, when renewables such as explains that the shift from human to animal the humane treatment and legal pro- wind and solar power are set to disrupt the power and the use of irrigation, fertilizer and tection of the mentally ill were finally fossil-fuel-based energy system. Our use of crop rotation were key to increasing agricul- incorporated in the 1845 Lunacy Act. energy has been transformed since the late tural yields and ultimately population size. Given Parkinson’s broad interests, nineteenth century with the extraction of oil He reveals how settlements in warm climates, passions and activities, it is perhaps sur- and natural gas, the diffusion of technologies such as Mesoamerica or India, depended on prising that his name lives on because of driven by electricity and an area of agricultural one essay — politely received at the time the expansion of power- land 60 times greater but not widely known. His description distribution networks. SOLVING ONE than that of the aver- of the signs and symptoms of the disor- History offers guidance age town at the time. It der are still exemplary, although he had on paradigm shifts, and ENVIRONMENTAL was 100 times greater little to suggest in the way of causation how we adapt. in colder climates such or therapy. More than 50 years later, the The book is a signifi- PROBLEM OFTEN LEADS as northern Europe, great French neurologist Jean-Martin cantly revised, updated TO ANOTHER. where forests providing Charcot coined the expression maladie and more detailed ver- fuel for heat were also de Parkinson, and the essay began to gain sion of Smil’s Energy in needed. The ability a wider audience. I hope Lewis’s book will World History (Westview, 1994). It takes us to mine and use energy-dense fossil fuels do a similar job for the man himself. ■ back to prehistory to quantify the energy altered the ‘energy footprint’ of towns and expended by foragers, hunters and agrarian cities and allowed urban centres to become Tilli Tansey is professor of the history of societies. Smil uses evidence from the !Kung denser. Smil dwells on genius scientists modern medical sciences at Queen Mary, people in Botswana, the Maasai in Kenya and and heroic engineers of the first and sec- University of London. Alaskan whalers, and discusses 500,000-year- ond industrial revolutions between 1760 e-mail: [email protected] old spear tips found in South Africa and the and 1913, and the high-tech takeover Stem Cell Dialogues The Genius of Birds Sheldon Krimsky (Columbia Univ. Press, 2017) Jennifer Ackerman (Penguin, 2017) Sociologist Sheldon Krimsky explores the history In a study scattered through with personal of stem-cell research through an unusual lens: observations, science writer Jennifer Ackerman Socratic dialogues. From the ethics of cloning extols the startling intelligence of birds. New to the politics of using embryonic stem cells, Caledonian crows can fashion tools, magpies the scenarios examine the achievements and recognize their own reflections and western controversies of regenerative medicine.
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