Francois Boissier de Sauvages de la Croix (1706-1776) was one of the first to describe what we commonly know as Parkinson's Disease. He described different types of scelotyrbe and referred to PD as scelotyrbe festinans ("running disturbance of the limbs"). He described those afflicted as showing resistance, and sometimes tripping, when trying to walk.
James Parkinson was responsible for most of the other symptoms associated with the disease. He published a 66 page paper in 1817, titled, An Essay on the Shaking Palsy. Parkinson, for whom the disease is named after, included scelotyrbe festinans as one of the symptoms in his essay, but he recognized that the outward appearance of the disease was much more complex than originally predicted.
It wasn't until 1841 that Marshall Hall incorporated Parkinson's term, shaking palsy, into the medical language. Before then it was referred to by its Latin name, paralysis agitans.
In 1877, two famous scientists studied the tremor, characteristic of PD. Jean-Martin Charcot analyzed the writing of those affected by the disease. He studied the position of their hands and the tremor while writing. He noticed the thick irregular lines and was able to differentiate between the tremor usually seen in those with multiple sclerosis from the tremor characteristic of paralysis agitans. William Gowers, in 1886, recorded the tracings of the tremor pattern. He used a metal rod and attached one end to a trembling part of the body (usually a hand) and the other to a rotating drum covered with smoky paper. He found that as the disease progressed, the patterned tremor decreased in frequency and increased in size.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Kinnier Wilson started writing about the mental symptoms seen in PD patients. He noted that depression and irritability were the most common. By the early 1960's, Charcot had become very involved in researching PD. He was a leading neurologist of the time and agreed with Parkinson's account of the disease, but he criticized his lack of including rigidity as a key symptom of the disease. (Finger, 1994)