'Billy Connolly says he's no idea who Parkinson was and just wishes he'd kept his disease to himself. He should read this book.' Jeremy Paxman Parkinson's disease is one of the most common forms of dementia, with 10,000 new cases each year in the UK alone, and yet few know anything about the man the disease is named after. In 1817 - exactly 200 years ago - James Parkinson (1755-1824) defined the disease so precisely that we still diagnose it today by recognising the symptoms he identified. The story of this remarkable man's contributions to the Age of the Enlightenment is told through his three passions - medicine, politics and fossils. As a political radical Parkinson was interrogated over a plot to kill King George III and revealed as the author of anti-government pamphlets, a crime for which many were transported to Australia; while helping Edward Jenner set up smallpox vaccination stations across London, he wrote the first scientific study of fossils in English, which led to fossil-hunting becoming the nation's latest craze - just a glimpse of his many achievements. Cherry Lewis restores this neglected pioneer to his rightful place in history, while creating a vivid and pungent portrait of life as an 'apothecary surgeon' in Georgian London.

'Billy Connolly says he's no idea who Parkinson was and just wishes he'd kept his disease to himself. He should read this book.' Jeremy Paxman Parkinson's disease is one of the most common forms of dementia, with 10,000 new cases each year in the UK alone, and yet few know anything about the man the disease is named after. In 1817 - exactly 200 years ago - James Parkinson (1755-1824) defined the disease so precisely that we still diagnose it today by recognising the symptoms he identified. The story of this remarkable man's contributions to the Age of the Enlightenment is told through his three passions - medicine, politics and fossils. As a political radical Parkinson was interrogated over a plot to kill King George III and revealed as the author of anti-government pamphlets, a crime for which many were transported to Australia; while helping Edward Jenner set up smallpox vaccination stations across London, he wrote the first scientific study of fossils in English, which led to fossil-hunting becoming the nation's latest craze - just a glimpse of his many achievements. Cherry Lewis restores this neglected pioneer to his rightful place in history, while creating a vivid and pungent portrait of life as an 'apothecary surgeon' in Georgian London.

In this book, Cherry Lewis skilfully blends the history of gauging the age of the earth with a biography of Arthur Holmes, a British geologist who was a pioneer of geochronology. When it was deeply unfashionable to do so in the early twentieth century, he spent many years trying to prove the great antiquity of the earth, stating that it was 'perhaps a little indelicate to ask of our Mother Earth her age, but Science acknowledges no shame'. Both fascinating and touching, this book appeals to a broad readership of both geologists and science enthusiasts.