When my Popee found out that he had Parkinson's disease around his 64rth Birthday, my family was devastated. We knew very little about the illness. We knew that it was a degenerative disease, but not what kind. In order to help my Popee live easier, we needed to know more about it. We wanted to find out what Parkinson's disease was, what the symptoms were and why he got it in the first place. Parkinson's disease is caused by the gradual loss of nerve cells in a deep part of the brain called the substantia nigra. In effect, the brain has a decreased concentration of the neurotransmitter, dopamine, in the corpus striatum because those lost cells are responsible for producing that neurotransmitter.
             By the time that the disease was recognized, the dopamine concentration in the stratium was decreased by 80 percent. Without dopamine, the body develops many symptoms like trembling, slow movement, and stiff muscles. Throughout history, the symptoms have been identified, but the cause was unknown. James Parkinson described the clinical features in 1817 in his paper called "Essay on the Shaking Palsy". "Most notable was his 1817 medical publication, An Essay on the Shaking Palsy. He provides several insightful case histories of the movement disorder that came to be called Parkinson's disease" (http://www.mayo.edu/fpd/pd-info/pd-history.htm 1). The cause of the disease was not understood till the mid-twentieth century even though it was recognized many years earlier.
             Early detection sometimes does not happen. It is improbable that a doctor will be able to detect disease by looking for the early symptoms. They do a quick run through of the patient and if they did not see anything that stood out, they normally would not catch it. In the early stages of this disease, it is common for symptoms to be missed. The people that usually notice peculiarities are family members or ones that are close. They notice a slight deviation from the normal. A...