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James Parkinson was an apothecary surgeon, political activist, and paleontologist during the latter part of the long eighteenth century. He is most famous for his 1817 work, An Essay on the Shaking Palsy, in which he was the first to describe and define the symptoms of paralysis agitans, a condition now known as Parkinson’s disease. During his lifetime, however, he was internationally renowned for his three-volume study of fossils, Organic Remains of a Former World. Sales of this work continued for 25 years after Parkinson’s death, even though much of its scientific content had become redundant. This was due to the beauty and fidelity of its illustrations, although Samuel Springsguth, the illustrator and engraver, is never explicitly acknowledged in the work. By examining several extant fossils known to have been in Parkinson’s collection and illustrated in his works, it has been possible to gain some insight into the way that Parkinson and Springsguth worked together when illustrating these volumes.

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