There’s a curious historical snippet in the latest edition of Neurology about how the famous French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot designed a shaking chair for patients with Parkinson’s disease after they reported sleeping better after a train or carriage ride.

The most obvious symptom of Parkinson’s disease is tremor and name first given to the condition, by James Parkinson in his famous essay, was the ‘shaking palsy’.

While Charcot’s 19th century contemporaries had tried ‘vibration therapy’ here and there, he was the first to systematically apply it to patients with Parkinson’s and found it helped with stiffness, discomfort and poor sleep.

Later Gilles de la Tourette, a one-time student of Charcot, developed the treatment into a type of electrical vibrating hat to specifically apply a 600 rpm treatment ‘directly’ to the brain.

The treatment was seemingly forgotten for many years but recently it has been revived and studies have found modest benefits for vibration therapy in Parkinson’s disease.

Link to paper.

Link to PubMed entry for same.