Did John Hunter Give James Parkinson an Idea?

Parkinson's introductory paragraph, perhaps the most famous disease description in neurology reads: "Involuntary tremulous motion, with lessened muscular power, in parts not in action and even when supported; with a propensity to bend the trunk forwards, and to pass from walking to a running pace: the senses and intellects being uninjured."¹ Most great ideas come from somewhere or someone. What or who started James Parkinson's thinking about the difference between tremor with motion and tremor at rest? Do the references in his essay tell us? Did he receive his stimulus from those he quoted, the Dutchman, Franciscus Sylvius de le Boe, or the Frenchman, François Boissier de la Croix de Sauvages, or from Galen, a Greco-Roman, all three ofwhom he read in Latin? Let us look at Parkinson's quotes. Sylvius de le Boe (1614-1672), a perceptive Dutchman who gained fame for introducing bedside teaching in Leiden, the Netherlands, wrote