19th century therapy for Parkinson's disease may help patients today

In the 19th century, Jean-Martin Charcot, developed a "vibration chair" to relieve symptoms of Parkinson's disease. He reported improvements in his patients, but he died shortly thereafter and a more complete evaluation was never conducted. Now a group of scientists at Rush University Medical Center have replicated his work, and they report that while vibration therapy does significantly improve some symptoms of Parkinson's disease, the effect is due to placebo or other nonspecific factors, and not the vibration. Read more