I have been specialized in memory and memory disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders for a quarter of a century. Interestingly, in all that time I have read very little about Dr. Alois Alzheimer (6/14/1864 – 12/19/1915). Engelhardt and de Mota Gomes wrote a recent article (“Alzheimer’s 100 anniversary of death and his contribution to a better understanding of senile dementia,” 2015, Arquivos De Neouro-Psiquiatria, 73, 159-162 PMID 25742587) in honor of the upcoming 100th anniversary of his death that helped me put Dr. Alzheimer in a broader context.

It’s important to understand that the concept of “senile dementia” dates back thousands of years. Both Aristotle and Plato held the belief that old age is linked to inevitable memory failure. The concept of mental stimulation as neuroprotective is also not new. Cicero believed that keeping mentally active prevented or delayed mental decline that he believed comes with age. Cullen defined senile dementia as “a decay in perception and memory” in the 18th century. Phillip Pinel, the great reformer of asylums, set the stage for not only more humane treatment but also increased empirical and pathological observation of those with mental disorders as the brain was increasingly viewed as cause of mental disorders. This has burgeoned into he current explosion of neuroscience and biological reductionism.

Aloysius Alzheimer was instrumental in transforming senile dementia into a brain disorder that is subject to scientific study. He was born in Marktbriet, Bavaria. He obtained his MD from Wurburg University in 1887. He was married with three children but widowed after 7 years. During his career he worked as what would now be known as a biological psychiatrist at hospitals in Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Munich, and Breslau. He had a long friendship and collaboration with Emil Kraepelin, the founder of modern scientific psychiatry, psychopharmacology, and psychiatric genetics.

Although his contribution to biological psychiatry was quit broad, his most famous case was Auguste Deter who was 51 in 1901. Her first symptom was jealousy toward her husband followed by memory decline, disorientation, aphasia, apraxia, agnosia, paraphrasing, and persecutory delusions. Alzheimer studied her for 5 months and later followed her until her death in 1906 at age 55. He was the first to describe “thick bundles of neurofibrils” now known at tangles along with “miliari foci of peculiar substance” now known as plaques based on post-mortem autopsy of her brain. He presented a paper at a Psychiatric Congress in 1906 and published his findings in 1907, which led Kraepelin to coin the name Alzheimer’s disease for this condition in his famous Textbook of Psychiatry in the 1910 edition.

Alzheimer died in 1915 of “renal and respiratory failure” at the age of 51.