Alois Alzheimer

Alois Alzheimer ( , ; 14 June 1864 – 19 December 1915) was a German psychiatrist, neuropathologist and colleague of Emil Kraepelin. He is credited with identifying the first published case of "presenile dementia", which Kraepelin later identified as Alzheimer's disease.

Early life and education

Alzheimer was born in Marktbreit, Bavaria, on 14 June 1864, the son of Anna Johanna Barbara Sabina and Eduard Román Alzheimer. His father served in the office of notary public in the family's hometown. The family was devoutly Catholic.

The Alzheimers moved to Aschaffenburg when Alois was still young in order to give their children an opportunity to attend the Royal Humanistic Gymnasium (high school). After graduating with Abitur in 1883, Alzheimer studied medicine at University of Berlin, University of Tübingen, and University of Würzburg. In his final year at university, he was a member of a fencing fraternity, and even received a fine for disturbing the peace while out with his team. In 1887, Alzheimer graduated from Würzburg as Doctor of Medicine.

While at the Frankfurt asylum, Alzheimer also met Emil Kraepelin, one of the best-known German psychiatrists of the time. Kraepelin became a mentor to Alzheimer, and the two worked very closely for the next several years. When Kraepelin moved to Munich to work at the Royal Psychiatric Hospital in 1903, he invited Alzheimer to join him. They faced many challenges involving the politics of the psychiatric community. For example, formal and informal arrangements were made among psychiatrists at asylums and universities to receive cadavers.

Auguste Deter In 1901, Alzheimer observed a patient at the Frankfurt asylum named Auguste Deter. The 51-year-old patient had strange behavioral symptoms, including a loss of short-term memory; she became his obsession over the coming years. Auguste Deter was a victim of the politics of the time in the psychiatric community;

On 8 April 1906, Auguste Deter died, and Alzheimer had her medical records and brain brought to Munich where he was working in Kraepelin's laboratory. With two Italian physicians, he used the newly developed Bielschowsky stain to identify amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. These brain anomalies became identifiers of what is now known as Alzheimer's disease.

On 3November 1906, Alzheimer discussed his findings on the brain pathology and symptoms of presenile dementia publicly, at the Tübingen meeting of the Southwest German Psychiatrists.

Following his presentation, Alzheimer published a short paper summarizing his presentation; in 1907 he wrote a longer paper detailing the disease and his findings. Alzheimer eventually conceived "his" disease as mainly characterized clinically by a severe dementia with instrumental symptoms, and pathologically by extended neurofibrillary tangles. He debated fiercely with Oskar Fischer, a German-speaking pathologist from Prague, who instead emphasized on the importance of neuritic plaques and of presbyophrenia as the phenotype.

Alzheimer and Fischer had different interpretations of the disease, but owing to Alzheimer's short life,

Critics and rediscovery In the early 1990s, critics began to question Alzheimer's findings and form their own hypotheses based on Alzheimer's notes and papers. Amaducci and colleagues hypothesized that Auguste Deter had metachromatic leukodystrophy, a rare condition in which accumulations of fats affect the cells that produce myelin. Claire O'Brien, meanwhile, hypothesized that Auguste Deter actually had a vascular dementing disease.