Alois Alzheimer was a German psychiatrist who discovered the
pathological condition of dementia and diagnosed the disease that bears his
name.
Alois Alzheimer was born in Marktbreit, Germany, in 1864, and
showed an early aptitude for science. After obtaining his medical degree, he
worked in hospitals in Frankfurt, where he met Auguste Deter, a 51-year-old
woman suffering from progressive short-term memory loss. He was eventually able
to isolate the pathological causes of severe dementia, work so extensive that
the condition became known as Alzheimer's disease.
Alois Alzheimer was born on June 14, 1864, in the small Bavarian
town of Marktbreit, Germany. He excelled in science and attended the
universities of Berlin, Tübingen and Wurzburg, where he wrote his doctoral
thesis and graduated with a medical degree in 1887. His parents had taught him
that the strong look after the weak, and he set out to dedicate his life to
that maxim.
Work on Pathology of the Nervous System
In 1888, Alois Alzheimer began his residency at the Hospital for
the Mentally Ill and Epileptics in Frankfurt, Germany, headed by Emil Sioli, a
progressive psychiatrist who put "no restraints" on Alzheimer's work.
He stayed there for seven years, eventually being promoted to senior physician.
During this time, Alzheimer studied psychiatry and his passion of neuropathology.
He partnered with Franz Nissl, the distinguished neurologist, and together the
pair conducted extensive investigations on the pathology of the nervous system.
Their work resulted in the six-volume Histologic and Histopathology
Studies of the Cerebral Cortex, published between 1906 and 1918.
In April 1894, Alzheimer married Cecilia Geisenheimer, and the
couple went on to have three children. The marriage made him financially
independent, helping him support his own research. Cecilia died in 1901, and
Alzheimer's single younger sister, Elisabeth, came to Frankfurt to raise the
children.
In 1895, Nissl moved to Heidelberg, Germany, to work with the
distinguished German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin. Alzheimer stayed in
Frankfurt, working on a wide range of subjects, including manic depression and
schizophrenia. In 1901, he met Auguste Deter, a 51-year-old woman with strange
behavior symptoms and increasing short-term memory loss. Her condition rapidly
deteriorated into severe dementia. The patient would become his obsession over
the coming years.
In 1902, Kraepelin invited Alzheimer to work with him in
Heidelberg, and one year later they moved the operation to the university
psychiatric clinic at Munich. During this time Alzheimer studied the Deter case
and conducted microscopical investigations on other diseases, including
Huntington's chorea and epilepsy.
In 1906, Auguste Deter died, and Alzheimer had her patient records
and brain brought to Kraepelin's lab in Munich. During an autopsy, Alzheimer
identified a number of pathological conditions, including shrinking of the
cortex and the presence of neurofibrillary tangles and neurotic plaques. The
plaques and tangles were distinctive enough to warrant a diagnosis of senile
dementia, which became known as Alzheimer's disease.
During Alzheimer's tenure at the psychiatric clinic in Munich,
students from various countries attended his classes and marveled at his
teaching. He was well known for his hands-on style, moving among the different
microscope workstations and discussing each student's observations. Years
later, many would recall the sight of Alzheimer bowed over a microscope with
his pince-nez glasses dangling around his neck and a cigar in his mouth, which
he would set on the workstation table to conduct his explanations. It was said
that at the end of the day there would be a cigar stump at nearly every
student's workstation.
On July 16, 1912, King Wilhelm II of Prussia appointed Alois
Alzheimer professor of psychiatry at the University of Breslau (now Wroclaw,
Poland). Though Alzheimer suffered from rapidly deteriorating health, he
devoted the last three years of his life to research and clinical work. He died
in Breslau (now Wroclaw), Poland, on December 19, 1915, at the age of 51, from
cardiac failure—a result of an inflammation of the inner layer of the heart.
biography
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