Who was Alois Alzheimer?

In June 1903, a researcher and pathologist named Alois Alzheimer (born Aloysius Alzheimer in 1864) was invited to open a psychiatric clinic in Munich, Germany, along with another physician named Emil Kraepelin. The clinic was to focus especially on brain research.

Three years later, Alzheimer gave a now famous conference at the 37th Congress of Psychiatrists in South Germany.

In his speech, Alzheimer stated that he had identified an “unusual disease of the cerebral cortex” that afflicted a woman named Auguste D. The disease caused memory loss, disorientation, and hallucinations that culminated in Auguste’s death at age 50.

At autopsy, Augusta’s brain showed various abnormalities. The cerebral cortex was much thinner than normal, but the discovery was given little importance. It was not until 1910 that Kraepelin named the disease “Alzheimer’s disease” in the 8th edition of the “Manual of Psychiatry”.

About Alois Alzheimer

Alois Alzheimer was born in 1864 in Markbreit in Bavaria, southern Germany. Eminent at school, he studied medicine in Berlin, Aschaffenburg, Tübingen and Würzburg, graduating in 1887. The following year, he began working at the state asylum in Frankfurt am Main, becoming interested in research on the human cerebral cortex. Here he began his studies in psychiatry and neuropathology.

Together with Franz Nissl, a colleague at the asylum, Alzheimer spent the next few years working on a major six-volume study, Histological and Histopathological Studies of the Cerebral Cortex, describing the pathology of the nervous system. The work was finally published between 1907 and 1918.

During his time working at the asylum, Alois married Cecilie Simonette Nathalie Wallerstein, with whom he had two children, Gertrude and Hans. Unfortunately, Alois’ marriage to Cecille would only last 7 years, Cecilie dying in 1901. Shortly after Cecille’s death, Alzheimer would make the decision to move to Munich at the invitation of Emil Kraepelin.

In 1913, en route to Breslau, Germany, Alzheimer contracted a severe cold complicated by endocarditis. He never fully recovered and died in 1915 at the age of 51, being buried next to his wife in the Jewish cemetery in Frankfurt am Main.

Today, the pathological diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease is generally based on the same investigative methods used in 1906.