Alois Alzheimer

Diagnoses

Vocation

Notable

German pathologist, graduated from Würzburg university in 1887 with a degree in medicine. In 1901, Dr. 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; the Frankfurt asylum was too expensive for her husband. Mr. Deter made several requests to have his wife moved to a less expensive facility, but Dr. Alzheimer intervened in these requests. Ms. Deter remained at the Frankfurt asylum, where Alzheimer had made a deal to receive her records and brain upon her death. On 8 April 1906, Ms. Deter died, and Dr. 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 staining techniques of Bielschowsky to identify amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. These brain anomalies would become identifiers of what later became known as Alzheimer's Disease. In 1912, the same year he became a professor in Breslau, Alzheimer became ill with strep throat, complicated by rheumatic fever and heart disease. He died three years later on 19 December 1915, Breslau, Germany, reportedly from endocarditis and kidney failure. He was 51. Link to Wikipedia biography