Dr. Alois Alzheimer was born June 14, 1864, in Marktbreit, Germany. He studied medicine at the universities of Würburg and Berlin. Upon his graduation in 1887, Dr. Alzheimer worked as a medical officer at the state asylum in Frankfurt am Main. There he became a leading neurologist, publishing works on epilepsy, brain tumors, syphilis, and hardening of the arteries. He was known for correlating the clinical course of his patients with the changes to the brain observed when autopsies were performed after their deaths.

In 1901, Dr. Alzheimer met Auguste D, a 51-year-old woman who became his patient at the asylum for the next four years. Her condition steadily deteriorated from displaying memory loss, difficulty with speech, confusion, suspicion, agitation, wandering, screaming when bedridden, incontinent and unaware of her surroundings.

When Alzheimer performed the autopsy of Auguste D after her death in 1905, he found that the brain had shriveled, and neurons had disappeared. He also discovered threadlike spindle-shaped objects “neurofibrillary tangles”, as well as thick viscous-looking blobs “senile plaques” similar to those previously found in the very old.

Dr. Alzheimer presented his findings to a group of psychiatrists in 1906, which was the first published description of this new dementia. When he made this discovery, Dr. Alzheimer had no idea the disease that was to be named after him would become the most common form of dementia in older people.

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