A brief on Alois Alzheimer (Professor of Psychiatry)

Alois Alzheimer was born on the 14th of June 1864 in Markbreit a small Bavarian village, Southern Germany where his father was notary public. He studied medicine in Berlin, Tubingen and Wurzburg where he wrote his doctoral theses on ceruminal glands and graduated with a medical degree in 1887. 

In December 1888 he began his medical career as a resident at the Hospital for the Mentally ill and Epileptics in Frankfurt am Main where he stayed for seven years and was subsequently promoted to senior physician. Later Alzheimer worked seven more years as an assistant physician at the Municipal Hospital for Lunatics and Epileptics also called Asylium in Frankfurt headed by Emil Sioli. Here he made his education in psychiatry and devoted himself to his main interest, neuropathology, where he became interested in research of the human brain cortex. He set up an archive of autopsy cases which would prove to be useful to him during his career.

 One year after Alzheimer started to work in the Asylium, the neurologist Franz Nissl joined the team. Nissl was known for his revolutionary “Nissl staining” method for nerve cells which is still used in routine and experimental neurohistology laboratories. A close friendship arose between the two scientists, working with the patient during the day and spending evenings discussing findings over the microscope.

In April 1894, Alzheimer married a banker’s widow, Cecilia Geiseinheimer, and they had three children.

During his stay in Frankfurt, Alzheimer met a 51 years old woman, Auguste Deter, who had been admitted in 1901. She was suffering from disorientation, impaired memory and troubles in reading and writing. The symptoms increased to hallucinations and to loss of higher mental functions. Deter died in 1906, four years after Alzheimer had left Frankfurt, but her brain was studied. Alzheimer’s second case was a demented 56 years old man, Johann F, who was admitted to the university psychiatric clinic on September 12 1907. He died three years later. The autopsy of his brain showed changes similar to those of the first patient. E. Kraepelin proposed that the syndrome should be called “Alzheimer’s disease”. 

During his career, he also worked on general paralysis, cerebral atherosclerosis, damage caused by chronic alcoholism, acute syphilitic, infections of the brain and anatomical basis of idiocy. He was a chain smoker.

On July 1912, Wilhelm II of Prussia signed Alzheimer’s certificate of appointment as full professor of psychiatry at the University of Breslau. On the train going to Breslau, he fell ill and was hospitalized. He suffered from rheumatic heart disease and died of heart failure.

 @ Contributed by Dr. Chidimma Rhoda Nwutobo (September 21, 2017)