Alois Alzheimer

From Freepedia

Alois Alzheimer (Alois is a short form for his given name Aloysius) (June 14, 1864 - December 19, 1915), a German psychiatrist and neuropathologist, was a colleague of Emil Kraepelin, who first identified the symptoms of what is now known as Alzheimers Disease. He observed the disease in a patient he first saw in 1901, and published his findings from his postmortem examination of her brain in 1906. He was born in a small town called Marktbreit, Bavaria, where his father served in the office of notary public. Alzheimer attended Aschaffenburg, Tübingen, Berlin, and Würzburg universities. He received a medical degree at Würzberg University in 1887. In the following year, he spent five months assisting mentally ill women, before he took an office in the city mental asylum in Frankfurt am Main: the Städtische Anstalt für Irre und Epileptiche (asylum for lunatics and epileptics). Emil Sioli was the dean of that asylum (1852-1922). Another neurologist, Franz Nissl (1860-1919), began to work in that same asylum with Alzheimer, and they knew each other. Much of Alzheimers later work on brain pathology made use of Nissl's method of silver staining of the histological sections. Alzheimer was the co-founder and co-publisher of the German journal called Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie. He never wrote a book that he would call his own. He fell ill on the train to University of Breslau where he was appointed professor of psychiatry in 1912. Most probably he had a streptococcal infection and subsequent rheumatic fever and kidney failure. He died of heart failure at the age of 51, in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland).

External links

• Who Named It? - Alois Alzheimer
• Alois Alzheimer's Biography, International Brain Research Organization