Dr. Alois Alzheimer - His Life and Work

1864

Dr. Alois Alzheimer

• Born June 14, 1864 in Marktbreit, Germany, in a small village near Wurzburg.
• Studied medicine at the universities of Berlin, Tubingen, and Wurzberg.
• At Wurzburg, he wrote his doctoral theses- Uber die Ohrenschmaltzdrusen (on ceruminal glands) in 1887, producing his first histological plates.
• In Dec. 1888, he began his medical career as a resident at the Hospital for the Mentally Ill and Epileptics, Frankfurt am Main, and was subsequently promoted to senior physician.
• In late 1888, Alzheimer began his medical career as an assistant physician at the Municipal Hospital for Lunatics and Epileptics (Städtische Irrenanstalt) in Frankfurt am Main, headed by Emil Sioli.
• Alzheimer was appointed director of the Irrenanstalt in 1895, continuing his research on a wide range of subjects, including clinical studies of manic depression and schizophrenia.
• Dr. Alzheimer’s research interests were wide ranging and included:
• dementia of degenerative and vascular (arteriosclerotic) origin
• psychoses
• forensic psychiatry

Dr. Franz Nissi

• epilepsy
• birth control
• Alzheimer’s interest in neuropathy of dementing disorders was shared by his colleague Franz Nissl
• Nissl provided Alzheimer with new histopathological techniques for studying nervous disorders.
• Alzheimer and Nissl began extensive investigations of the pathology of the nervous system.
• They studied in particular the normal and pathological anatomy of the cerebral cortex
• Their work resulted in a major six volume work entitled Histologische und histopatologische Arbeiten über die Grosshimrinde (Histologic and Histopathologic Studies of the cerebral Cortex) published between 1906 and 1918.
• Alzheimer’s efforts were concentrated on the patient material, while Nissl performed experimental studies of the reaction of nerve cells and tigroid substance after sectioning axons.
• Alzheimer was a careful and dedicated laboratory worker who proved his clinical observations histologically.
• He was known for his wonderful gift of description of his microscopical findings.

Dr. Alois Alzheimer and his family

• A close friendship arose between the two doctors. They worked with patients during the day, and spent their evenings and nights at the microscope.
• Dr. Alzheimer contributed to the development of a modern clinical service, while setting up a scientific patient database
• He built an archive of autopsy cases, on which he could rely during the rest of his scientific career
• In April 1894, Alzheimer married a banker’s widow Caecilie Geisenhammer, born Wallerstein, in Frankfurt.
• The Alzheimers had three children.
• His marriage provided him with the financial independence to allow him to support his own research.
• However, in 1901, Dr. Alzheimer’s wife died.
• In 1903, Alzheimer left Frankfurt, and after a short stay in Heidelberg at the university psychiatric clinic, worked at Royal Psychiatric Clinic in Munich, for Dr. Emil Kraepelin, one of the most highly regarded psychiatrists.
• Kraepelin believed that a vast number of mental illnesses were actually organic diseases.

Dr. Emil Kraepelin

• In his Handbook of Psychiatry, Kraepelin published the first classification of diseases. By the early 1890s, it became an international bestseller.
• Kraepelin had a lot of opposition from the psychiatric community.
• His most formidable rival was Sigmund Freud. – Freud's approach was that a large number of mental problems were neuroses of the mind, not organic diseases of the brain.
• Alzheimer's large study on general paralysis of the insane , published in 1904, is an excellent example of his work and one of his best known. – Starting out from 170 clinically typical cases, the characteristic histological features are determined, novel histological observations are compared with those in other diseases – Alzheimer then demonstrated how the histological differential diagnosis can be used to answer clinical questions.
• At a meeting of the South-West German Society of Alienists* in November 1906 Alzheimer described "eine eigenartige Erkrankung der Hirnrinde" (a peculiar disease of the cerebral cortex) - the clinical and neuropathological features of Auguste D, the 51 year old woman who had died in the Frankfurt mental asylum. *Alienists were superintendents of early mental institutions.
• In 1908, Alzheimer joined the staff of the Psychiatric Institute as ausserordentlicher (associate) professor and succeeded Robert Gaupp as director of the clinic’s anatomical laboratory.
• Alzheimer’s laboratory had a unusually warm atmosphere that was highly conducive to learning and creative research.

Alzheimer's laboratory

• On July 16, 1912, King Wilhelm II of Prussia signed Dr. Alzheimer’s certificate of appointment as full professor of psychiatry at the University of Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland).
• Alzheimer accepted the invitation and left Frankfurt.
• He felt ill on the train and had to be hospitalized immediately upon arrival.