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Meet Dr. Alois Alzheimer!

Alois Alzheimer was born June 14, 1864 in Marktbreit am Main, Bavaria. He studied medicine in Tübingen, Berlin and Würzburg. In 1888 he joined the staff of the


Alois Alzheimer was born June 14, 1864 in Marktbreit am Main, Bavaria. He studied medicine in Tübingen, Berlin and Würzburg.

In 1888 he joined the staff of the city mental asylum in Frankfurt am Main and worked with Franz Nissl with whom he became close collaborators and lifelong friends. Alzheimer had a firm belief that clinical work and laboratory research were complementary: his mission was “to serve psychiatry with the microscope”. Alzheimer’s focus was on correlating psychiatric symptoms with histological results obtained from brain autopsies. He described brain changes in arteriosclerosis, loss of nerve cells in Huntington’s disease in the corpus striatum and brain changes in epilepsy. In 1901, Auguste D. was admitted to the Frankfurt asylum and became one of Dr. Alzheimer’s patients. In April 1906, Mrs. Deter died and Alzheimer had the patient records and the brain brought to Munich where he was working at Kraepelin's lab. Alzheimer saw increased silver staining in many nerve cells of the cerebral cortex of Auguste D., which he attributed to an abnormal thickening of neurofibrils and their alignment into bundle. These findings were reported in his lecture of November 1906 at the 37th Congress of Psychiatrists of Southern Germany in Tubingen.

During the later years of his career, Alzheimer concentrated on the study of changes in glial cells.

His death at the age of 51 was the result of cardiac failure following endocarditis.

References: 

Verhey, F. RJ. "Alois Alzheimer (1864–1915)." Journal of neurology 256.3 (2009): 502-503. 

Devi, Gayatri, and Wolfgang Quitschke. "Alois Alzheimer, Neuroscientist (1864-1915)." Alzheimer Disease & Associated Disorders 13.3 (1999): 132-137. 

Goedert, Michel, and Bernardino Ghetti. "Alois Alzheimer: his life and times."Brain pathology 17.1 (2007): 57-62. 

Cipriani, Gabriele, et al. "Alzheimer and his disease: a brief history."Neurological Sciences 32.2 (2011): 275-279.

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