Did anyone know that the First case of Alzheimer's Disease

In 1901 it was a wife of 51 year a old woman only know as Auguste D' her personality is lost to history , her particulars , aside from the details of her illness, are forgotten .


The name of the doctor , however , has become a household word . He as we all know him was Dr alois Alzheimer.

am reading a book , about the husband of auguste , telling his concerns to the German neurologist .

I was taken back to read that the first person was only 51 years old, I never new that , I thought it was only happening in the last 10 years that people got AZ so young , show how wrong I was .

reading about Auguste make it seem so real.



It does say that , she was examined by a young German neurologist and even at the first encounter he was perexed by her, unable to understand or diagnose her strange symptoms and behavior . In all his medical training and experience he had never seen a case quite like this .

She had the same memory loss , the same difficulty with speech , the confusion and the general feebleness of reasoning , Yet she wasn’t senile, she wasn’t even very old


The woman was obviously suffering from a severs alteration in her mental faction, similar to what he had often seen in the very old and senile.
Her problem couldn’t be diagnosed as “senile dementia “- she was only 51.

She had been perfectly healthy for most of her life, never been in the hospital, had rarely been sick

The portly neurologist reviled his note and considered the case. Although Augusta’s mind was clearly gone, she had no infirmity in her body. The diagnosis wasn’t insanity, nor was it any of the other mental diseases he had seen so often before. this wasn’t the general paralysis of the insane seen in syphilis or the dementia of schizophrenia .

Nevertheless, it was clear that the pitiable woman in front of him had rapidly progressive mental disease.

So I would like to know is please is why as AZ can happen to young people as young as 40 , why do people still say senile dementia ?

when Senile means Old age

I never posted to this forum before. I am a psychologist and I have my own blog at http://www.drvitelli.typepad.com. I have a long interest in neurological problems and look forward to some good conversations.

When Alzheimer's disease occurs in someone younger than 65, it's known as presenile dementia or early-onset dementia

pre-senile demntia- from neuroborreliosis!!! Lyme disease. It sucked.

I could no longer remember a spoon was a spoon. Agnosia. I started stopping at green lights and going at red lights for over a week because I got the wirres crossed in my brain. I even yelled at all these people honking at me, "THE LIGHT IS GREEN!" when i was at a dead stop because the light was GREEN and I thought that meant stop for a whole week. I drove crazy like that for a whole week almost getting hit over & over and peopple honking and yelling before it hit me the truth that red means STOP!!!! Green means GO! My husband forbade me from driving.

I kept forgetting my toddlers name. I was 28-29 when this happened.
My husband I kept forgetting was my husband.

Now I am normal again. 9 months of IV Rocephin. 7 years ago...