Alois Alzheimer (1864)

Alzheimer was a German neuropathologist who first identified what is today called Alzheimer's disease, a neurodegenerative disease found most commonly in people over age 65. He first observed it in his patient in 1901 and presented his findings after a postmortem examination of her brain in 1906. The diagnosis would soon be applied to patients the world over, and the disease is now recognized as the most common form of dementia. Alzheimer did not name the disease that bears his name. Who did? More...

....."Another irony is that it may have been somebody else who ‘discovered’ Alzheimer’s Disease. The condition had already been described by Oskar Fischer, Francesco Bonfiglio and Graetano Perusini, and it was largely due to Emil Kraepelin, Alzheimer’s boss at the clinic in Munich, that the condition bears Alzheimer’s name. Kraepelin, who first classified schizophrenia, included Alzheimer’s description of Auguste Deter’s symptoms and pathology in the eighth edition of his book Psychiatrie, which was published in 1910. In that book, Kraepelin calls the condition ‘Alzheimer’s Disease’ for the first time:

…the autopsy reveals, according to Alzheimer’s description, changes that represent the most serious form of senile dementia….the Drusen [amyloid plaques?] were numerous and almost one-third of the cortical cells had died off. In their place instead we found peculiar deeply stained fibrillary bundles that were closely packed to one another, and seemed to be remnants of degenerated cell bodies…The clinical interpretation of this Alzheimer’s disease is still confused. While the anatomical findings suggest that we are dealing with a particularly serious form of senile dementia, the fact that this disease sometimes starts already around the age of 40 does not allow this supposition [i.e. it should be considered as a new disease]. In such cases we should at least assume a ‘senium praecox’ if not perhaps a more or less age-independent unique disease process."

http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2007/11/02/alois-alzheimers-first-case/

We will find a way to maintain brain cells, and learn to keep the neurons in the brain functioning properly. GW