[On the 100th anniversary of Alzheimer's disease]

In November 1906, the German neurologist Alois Alzheimer presented a lecture to his colleagues regarding a 55-year-old patient with dementia who was found to have aggregated protein deposits (senile plaques) and abnormal neurofibrils in the cerebral cortex. Alzheimer was born in 1864 in Bavaria. After he became financially independent through marriage, he could devote himself to neuropathological research. At the end of the 19th century, it was widely believed that dementia was the inevitable consequence of arteriosclerosis. Alzheimer questioned this belief after finding no postmortem evidence of arteriosclerotic vessel alterations in the brain of a young patient with dementia. After finding a second and third case, Alzheimer was convinced that he was on the verge of discovering a new disease. The eponym 'Alzheimer's disease' was introduced in 1910 by his mentor Kraepelin.