Oil on the brain: dementia in the popular press prior to the 1906 Alzheimer case report

Concepts of dementia precede the description published by Alzheimer. Historically, the term was misunderstood and misused by the published newspapers of the nineteenth century. We aimed to describe the historical use of the term dementia in New Zealand newspapers.

Papers Past is a project of the National Library of New Zealand that aims to digitise all New Zealand newspapers from 1839 onwards. There are 96,022,840 newspaper articles in this dataset.

There were 1,521 newspaper articles between 1839 and 1906 in which the word dementia appeared in the content or title. Of these, 165 met the inclusion criteria. Of included articles, 87 had a description of the condition, 92 mentioned a cause of dementia and 25 included a description of management. Categories were not mutually exclusive. The common cause of dementia described was mental impairment (N=44), with special emphasis on mania, postpartum depression and intellectual disability. This was followed by environmental factors (N=34) and alcohol use (N=26). The common form of management for dementia was incarceration within an asylum or a gaol, occurring in 18 of 25 reported cases. Specific treatments for dementia included: a blister to the neck, rheumatic balsam, milk with lime water, marine serum and cranial surgery.

The descriptions of dementia from newspaper articles were consistent with nineteenth century Western concepts of the disease, and the causes and treatment of dementia reflected the New Zealand environment and Pākehā culture during colonial times.