Published in V UNESC Seminar of Medical Humanities

Keywords: Alois Alzheimer, Alzheimer’s Disease, History of Medicine.

Alzheimer's disease is the most common type of dementia. Its onset is insidious, and the brain damage is continuous, resulting, over time, in the functional disability of the patients. The objective of this paper is to know the history of the discovery of Alzheimer's Disease and to understand the origin of this eponym. The study was carried out through bibliographic research in the following databases: Pubmed, Scielo and Lilacs. The following descriptors were used: Alois Alzheimer, History of Medicine, Alzheimer's Disease. Alois Alzheimer was born in the small town of Marktbreit in Bavaria (Germany), and graduated in 1887 receiving his medical degree from the University of Würzburg. He took up his first position as an assistant at the Asylum for Mental and Epileptic Patients in Frankfurt, where he served for 14 years. He met Franz Nissl (1860-1919), the German neuropathologist, and together they studied the cortex of patients with pre-senile dementia. He presented his postdoctoral thesis showing the existence of neurofibrillary entanglements, which came to characterize a specific form of dementia. In 1910, the German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926) named this condition as Alzheimer's Disease. Alzheimer is recognized as a memorable psychiatrist and neuropathologist who discovered a disease that today affects millions of people worldwide.