The Story of a Alois Alzheimer and Auguste Deter

Alois Alzheimer and Auguste Deter

The brain disease that has come to be known as Alzheimer’s disease was first described in November of 1901. The chain of events began when Karl Deter brought his wife, Auguste, to the Städtische Heilanstalt für Irre und Epileptische (City Hospital for the Mentally Ill and Epileptics) in Frankfurt, Germany.

Auguste’s behavior made it almost impossible for Karl to work anymore. She would sometimes wake up in the night and scream for hours. Knowing what we know now of Alzheimer’s disease, she undoubtedly needed a lot of personal care.

Upon her admission, she was interviewed by a resident at the hospital, a young doctor named Aloysius Alzheimer. He had joined the staff at the hospital thirteen years earlier and was pursuing his interests in psychiatry and neuropathology. Auguste Deter had problems with memory and with reading and writing, and she showed signs of disorientation.
She was diagnosed with presenile dementia. Later in 1906, Alois Alzheimer presented the results of the autopsy of Frau Deter’s brain to the South-West German Society of Alienists. In his speech he described two abnormalities or the patient’s brain, neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid plaques, the plaques and tangles that have 

become synonymous with Alzheimer’s disease.