A brilliant German group had a brain bank which they used for neuropathology purposes. In this group, led by Kraepelin, was Alois Alzheimer. Alzheimer is now famous because Alzheimer's disease was named after him.
Although Alzheimer spent most of his research time on "dementia praecox", those results have been ignored by many. Alzheimer reported gliosis and other positive findings in dementia praecox, now called "schizophrenia". These findings were rejected by David, a British neuropathologist, in a scathing review. However, it appears that David was wrong.
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This 1910 photo near Munich shows, starting from the left, Alzheimer, Kraepelin, Gaupp, and Nissl. These four were all brilliant brain scientists. Alzheimer, Kraepelin, and Nissl became famous. Unfortunately Alzheimer died in 1915. Kraepelin lived until 1926. In 1897 Alzheimer created a stir with a report about positive findings in "dementia praecox".
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This web page will not deal that much with Alzheimer's disease, although I am interested in it, because I have another page devoted to that terrible disease. The above photo shows Alzheimer.
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Shown here is Alzheimer in Breslau in 1913 with a tennis racket. By this time he was famous. In this year he published a brilliant article on dementia praecox, confirming his earlier work (1897). Alzheimer became known for neurogeriatrics. However, he also studied the brains of younger people.
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This drawing shows a discovery of Alzheimer's colleague, Nissl. The Nissl bodies are shown as black dots. These bodies play an important part in my own theory of schizophrenia because the bodies are destroyed in this disease.
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Shown here is Alzheimer and his family.
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This photo shows the grave of Alzheimer and his wife in Frankfurt, Germany. One of the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease is memory loss. Dementia can result. There is a degeneration of brain cells. This is what Alzheimer discovered.
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Alzheimer had competition. Shown here are two figures from a brilliant psychology textbook by Wilhelm Wundt. The book, "Physiological Psychology", was published in 1902 and was soon translated into English.
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Shown here is a much more sophisticated drawing of the Nissl bodies, also called the "rough endoplasmic reticulum". It is now known that they synthesize proteins from amino acids. Another interesting cell organelle is the mitochondrion, which also figures into my theory. In schizophrenia the mitochondria are enlarged due to a flooding of the cell with amino acids. The Golgi apparatus was named after Camilo Golgi, a brilliant Italian scientist who was a contemporary of Alzheimer.
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Shown here is a drawing made by Alzheimer of the neurofibrillary tangles in the brain that he saw in the disease that now bears his name.
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Shown here is Wilhelm Wundt, who was a very prolific writer on psychology. Wundt was born in 1832 and died in 1920. Wundt had a similar approach to that of Alzheimer, and he was also from Germany.
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