On Nov. 3, 1906, a clinical psychiatrist and neuroanatomist, Alois Alzheimer, reported “A peculiar severe disease process of the cerebral cortex” to the 37th Meeting of South-West German Psychiatrists in Tubingen, he described a 50-year-old woman whom he had followed from her admission for paranoia, progressive sleep and memory disturbance, aggression, and confusion, until her death 5 years later.

His report noted distinctive plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in the brain histology. It excited little interest despite an enthusiastic response from Kraepelin, who promptly included “Alzheimer’s disease” in the 3ih edition of his text Psychiatrie in 1910.

Alzheimer published three further cases in 1909 and a “plaque-only” variant in 1911, which reexamination of the original specimens in 1993 showed to be a different stage of the same process.

In 1912, he was appointed Chair of Psychiatry at the University of Breslau. This position was the realization of his dreams as a young assistant at the psychiatric hospital at Frankfurt, for his professional life: to work as clinician and director responsible for a psychiatric hosr pital.

Unfortunately, he had very few years left to work in Breslau, for he died there at the age of 51 on December 19, 1915.