, dementia was mentioned in most systems of psychiatric classification throughout pre-modern times, though the precise meaning of the word is often unclear (Pitt, 1987).Nineteenth CenturyIt can be argued that the origins of the scientific study of dementia date back to the early nineteenth century. The initial steps were undertaken by the great French psychiatrist Pinel at the beginning of that century. Pinel's observations led him to the conclusion that the term dementia should be applied in relation to the "progressive mental changes seen in some idiots" (Pitt,3). Furthermore, Pinel thought that dementia was a distinct abnormal entity, and thus he used the term dementia to designate one of the five classes of mental derangement. However, by applying the term dementia to 'idiots', Pinel failed to differentiate between dementia and mental subnormality. This was accomplished by Pinel's student Esquirol in his 1838 textbook Mental maladies-A treatise on insanity. Esquirol summed up the difference between the demented and the mentally handicapped in the following epigram: "The dement is a man deprived of the possessions he once enjoyed, he is a rich man who has become poor. But the defective has been penniless and wretched all his life" (Mahendra, 10). Furthermore, Esquirol was also instrumental in the popularization of the term senile dementia. Remarkably, his description of senile dementia is very similar to our present day definition. Interestingly, in 1845 Griesinger proposed that senile dementia was due to a disease of the cerebral arteries, a faulty view which persisted until Alzheimer's time.Much of today's basic knowledge about dementia was accumulated throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, and the first decade of the twentieth century. 1872 saw Huntington present a paper called "On chorea", in which he discussed a typical case of what is now known as Huntington's disease. Twenty years later in 1892 two...
