significant events occurred. First Pick in a paper called "On the relation between aphasia and senile brain atrophy" described the case of August H. a 71 year old patient with senile dementia. Although the case is not typical of our present day conception of the disease Pick was given credit for discovering a new disease. The other more significant event in 1892 was Blocq and Mariensco's description of scattered silver staining plaques in the cortex of senile patients. These plaques were subsequently named senile plaques (SP) by Simchowitz in 1911.The year 1894 saw Alzheimer's first major contribution , a differentiation between senile and vascular (arteriosclerotic) dementia. Alzheimer described the specific changes observed in arteriosclerotic atrophy of the brain, which resemble what we might call vascular dementia. In 1898 another milestone occurred when Binswanger introduced the term presenile dementia. Thus by the twentieth century significant changes were taking place in our understanding of dementia. The nineteenth century view that there was only one mental disease-insanity-and that dementia was its terminal stage was dispelled by Kraepelin in the 6th edition of his textbook Psychiatrie, published in 1899 (Pitt, 4). Kraepelin separated dementia praecox (a concept he proposed in 1898 in relation to Schizophrenia) from the other dementias (paralytica and organic), and Senile dementia was included under another category called involution psychosis (Pitt, 4).Twentieth CenturyIn 1907 Alzheimer published his landmark case "A unique illness involving the cerebral cortex" in which he described a fifty-five year old demented woman. The case was very unusual for two reasons its clinical course, and the discovery of a striking microscopic lesion in the woman's brain (Beach, 1987). The clinical course was unusual because of the young age of the patient and the rapidity of degeneration (the patient died within four and a half y...
