History of dementia

Although recognized in ancient times, the term dementia was first introduced in 1789 by Philippe Pinel, and indeed it was 19th century clinicians who first grappled with its defining features.

Philippe Pinel, a French doctor who lived in the second half of the eighteenth century and who is often considered as the father of modern psychiatry.

He described dementia as ‘a disintegration of reason, which was reminiscent of the childish inanity of old age’.

The word dementia comes from Latin demens which literally means ‘without mind’. The ancient Greeks and Romans described symptoms similar to those of Alzheimer’s disease.  The Greeks, including Plato, recognized it as an abnormal condition of old age.

Senile atrophy of the brain was noted in the first century BC and sclerotic plaques in the brains of demented elderly patients have been noted many years before the description of Alzheimer.

By the year 1800, two definitions of dementia were recognized, both having psychosocial incompetence as their central concept.

However, it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that dementia of early onset became recognized as a specific medical entity.

In 1907 Dr Alois Alzheimer published a paper identifying a cluster of symptoms of dementia. This included reduced comprehension and memory, disorientation, unpredictable behavior and difficulties with communication.
History of dementia

Early history of dementia

The disease that can produce dementia are as old as mankind. Around the year 2000 BC ancient Egyptians, even though they held that the heart and diaphragm were the seats of mental life, were aware that age could be accompanied by a major memory disorder.

The word ‘dementia’ has been around for quite some time and comes from the Latin demens which literally means ‘without mind’.

Many Greco Roman authors including Plato and then Horatius seem to have thought that old age per se was often synonymous with dementia.

Cicero, the Roman philosopher of the second century BC, may be the first writer of the time to argue that dementia was not an inevitable consequence of old age and was preventable via ‘intellectual activity which gives buoyancy to the mind’, concept furthered by Galen in the second century AD.

Solon in 6th century the father of modern legal thinking, wrote that judgment can be impaired by ‘physical pain, violence, drugs , old age or the persuasion of a woman’.

By the eighteenth century it was becoming medically recognized as ‘abolition of the reasoning faculty’, according to a French scientific encyclopedia of 1765.

The syndrome of senile dementia first came to light in the medical literature in Germany in the mid 1800s. In 1892, microscopic senile plaques, now called amyloid plaques, were first described and in 1907, were correlated with dementia in older adults.

Early history of dementia