The First Alzheimer's Patient

In 1901, the German psychiatrist Dr Alois Alzheimer treated a 51-year-old woman, Auguste Deter, who had developed a type of dementia. The illness he documented became known as Alzheimer’s disease. We speak to Professor Konrad Maurer, who discovered Dr Alzheimer's original case file on Auguste Deter, which had been lost for almost a century. Photo: Auguste Deter photographed in the psychiatric hospital in Frankfurt where Dr Alzheimer worked, c.1901