La controversia de las placas seniles en la enfermedad de Alzheimer

• Published in: Physis (Firenze) Vol. 34; no. 3; p. 615
• Main Author: Perez Trullen, J M
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Italian
• Published: Italy 1997
• Subjects: Alzheimer Disease - history; Dementia - history; History, Modern 1601; Humans; Philosophy, Medical - history
• ISSN: 0031-9414

Since ancient times, the study of cognitive deterioration has been a medical and philosophical constant. Unitl the 18th century, this study took place alongside that of other mental illnesses, for which reason it could not be separated, except in certain special cases, from other processes that were genuinely psychiatric. This century has witnessed a Mental Revolution as a consequence of the divorce between neuropsychiatry on the one hand, and philosophy and religious ideas on the other, of the spread of the ideas of Cullen, Chiarugi and Pinel, the emergence of the Enlightenment and Vitalism. At the end of the 19th century there were three anatomoclinical and etiopathogenic schools of thought regarding dementia in the senile period (presbyophrenic vascular and senile dementia). Alzheimer's description of the illness which now bears his name marked a break with the earlier schools of thought and began a controversy in the different neurological schools which lasted until the second half of the twentieth century, with the publication of cases similar to that of Alzheimer (Bonfiglio, 1908; Sarteschi, 1909; Perusini, 1910) and, in particular, the dissemination of the case that came about when Kraepelin named the phenomenon Alzheimer's disease in 1910. This term was not readily accepted, and the illness was categorised in several other ways: atypical senile dementia, presenile dementia, atypical presbyophrenic dementia and so on. Given that the problem of the use of term Alzheimer's disease lay not only in the unspecific nature of clinical data, but also in the fact that it affected the most important anatomopathological discoveries, the decision to use the term was left to the discretion of the different neurological schools of thought. Kraepelin's personal opinion played a very relevant role from the first; his scientific prestige and authority decisively contributed to its denomination as Alzheimer's disease.