Part 5 · Context and review
History and people
From one woman in a Frankfurt asylum in 1901 to the antibodies approved in 2023 and 2024. Scrub the timeline or press play: each era is drawn as a scene, with the milestone and its source in the panel beside it.
Scenes are illustrations, not historical images. Eras are spaced evenly, not to scale in years. A "via a later review" label means the original paper has no abstract and its content comes through a later history review or Alzforum.
What the history leaves open
Why a separate disease?
Historians still debate why Kraepelin made a new disease from so few cases; one explanation is the rivalry between the Munich and Prague schools. The line between "presenile" Alzheimer's and "senile dementia" was dropped in 1978. 49
The amyloid cascade, three decades on
Hardy and Higgins proposed the amyloid cascade hypothesis in 1992. A 2024 history review notes that the dominant amyloid hypothesis has so far yielded "poor therapeutic results". 49,222 See Amyloid, animated for the evidence on both sides.
Mixed causes in the oldest old
The same 2024 review concludes that mixed dementia, with Alzheimer's changes alongside other brain diseases, is now established as the most frequent cause of dementia in the oldest old. 49
How old was Auguste D.?
One account gives her age as 50 when her symptoms began in 1901; another says she was 56 when she died in 1906. The sources disagree slightly. 49,235