Alois Alzheimer (June 14, 1864 - December 19, 1915), a German neurologist ("Nervenarzt", which includes psychiatry), was a colleague of Emil Kraepelin who first identified the symptoms of what is now known as Alzheimers Disease. He observed the disease in 1906. He was born in a small town called Marktbreit, Bavaria, where his father served in the office of notary public. Alzheimer attended Aschaffenburg, Tübingen, Berlin, and Würzburg universities. He received a medical degree at Würzberg University in 1887. In the following year, he spent five months assisting mentally ill women, before he took an office in the city mental asylum in Frankfurt am Main: the Städtische Irrenanstalt. Emil Sioli was the dean of that asylum (1852-1922). Another neurologist, Franz Nissl (1860-1919), began to work in that same asylum with Alzheimer, and they knew each other. Alzheimer was the co-founder and co-publisher of the German journal called Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie. He never wrote a book that he would call his own. He fell ill on the train to University of Breslau and died of endocarditis at the age of 51, five months after arrival to Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland).
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