Liberal Arts Professor Writes a New Book on Dr. Alzheimer
When the 51-year-old woman first came to see Dr. Alois Alzheimer, she had almost no memory and was often angry and disoriented. After she died, Alzheimer, a German pyschiatrist, examined his patient's brain and spinal cord, and found odd plaques and tangles.
When the doctor presented his findings to his colleagues, they were not particularly impressed, says Jesse Ballenger, an assistant professor of science, technology, and society in the College of the Liberal Arts, who has written a history about the way Alzheimer's disease is seen in America.
In 1906, says Ballenger, Alzheimer wasn't trying to understand the illnesses of old age. He was just trying to keep the practice of psychiatry current.
“Psychiatry was falling behind. This was the age of the germ,” says Ballenger. “And the rest of medicine was moving forward with a much more scientific, much more biologically based ability to explain why people are ill.”
Alzheimer was looking for a biological explanation of the puzzling symptoms his patient presented.
“The hope was, we will find disorders in the brain,” says Ballenger. “We will understand how mental illnesses are rooted in the changes in the brain.”
The lack of professional attention to Alzheimer's findings was not surprising, says Ballenger. It was known that sometimes people developed a condition called senile dementia as they aged. It would be called that until the late 1970s and 1980s.
It was then that a change in language took place, says Ballenger.
Before becoming a historian, Ballenger worked at a hospital as a nurse aide.
“They brought us in and said, ‘You've grown up thinking about people having senility, people who are confused. But they're suffering from a disease—a disease called Alzheimer's.'”
The name change was promoted by government officials as a way to get more money for research.
He says if Dr. Alzheimer could come back today, 100 years after he presented his famous paper, he would be shocked that what was once seen as a normal part of aging for some, is now called a disease and a health problem to be solved.