<P> The ancient Greek and Roman philosophers and physicians associated old age with increasing dementia . It was not until 1901 that German psychiatrist Alois Alzheimer identified the first case of what became known as Alzheimer 's disease , named after him , in a fifty - year - old woman he called Auguste D. He followed her case until she died in 1906 , when he first reported publicly on it . During the next five years , eleven similar cases were reported in the medical literature , some of them already using the term Alzheimer 's disease . The disease was first described as a distinctive disease by Emil Kraepelin after suppressing some of the clinical ( delusions and hallucinations ) and pathological features ( arteriosclerotic changes ) contained in the original report of Auguste D. He included Alzheimer 's disease , also named presenile dementia by Kraepelin , as a subtype of senile dementia in the eighth edition of his Textbook of Psychiatry , published on 15 July , 1910 . </P>
when was the first case of alzheimer 's diagnosed
1901