What Really Causes Alzheimer's Disease - Soil and Health Library

In 1901 there was certainly nothing new about dementia in
the elderly. This condition had been known by the Greeks
as morosis, and as oblivio and dementia by the Romans. In
Middle English it was known as dotage, in French it was called
démence, and in 18 th century English it was categorized as
fatuity. 7 The term senile dementia itself was first coined by the
French psychiatrist Jean Étienne Esquirol in 1838, who wrote:
“Senile dementia is established slowly. It commences with
enfeeblement of memory, particularly the memory of recent
impressions.” 8
Classical literature is also full of references to the elderly
demented. The Roman poet Juvenal, for example, wrote in the
1 st century AD: “worse than any loss in body is the failing
mind which forgets the names of slaves, and cannot recognize
the face of the old friend who dined with him last night, nor
those of the children whom he has begotten and brought up.” 9
Even earlier, in the 4 th century BC, the Greek historian
Xenophon wrote in his Memorabiblia: “haply [by chance] I may
be forced to pay the old man’s forfeit—to become sand-blind
and deaf and dull of wit, slower to learn, quicker to forget,
outstripped now by those who were behind me.” 10 Even the
Bible, in Ecclesiasticus chapter 3, verses 12-13 encourages the
young to understand the mental decline often seen in the elderly
with this advice: “O son, help your father in his old age,
and do not grieve him as long as he lives / even if he is lacking
in understanding, show forbearance.”
There is no doubt, therefore, that dementia has been a curse of
many of the elderly for millennia, providing fodder for authors
as diverse as Euripides, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Chekhov,
Trollope, Darwin, and Sir Walter Scott. 11 What is not so obvious,
however, is whether the senile dementia characterized by
these and other scribes was actually Alzheimer’s disease. There
are, for example, more than 70 known types of dementia. 12
15