There is a major difference between eighteenth-century views on dementia and what the historian finds a century later when dementia starts to refer more or less specifically to states of cognitive impairment mostly affecting the elderly, and almost always irreversible. The word ‘amentia’ was no longer used in this context and started to name…    



The fragmentation of dementia

During the second half of the nineteenth century, and based on the clinical observations and reconceptualization carried out by the French, German and English writers mentioned above, dementia starts to be considered as a syndrome and hence could be attached to a variety of disorders. The primary classification was to be between primary and…    



Presbyophrenia and confabulation

The word ‘presbyophrenia’ was coined by Kahlbaum (1863) to name a subtype of the paraphrenias (insanities occurring during periods of biological change). Presbyophrenia was a form of paraphrenia senilis characterized by amnesia, disorientation, delusional misidentification and confabulation.

Ignored for more than 30 years, the term reappeared in the work of Wernicke, Fischer and Kraepelin.…