The term ‘vesanic dementia’ began to be used after the 1840s to refer to the clinical states of cognitive disorganization following insanity (Berrios,  1987);  its meaning has changed with equal speed alongside psychiatric theory. According to the unitary insanity notion, vesanic dementia was a terminal stage (after mania and melancholia); according to degeneration theory,…    



Alzheimer’s disease

AD has become the prototypical form of dementia. From this point of view, a study of its origins should throw light on the evolution of the concept of dementia. The writings of Alzheimer, Fischer, Fuller, Lafora, Bonfiglio, Perusini, Ziveri, Kraepelin and other protagonists are deceptively fresh, and this makes anachronistic reading inevitable.  However,  the…    



Pick’s disease and the frontal dementias

Dementias believed to be related to frontal lobe pathology have once again become of interest, and authors often invoke the name of Arnold Pick (Niery et al., 1988). However, when the great Prague neuropsychiatrist described the syndrome named after him, all he wanted was to draw attention to a form of localized (as opposed…