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Preface
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Chapter
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Preface It is ironic that the professional and popular discourses surrounding Alzheimer disease (AD), whose most dreaded feature is the obliteration of memory, proceed with little awareness of its past. As with individuals, large-scale social enterprises such as the research, policy, and caregiving efforts that surround AD require a sense of history in order to situate themselves in the present and orient themselves toward the future. We hope that the essays in this volume, taken as a whole, will begin to address this irony—creating a fuller sense of the origins and development of the concept of Alzheimer disease, not simply to preserve the past for its own sake, but to better understand where we are and where we may be going. The time is ripe for such an endeavor. At the end the twentieth century, knowledge about this ‘‘disease of the century’’ is in a state of flux. Biomedical and social scientists, policy makers, and caregivers are searching for new ways to think about AD as they grapple with information concerning its genetic basis, its relationship to aging, the problems and potential of developing effective drug treatments, and the ethical dilemmas surrounding the complex issues of the personhood of people with dementia. These issues are not entirely new, of course. As the historical chapters in this volume show, people concerned with this disorder have grappled with these issues for decades, though perhaps in different forms and with a different set of assumptions and resources. Likewise, though the development of science and society may change the particular form these issues take, people will continue to face versions of them for the foreseeable future. We do not claim that this book will resolve these issues. There are, of course, as many perspectives on the past as there are on the present. xii Preface Thinking historically, which we suggest is a crucial aspect of thinking intelligently about any complex issue, does not involve reducing the past to an artificially stable narrative of inevitable progress that legitimates one particular point of view. Such abuse of the past is all too common in scientific discourse. Rather, thinking historically means creating a narrative that finds a meaningful pattern in the past without obliterating its contingencies and complexities. Our understanding of the past should be as complex and contestable as our understanding of the present. Historical thinking ultimately means re-creating a past that is real enough to argue about. Thus, if the reader finds much to argue with in the following chapters, this volume will have succeeded in its task of beginning to create a historical framework for thinking about the problem of AD. History will not make the problems we face in AD today and tomorrow simpler or less daunting. But in its complexity, history can enrich our understanding and make our struggles more meaningful. On a smaller scale, the power of history to affect the present and shape the future may be seen in the genesis of this book. A major impetus has been the interest of Konrad Maurer, his wife Ulrike, and his colleagues in the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, in uncovering historical data concerning Alois Alzheimer and his work. Their interest in history and their hard work led to the creation of a museum and conference site at Alzheimer’s birthplace, the discovery of the clinical records for the first case of the disease that bears Alzheimer’s name, and ultimately the symposium in November 1997 in which much of the material in this book originated. We expect that these important historical records will lead to further projects in the future. The 1997 symposium was a celebration of the life and legacy of Alois Alzheimer and the neuroscientists of his generation. Alzheimer was born in Marktbreit, an idyllic German village in lower Frankonia situated on the river Main between Wurzburg to the north and Rothenburg to the south. Eduard Alzheimer, the father of Alois Alzheimer, was a notary public of the local royal court of justice. Eduard’s first wife died of complications from childbirth a few days after their son Karl was born. Eduard married her sister and moved in the winter of 1863/64 to a substantially smaller, but attractive, house. This is the house in which Alois Alzheimer was born on June 14, 1864. More than a century later, it was the site of the symposium that drew distinguished scholars and scientists from many disciplines and...