I've tried to find when Alzheimer's was discovered as a disease and I've been unable to come up with that info. Does anyone happen to know?
I've been researching my own family history for about 10 years. I've come across two ancestors that might have had it. I have a gr-gr-grandfather that died of "Senile Dementia" in a mental hospital in 1915. (He had spent 3 years in the hospital. Oral tradition places his death in 1911 leading me to believe that the family prefered to claim he died then admit he was hospitalized. I have no living family that remembers him and very little info was passed down.) I also had a gr-gr-grandmother who died in a 1950 and "Dementia" was listed as a contributing factor in her death. While my grandmother remembers her well she doesn't speak often about any of the time after "her mind went". I do know that she took to hiding money towards the end of her life. After "her mind went" she would scratch her face off of any photo of herself, so now there are few remaining photos of her. She became difficult to care for (I'm not sure how difficult but I think that before she became too much for her husband to care for himself he did have to start tying her in bed at night to keep her from wandering off.)
I have wondered if it is possible that one or both could have had Alzeimer's but that the disease might have been unknown then.
I've been researching my own family history for about 10 years. I've come across two ancestors that might have had it. I have a gr-gr-grandfather that died of "Senile Dementia" in a mental hospital in 1915. (He had spent 3 years in the hospital. Oral tradition places his death in 1911 leading me to believe that the family prefered to claim he died then admit he was hospitalized. I have no living family that remembers him and very little info was passed down.) I also had a gr-gr-grandmother who died in a 1950 and "Dementia" was listed as a contributing factor in her death. While my grandmother remembers her well she doesn't speak often about any of the time after "her mind went". I do know that she took to hiding money towards the end of her life. After "her mind went" she would scratch her face off of any photo of herself, so now there are few remaining photos of her. She became difficult to care for (I'm not sure how difficult but I think that before she became too much for her husband to care for himself he did have to start tying her in bed at night to keep her from wandering off.)
I have wondered if it is possible that one or both could have had Alzeimer's but that the disease might have been unknown then.