Auguste Deter

Admitted on the 25th, examined on the 26th

Auguste Deter, aged 51, was admitted to Frankfurt's municipal asylum on 25 November 1901, but Alzheimer's surviving examination notes begin on 26 November. That is the better-supported date for their documented first interview, and later biographies often collapse the two.

Alzheimer systematically tested her identity, orientation, memory and ability to name objects. She gave "Auguste" as both her first and last names, and thought her husband might be named Auguste as well.

Pork, cauliflower, spinach

Although it was only her second day in the institution, Deter answered that she had been there for three weeks.

She called a pencil a pen and correctly identified several other objects. At lunch she was eating pork and cauliflower, and called it spinach.

The examinations continued on 28, 29 and 30 November, with her answers and samples of her writing recorded; the often-quoted line "I have lost myself" belongs to the entry of 29 November.

No disease was diagnosed

There was as yet nothing called Alzheimer's disease to diagnose. The clinicopathological description followed Deter's death in 1906, and Kraepelin introduced the eponym in his 1910 textbook.

The decisive observations — plaques and neurofibrillary tangles — could not be made during an interview; they came from postmortem tissue. Deter was the first published index case of the condition, not the first person ever to have it.

The original clinical file was rediscovered in Frankfurt in the 1990s, which is why the exact wording and dates of these examinations are available again.