In November 1901, German psychiatist Alois Alzheimer encountered a woman named Auguste Deter (Auguste D, as she came to be known) who had been brought to Alzheimer's Frankfurt clinic by her husband.
According to the husband, the couple had been harmoniously married since 1873, but he had recently noticed a gradual decline in his wife that went beyond short- and long-term memory loss. At the relatively young age of 51, she had become disturbingly absent-minded, making obvious mistakes in food preparation, neglecting her housework, stashing objects in nooks and crannies around their apartment, wandering aimlessly from room to room, and suffering from intense bouts of jealousy and paranoia.
