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Auguste D

One hundred years on: ‘The person’not ‘the case’

Wythenshawe Hospital,Manchester,UK

Tracey Fletcher

St. Bartholomew's Day Assessment and Treatment Centre,Roby,Merseyside,UK

Auguste D. is regarded as being the first case described by Alois Alzheimer to highlight the disease that would later be named for him. Auguste is described in terms of her illness, of her disturbances and ultimately of her neuro-pathology. In the past 100 years since her death in 1906 there has been almost no attempt to consider her as a person or as a fellow human being outside the context of illness. This article takes a social research approach to place those things we know about the person Auguste and places them in an appropriate social context for a working class woman of Imperial Germany at the close of the 19th century. By doing so her status is raised beyond that of a pitiful victim of disease and we begin to appreciate her lived experience before the onset of dementia.

Key Words: Alzheimer's • Auguste D. • personhood • social history

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