| According to the World Health Organization (WHO), dementia is a disorder that occurs as result of a neurodegenerative
process in brain, and usually is chronic or progressive by nature. Most descriptions of senile dementia date back
to Alois Alzheimer. In 1906, Alzheimer described the first patient, Auguste Deter, who suffered from the disorder that later
became known as Alzheimer’s disease. Although, the history of the disease before 1906 is quite rich, little has been said
about the contributions of ancient and medieval physicians to the understanding of dementia. Over the centuries, the concept
of senile dementia changed from an inevitable mental decline with aging, to different sets of clinical features with narrow
limits of diagnosis of a disease in its own right. Documentation of the historical origins of prevention, diagnosis, and therapies
of dementia would make an important contribution to a more complete understanding of this pathological degeneration of
dementia. The present review focuses on the contributions of Avicenna (AD 980–1037) to the development of diagnosis
and the discovery of etiology of different forms of dementia, with the goal of revealing the extent to which dementia was
understood in the golden age of Islam in Persia. |