Alzheimer’s Disease and other forms of dementia are a growing problem in America and elsewhere in the developed world. I have a handful of family members who spent anywhere from two years to a decade in a nursing home due to memory loss. Currently around six million Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s. The prevalence of Alzheimer’s is expected to grow in the coming years. However, it wasn’t always that way:
It affects one person in 14 people over the age of 65. one in every six people over the age of 80, and one in three in people aged 85 and older.
To study the prevalence of dementia historically scholars searched through ancient texts to look for signs of the disease. They found little mention of dementia.
A new analysis of classical Greek and Roman medical texts suggests that severe memory loss – occurring at epidemic levels today – was extremely rare 2,000 to 2,500 years ago, in the time of Aristotle, Galen, and Pliny the Elder.
“The ancient Greeks had very, very few – but we found them – mentions of something that would be like mild cognitive impairment,” said first author and gerontologist Prof. Caleb Finch. “When we got to the Romans, and we uncovered at least four statements that suggest rare cases of advanced dementia; we can’t tell if it’s Alzheimer’s. So, there was a progression going from the ancient Greeks to the Romans.”
Other ancient texts, such as the medical writing by Hippocrates, also have little to say about dementia or memory loss.
Centuries later, in ancient Rome, a few mentions crop up. Galen remarks that at the age of 80, some elderly begin to have difficulty learning new things. Pliny the Elder notes that the senator and famous orator Valerius Messalla Corvinus forgot his own name. Cicero prudently observed that “elderly silliness … is characteristic of irresponsible old men, but not of all old men.”
Why is dementia a modern phenomenon but barely mentioned in ancient medical texts? There are a variety of theories.
The research, published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease under the title “Dementia in the Ancient Greco-Roman World Was Minimally Mentioned,” bolsters the idea that Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias are diseases of modern environments and lifestyles, with sedentary behavior and exposure to air pollution largely to blame.
Perhaps but there is another explanation. Alzheimer’s and cancer, heart disease and strokes are primarily diseases of old age. People in ancient times did not live as long as is common today. Life expectancy was probably half what it is today. Granted, if you managed to survive to your 5th birthday your odds of living well into middle age or beyond went up significantly. Hower, the strongest, most heathy people who lived into what we now consider old age were probably not representative of average people who become old today. People who become old today may have had a lot of medicinal help to get there. I know a woman who lived to 100. Yet, she had heart bypass surgery more than 30 years before her death.
Perhaps modern diets, sedentary lifestyles or something else contribute to dementia However, ancient people had their own environmental factors that harmed memory and brain health.
Finch speculates that as Roman cities grew denser, pollution increased, driving up cases of cognitive decline. In addition, Roman aristocrats used lead cooking vessels, lead water pipes and even added lead acetate into their wine to sweeten it – unwittingly poisoning themselves with the powerful neurotoxin.
Despite blaming the environment for dementia, the chances are that old age is the most likely contributing factor. Maybe the foods we eat matter. Excess drinking could also exacerbate problems. High blood pressure as well. Yet the likelihood is that much of modern dementia would never develop if people died of other conditions long before they grew elderly.