Abstract
Besides the dominant European psychiatric and neuroscience schools of France and Germany the advanced neuropathological school of Vienna and the psychiatric-neurological center of Prague in the second half of the 19. century were of a significant importance. Among the leading topics of that time were the differentiation of dementia from inborn mental retardation and the comprehension of histopathological, metabolic and infectious causes of the senile and presenile mental deterioration.
The pieces of knowledge, built by the research of famous personalities, who gave their eponyms to the classic categories of dementia - Arnold Pick in Prague and Alois Alzheimer in Frankfurt and Munich - were further nourished by a number of no less meritful explorers like Franz Nissl, Emil Redlich, Fritz Schaudinn, August von Wassermann, or Oskar Fischer, Gaetano Perusini and Francesco Bonfiglio. The Prague contribution to this progress came mostly from the German script.
An exclusion is Karel Kuffner, whose comprehensive textbooks successfully rival the textbooks of Emil Kraepelin. The break of the 19th and the 20th century was extraordinarilly rich in iscoveries and new conceptions, which are until now structuring our understanding of dementia.