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20 March 2009. The 9th International AD/PD conference, held in Prague 11–15 March, made a big splash in the otherwise sleepy backwater of Alzheimer disease history. In the opening session of the meeting, Pavel Kalvach of the Charles University of Prague jolted jetlagged attendees with the news that his very city had hosted a contemporary of Alois Alzheimer’s who had described his rival’s eponymous disease in more depth than did Alzheimer himself. That seminal investigator was Oskar Fischer, and his story resonates with historical pain. Fischer’s contributions were widely noted and debated when he published them in 1907, 1910, and 1912 [1–3], and for some years afterward. But they later became neglected as Fischer’s career crumbled amid nationalist tension and the anti-Semitism of his time. His life ended tragically in 1942 in Terezin (Theresienstadt), a concentration camp set up in a garrison town near Prague. This camp is especially known for having incarcerated noted artists, writers, musicians, scientists, and other scholars, whose cultural achievements in the camp the Nazis successfully touted as part of their propaganda campaign to hide the true horror of the camps, deceiving even the Red Cross on an invited visit in 1944. Fischer remained consigned to oblivion, both in his home country and by most in the worldwide dementia community, until the fall of 2008,when Michel Goedert of the MRC laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, U.K., recounted in the journal Brain the story of what his visit to the Archives of Charles University, as well as conversations with Fischer’s descendants and present-day Czech researchers, brought to light. Freely available for download, Goedert’s paper makes for gripping reading about the historical context of Fischer’s life and also about how his observations intersect with those of other investigators at the time [4]. “We are grateful to Goedert for this discovery. This country had completely forgotten Oskar Fischer,” Kalvach told the audience. “News” to many, however, is rarely news to all. In Prague, conversation with other scientists turned up that Piet Eikelenboom, for one, wrote three years ago that Fischer’s three papers contain prescient conceptual insight into the role of inflammation in AD that found confirmation with the advent of new molecular techniques starting some 70 years later [5]. A few other AD scientists have mentioned Fischer, as well, and even showed some of his drawings at talks at AD/PD [6]. At the conference, Kalvach brought Fischer’s story to a wide audience as part of his broader account on the early history of dementia research in Prague. Below are selected highlights.

Prague: What Say You, Alois – Should It Be “Alzheimer-Fischer” Disease?