阿尔茨海默氏 (Ā'ěrcíhǎimòshì): Alzheimer's (Alois Alzheimer, G…

Meanings

1 Alzheimer's (Alois Alzheimer, German psychiatrist; the 氏 'family name' marker is appended in medical contexts)
2 (used in 阿尔茨海默氏症 / 阿尔茨海默氏病) Alzheimer's disease

Characters

阿

ā

prefix for names; transliteration syllable

尔

ěr

you (literary); transliteration ending

茨

cí

thatch; transliteration syllable

family name; clan marker

Examples

她奶奶得了阿尔茨海默氏症。

Tā nǎinai dé le Ā'ěrcíhǎimò shì zhèng.

Her grandmother has Alzheimer's disease.

阿尔茨海默氏病是最常见的痴呆症。

Ā'ěrcíhǎimò shì bìng shì zuì chángjiàn de chīdāizhèng.

Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia.

Tips

usage

阿尔茨海默氏 is the surname Alzheimer plus 氏 (shì, family/lineage marker), the Chinese convention for naming diseases after a person — the same way 氏 attaches to 帕金森氏 (Parkinson's) or 唐氏 (Down). Almost never appears alone; it pairs with 症 zhèng or 病 bìng to form the disease name. Mainland medical writing increasingly drops the 氏: 阿尔茨海默病 is now standard.

history

Named after Alois Alzheimer (1864–1915), the Bavarian psychiatrist who in 1906 described the case of "Auguste D." — the first documented patient — and identified the amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles still defining the disease today.