FRANZ NISSL 1860-1918 ALOIS ALZHEIMER 1864-1915

In reviewing the history of medicine, one is struck by the fact that whenever ignorance and confusion dominate a particular field of medical knowledge nature seems to concentrate in one or two men great forces of intellect to penetrate the darkness and discern in the dimness of half-knowledge shining principles of truth. The greater the need, the greater the effort nature makes to create adequate response. She fashioned powerful minds to cope with superstition and mystery in the early centuries and to overcome medieval blindness. Approaching recent times one sees nature again at work, meeting great demands in the domain of surgery and medicine with the fine minds of the medical profession in the past century, and the crying need for advance in the knowledge of the histology of the nervous system finding a glorious answer in the work of Alzheimer and Nissl. To these two scientists mankind owes a