Abstract
This study was done in order to investigate the etiology and pathology of dementia in the variety literature. Dementia in elderly persons(above the age of 60) mainly classfied Alzheimer disease and Cerebral vascular dementia. The results were as follows: 1. Dementia patients have abnormal mental function, who have no mental weakness but defects of memory, verbal disturbance, behavior disturbance and loss of intellectual function. 2. Dementia regard as 'me-beng(?病)', 'jeon-gwang(癲狂)', and 'heo-ro(虛勞)' in oriental medicine and the symptom is a silence with no response, mixing, a crying or a laugh, a stranger behavior and a amnesia; disturbances of speech, emotion, behavior. 3. Dementia caused by Alzheimer disease, Multi infarct dementia, Parkinson's disease, sequelae of acute CO poisoning, head injury and alcoholism(occidental medically) and the 'Dam(痰) and Damhwa(痰火), weakness of heart and spleen(心脾虛) caused by pent up anger of seven emotions(七情鬱結), the weakness of liver and kidney(肝腎不足)(oriental medically). 4. The causes of Alzheimer disease are various; a heredity factor, a morphological factor of brain tissues, a psychological factor and a biochemical factor (occidental medically) ; the 'Dam(痰) and Damhwa(痰火) caused by weakness of the internal organs and disturbance of the emotions(oriental medically). 5. Cerebral vascular dementia caused by loss of the certain cerebral neurons and oriental medically caused by obstruction of 'dam(痰)' or 'eo heul(瘀血)'. It is recommended that further study of many sided investigations, specially against a weakness of spiritual functions and a certain neurotoxin in the future.
