Is Dementia Primarily a Modern Phenomenon?

A recent analysis by USC reveals that medical documents dating back 2,500 years rarely mention severe memory loss, indicating that modern times’ widespread dementia stems from modern environments and lifestyles.

You might think age-related dementia has been with us all along, stretching back to the ancient world.

But a new analysis of classical Greek and Roman medical texts suggests that severe memory loss — occurring at epidemic levels today — was extremely rare 2,000 to 2,500 years ago, in the time of Aristotle, Galen, and Pliny the Elder.