He compares what these people see to looking at a picture upside down. The term originally referred to a condition following acute brain damage. However, a congenital form of the disorder has been proposed which may be inherited by about 2.5% of the population. Face blindness was first recognized in the 1940’s when soldiers who had suffered head injuries were now unable to recognize faces. It was not named until the term prosopagnosia was first used in 1947 by Joachim Bodamer, a German neurologist. He described three cases, including a 24-year-old man who suffered a bullet wound to the head and lost his ability to recognize his friends, family, and even his own face.