As a medical student, he befriended Frederik van Eeden, who was to be a well-known psychiatrist and one of the most famous Tachtigers.

Aletrino published between 1889 and 1906 a few novels and collections of stories, all extremely bleak and cheerless in atmosphere.

In his final years, an incurably ill man, he lived with his wife in Switzerland.

Aletrino had been schooled by Cesare Lombroso, who attempted to explain criminality in light of a degenerating central nervous system.

He continued to fight throughout his life to engender a more tolerant and understanding attitude of homosexuality.