Apoplexy

The old, very popular and quite international term apoplexy (or its equivalents apoplectic attack, attack, apoplectic ictus or ictus) today generally means stroke. The word “apoplexy” comes from the Greek apoplexia, which is derived from the verb apoplessein, meaning, respectively, “stroke” and “to strike.” To define apoplexy is therefore to relate the history of the word and of its different successive significations. The history of apoplexy, from the Greeks to the twentieth century, will be presented first, followed by the medical details of stroke.

History

In the Hippocratic corpus, “apoplexy” appears as an obviously clinical term. For many centuries after Galen’s writings of the second century A.D., it was thought that apoplexy involved brain matter, whereas epilepsy represented a disturbance of brain function. From the invention of the printing press to the late nineteenth century, several hundred monographs were devoted to apoplexy. Indeed the medical history of A. Dechambre (1866) listed some 150 such references between 1611 and 1865.

The first autopsies involving postmortem examinations of the brain were performed in the seventeenth century. Many more were done, however, after the publication of De Sedibus, et Causis Morborum per Anatomen Indagatis, Libri Quinque by Giovanni Battista Morgagni in 1761. Morgagni reported numerous cases of postmortem examinations of apoplexy cases, which he separated into serous apoplexy (apoplexia serosa) and sanguineous apoplexy (apoplexia sanguinea).