History of Stroke

Stroke is one of the leading causes of disability and death worldwide. It has become the first disease leading to neurologic referrals to hospital and, while it has been recognised in medicine since antiquity, stroke did not acquire a proper place within neurology until the second part of the 20th century. The main reason for this is that, because it deals with blood vessels and circulation, neurologists themselves did not want to include stroke as a primary disorder of the nervous system. However, this is one of the many reasons why the historical development of stroke and cerebrovascular disease is of unique interest; it touches not only on neurology but also on internal medicine, angiology, cardiology, rehabilitation, and psychiatry within the frame of secondary behavioural and personality changes after stroke. For the same reasons, the study of the developments in the field of stroke over time is an excellent mirror of historical developments in medicine in general, encompassing many different domains. It is, thus, rather paradoxical that the last book on the history of stroke was published over thirty years ago (Fields and Lemak’s History of Stroke in 1989). Along with the many new developments in stroke diagnosis, acute management, and prevention, a new look at the evolution of stroke concepts over time has become necessary, and this is what the present volume is attempting to accomplish. Since stroke has developed into several different smaller fields, we have organised the book with four editors from different fields who have chosen authors with specific expertise in the corresponding overviewed issues. Our principal goal is to underline how developments have been made and to follow the paths of these developments over the years. History is not a minor part of medical knowledge. Indeed, history defines what we are and think today and how we will envision and plan the future. This fresh look at the history of stroke may also have a significant impact on future advances and research in cerebrovascular disease and stroke.

Julien Bogousslavsky, a former full professor of neurology and head of university department of neurology in Switzerland, now chairs the Center for brain and nervous system disorders of the Swiss Medical Network, along with his position of Chief editor of European Neurology, the third oldest neurological journal. He was founder of the European Stroke Conference and of the journal Cerebrovascular Diseases along with Michael Hennerici, and was the millenium president of the International Stroke Society. He has published over 700 scientific papers and books, and is also the author of works and brain and creativity, writers such as Marcel Proust or Blaise Cendrars, Surrealism, and the relationships between avant-garde poets and artists.

Maurizio Paciaroni, having completed his 4-year university specialization course in Neurology, at the University of Perugia in Italy, went on to became a Research Fellow in the field of vascular neurology at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. Subsequently, he participated in NASCET (North American Symptomatic Carotid Endarterectomy Trial) at the Robarts Research Institute, the University of Western Ontario, London Ontario, Canada. Currently, he is the team leader of the Stroke Unit at the University of Perugia Hospital, Italy. He has published more than 250 research papers, in both English and Italian, and has co-authored several chapters and texts on stroke.

Michael G. Hennerici is professor emeritus and former chairman of the department of neurology as well as medical director of the Mannheim Hospital at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Along with Julien Bogousslavsky (Switzerland) he was founder and chairman of the European Stroke Conference (ESC) in 1990 (Düsseldorf, Germany) and the journal Cerebrovascular Diseases (Honorary Editor and Founding Editor in Chief) for more than a quarter of a century. He has published more than 850 scientific papers and books on all aspects of research in basic neurophysiology as well as imaging principles of the brain and its vasculature (Ultrasound, CT and MRI), all aspects of Cerebrovascular Diseases (eg. diagnosis, management and treatment in exploratory pilot and large clinical trials) and pioneer studies of the Natural History of Asymptomatic Carotid Disease in particular (1987). Along with his wife Marion Hennerici, who early joined the ESC Executive Committee, he founded the European Stroke Research Foundation (ESRF), which today continuously supports numerous applications of researchers worldwide (https://www.esrf.website). Following his primary education in musical arts (Organist diploma) and numerous concerts given, he later became interested in brain diseases of musicians and painting artists as well as their relationships to stroke. This also follows the spirits of education at the Department of Neurology and Neurophysiology in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany during his student’s education in the early 1970s.

Laurent Tatu is professor of anatomy and neurologist. He is the coordinator of the Department of Anatomy at the University of Franche-Comté (France) and head of the Neuromuscular Diseases Department at Besançon University Hospital. His main research topics are vascular anatomy of the brain and morphological and functional muscle anatomy applied to botulinum toxin therapy for neurological diseases. He is an associate editor of the journals “European Neurology” and “Case Reports in Neurology”. With a longstanding interest in history, he is the author of works on the history of medicine and the history of the First World War. With Julien Bogousslavsky, he has published numerous articles on the history of medicine and three books on neuropsychiatry in the First World War (2012), Blaise Cendrars (2015) and Gustave Roussy (2023).