Apoplexy
Apoplexy names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Apoplexy a disease of the blood vessels of the brain
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
Important: Safety Warning
This page gives first-aid or emergency advice that predates modern medicine and can make an emergency worse. Do not follow it. In any medical emergency, call emergency services and follow current first-aid guidance.
In addition, this page presents medical treatment from an era before modern medicine. The remedies described are ineffective against the conditions named, and some of the ingredients or doses are harmful. Do not use them to treat any illness; consult a qualified medical professional.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
a disease of the blood vessels of the brain. It may take the form of the bursting of a blood vessel and the flooding of a brain area; or of a softening of the walls of a blood vessel, and the accumulation of a dam of soft material in an artery, thus shutting off the blood supply of a brain area; or it may be that obstructive material is swept into an artery of the brain from some other part of the body. In all three forms the results are much the same. One side of brain and body is paralyzed. The face becomes empurpled, the patient, unconscious. A slow pulse, dilated pupils, and chills are common symptoms. Laying on the non-paralyzed side, mustard to the feet, loose clothing, quiet, and blood letting are recommended by medical authority. High living and want of exercise are supposed to favor the disease. Excitement or anger, causing a rush of blood to the head, are immediate causes of a fit of apoplexy. Young and old are subject to it. The effects of apoplexy may pass away, but are likely to linger, and the symptoms are almost certain to recur. A person of short, stocky build, with a corpulent body and a quick temper, is supposed to be particularly liable to an attack. See Disease
Apoplexy a serious malady
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a serious malady, coming on so suddenly and so violently that anciently anyone affected by it was said to be attonitus (thunderstruck), or sideratus (planetstruck). The disease now described is properly called cerebral apoplexy, the cerebrum or brain being the part chiefly affected.
Apoplexy a serious malady
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a serious malady, coming on so suddenly and so violently that anciently anyone affected by it was said to be attonitus (thunderstruck), or sideratus (planet-struck). The disease now described is properly called cerebral apoplexy, the cerebrum or brain being the part chiefly affected.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 entry correctly names the three mechanisms — a burst vessel, a clot forming in place, and material "swept into an artery of the brain from some other part of the body" — but then insists that "in all three forms the results are much the same." That is the one point modern medicine reverses absolutely: since CT scanning came into hospital use in the 1970s, the first task in a suspected stroke is to tell bleeding from blockage, because the treatment for one can kill a patient with the other. Clot-dissolving drugs (alteplase, approved in the United States in 1996) and catheter removal of clots, established by a run of trials in 2015, can now undo damage if given within hours — hence the slogan "time is brain." The bloodletting and mustard plasters "recommended by medical authority" in 1910 are gone, and the word apoplexy itself has been replaced by stroke, surviving chiefly in "apoplectic," meaning enraged.
Written for this edition, 2026.