Stories of Stroke: Key Individuals and the Evolution of Ideas

Description:

Stroke is one of the most important and most feared conditions known to man. The threat of stroke is important to all people. What could be more devastating than to lose the ability to speak, move a limb, stand, talk, see, read, feel write or even think? This book brings together ideas, events and advances – the stories – before and during the 20th Century through the accounts of global experts in the field, many of them having been first-hand witnesses to progress. Focusing on selected stories of stroke, this book offers a readable summary of the most dramatic and extensive changes in knowledge about stroke and in caring for stroke patients. Of interest to anyone interested in neurosciences and for physicians caring for stroke patients, this book informs on moving forward, by looking to how we got to where we are.

See more medical ebooks at here:

Computed Tomography: Advanced Clinical Applications

100 Cases in Clinical Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, 2nd Edition

Germ Theory: Medical Pioneers in Infectious Diseases 2nd Edition 2023

Intracerebral Hemorrhage: Advances in Emergency Care

Role of social status and social environment on net survival in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia: A high-resolution population-based study

PREFACE

Every illness is not a set of pathologies but a personal story.
—Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997)
There’s always a story. It’s all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything’s got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.
—Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky (New York: Harper Collins, 2000)

Behind every person, every idea, every event, every advance there is a story. In this book, we collect many of the stories that together tell some of the history of a medical condition: stroke.

Stroke is one of the most important and most feared conditions known to man. World history has been changed by stroke. Many important leaders in science, medicine, the arts, and politics have had their productivity cut prematurely short by stroke. Some of their stories are included in this book. Even more important is the threat that stroke poses to every individual. What could be more devastating than to lose the ability to move a limb, stand, walk, see, feel, think clearly, remember, read, write, speak, or understand language? Loss of function is often quick and totally unanticipated. Impairments may be permanent. Most individuals fear stroke more than any other disease, with the possible exception of cancer. Everyone would like to exit this life with their capabilities and mind intact, despite the inevitable aging of their bodies.

Clearly, the history of stroke needs to be written. Stroke is a very complex disorder. Multiple conditions and risk factors and developments in medical knowledge and technology relate intimately to the history of stroke. A detailed complete analysis of the evolution of knowledge about all these stroke-related factors would fill many large volumes. These volumes would constitute a reference valuable to scholars but would make rather tedious reading. Instead, we have striven herein to offer an eclectic, easily read, single volume that shares selected stories. We elected to focus on key individuals who were innovators, movers, and shakers who advanced the field further along. We also emphasized ideas – how they began, and how they then evolved up to the present day. We also chose to emphasize the twentieth century, especially the second half of the twentieth up to the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first century. This period saw the most dramatic and extensive changes in knowledge about stroke and in caring for stroke patients. The story of those advances has not been told. The senior editor was active during this period and, as a witness, could help deliver a firsthand account of progress and how it developed.

Many texts provide accounts of medical advances beginning with the ancients and Hippocrates. We include eclectically some of the early history that relates to the brain and to vascular disease, but it is not the emphasis of this volume.

We have asked individuals from different countries to contribute. They were chosen because of their knowledge about various aspects of stroke development. We have edited their contributions, sometimes extensively, to make them conform to the style and goals of the volume. We have also limited references to those that were essential and important. We kept the volume sparsely illustrated with figures in order to reduce the cost of publication and printing and to contain the cost for those who wish to purchase the book. Pictures and photographs of the individuals discussed are now readily available through the internet.

Louis R. Caplan MD Aishwarya Aggarwal MD