I've been reading the book, Brain, Mind and Medicine; Essays in Eighteenth Century Neuroscience, edited by Harry Whitaker, C.U.M. Smith and Stanley Finger. Interesting couple of chapters on apoplexy.
In 1769 Edinburgh physician Cullens proposed this classification system. It was highly acclaimed.
Class II Neuroses (an injury of thesense and motion, without an idiopathic pyrexia or any local affection)
Class I Comata. A diminution of voluntary motion, with sleep more or less profound; the motion of the hrart and arteries remaining.
The idiopathic Species:
1. Apoplexia(sanguinea) with symptoms of universal plethora, especially of the head.
2. Apoplexis (serosa) with a leucophlegmasia over the whole body, especially in old people.
3. Apoplexia (Hydrocephalia) coming on by degrees, affecting infants, or those below the age of puberty first with lassitude.
4. Apoplexia (Atrabiliara) taking place in those of a Melancholic constitution.
5. Apoplexia (Traumatica) from some external injury mechanically applied to the head.
6. Apoplexia (venerata) from powerful sedatives taken internally or applied externally.
7. Apoplexia (mentalis) from a passion of the mind.
8. Apoplexia (Cataplectica) in the contractile muscles, with immobility of the limbs by external force.
9. Apoplexia (suffocata) from some external suffocating power.
The apoplexy is frequently symptomatic;
1. Of an intermittent fever
2. Continued fever
3. Phlegmasiae
4. Exanthema
5. Hysteria
6. Epilepsy
7. Podraga
8. Worms
9. Ischuria
10. Scurvys
Some of the treatment options from Cooke in 1820 were; cathartics, revellents, cataplasms, clysters, sialogues, sinapisms, rubefacients, cupping and leeches. But the most popular method was bloodletting.
Benjamin Franklin tried medical electricity in 1750 on a stroke patient. Applying electricity to the 'disordered side' did not help.
Thank god we are in a much more enlightened era where the height of medical intervention after the acute phase seems to be benign neglect.
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