Seventeenth Century Concepts of “Apoplexy” as Reflected in Bonet’s “Sepulchretum”

Abstract

The term “apoplexy,” which has been in use since antiquity, referred to a catastrophic illness with an abrupt loss of consciousness and a frequently fatal outcome. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries scholastic approaches that relied on authorities were merging with an observational approach to medicine and Galen’s speculation that apoplexy was due to an accumulation of phlegm or black bile in the cerebral ventricles began to be seriously challenged. The most extensive collection of case reports with autopsies published in the seventeenth century was Theophile Bonet’s Sepulchretum sive Anatomia Practica. Section 2 of Book I of the Sepulchretum contains 70 case reports of patients that died with the diagnosis of apoplexy. The scholia in this section provide an idea for the modern reader of the notions physicians had of apoplexy in the seventeenth century. The Sepulchretum was an important book for physicians of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It played an important role in the development of modern medicine and it was an important foundation for Morgagni’s De Sedibus et Causis Morborum. This essay reviews the pathological findings reported in victims of apoplexy and examines the views concerning the symptomatology, pathogenesis, etiology, and treatment of this condition that were prevalent at that time.