Historical note on carotid disease and ligation

摘要

Six years before Thomas Willis (1621-1675) described the cerebral arterial circle (fig. 1), the first link between carotid disease (Greek: karotide, to stupefy) and disordered brain circulation was probably made by the Swiss physician Johann Jakob Wepfer (1620-1695) who led the Schaffhausen School of Medicine. Wepfer, known as 'The Hippocrates of Helvetia', described the polygon of arteries at the base of the brain. He is best remembered for his Historiae Apoplecticorum (1658), where he described haemorrhagic apoplexy 1, 2. He also described carotid thrombosis in a patient with a completely occluded calcified right internal carotid.artery 3,4.