Hippocrates, the father of medicine, was the first to identify the sudden onset of paralysis more than two millennia ago. As its specific origin was not known, the general term 'apoplexy' was coined to describe this condition. It was only in the seventeenth century that postmortem analysis began to show that bleeding in the brain was one of the underlying causes for the paralysis, giving rise to our modern concept of stroke as a cerebrovascular disease.

In spite of this long tradition, we still have a limited battery of tools to treat stroke and prevention is arguably our best strategy to keep this devastating condition at bay. Indeed, the large number of educational campaigns on what stroke is and how to reduce any risk factors attest to the importance of receiving reliable information to cope with this condition. If you are looking for information on stroke, then you must visit the Internet Stroke Center web site, a comprehensive source of professional information about cerebrovascular disease.

The Internet Stroke Center is a non-profit, purely educational web site from Washington University in St Louis directed by Mark P. Goldberg. The web site editor is Adam Istas and the content is supplied by experts at the (clinical) Stroke Center at Washington University and around the world. The site includes the only continuously updated database of clinical trials and research agents (the Stroke Trials Directory), with more than 400 detailed listings. The site also offers extensive directories of stroke publications, syndromes, treatment centres and conferences. In addition, it contains more than 20 detailed, referenced teaching presentations, which constitute a remarkable educational asset.