Today in brain cutting didactic we saw a patient who had a massive infarct. It got me thinking about why a stroke is called a stroke.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a sudden, inexplicable cerebrovascular accident was first likened to a “stroke of God’s hand” in 1599. The relationship of a cerebral infarction to an act of God exists in other cultures as well: the Greek verb plesso means to “stroke, hit, or beat,” and the derivative plegia gives us our term hemiplegia.
Dirckx JH: Stroke. Stroke 17:559, 1986.