Although small aneurysmal dilatations are common in any and all of the cerebral vessels, large intracranial aneurysms are rare. Thus, Hoffmann,1 in reporting on seventy-eight intracranial aneurysms observed during twenty years' examination of medicolegal cases in Vienna, describes chiefly minute dilatations or diffuse enlargement of the cerebral arteries, and not aneurysms of a size that would be likely to produce pressure symptoms. Most of these cases had come to necropsy because of sudden death from rupture of the dilatations, and had not been observed clinically. The aneurysms were distributed as follows in seventy-five cases:
Arteries of the sylvian fissures............................................. 20
Carotids................................................................... 13
Anterior communicating...................................................... 12
Basilar...................................................................... 10
Vertebral.................................................................... 10
Miscellaneous.............................................................. 10
Total.................................................................... 75
Of these, fifty-three were in women and twenty-two in men, which reverses the proportions usually observed in aneurysms. It is to be noted that of the ten aneurysms of the vertebral artery, seven were on the