Although reports of spontaneous occlusion of the carotid arteries antedated Ramsay Hunt's article in 1914,1 he laid emphasis on the clinical significance of arteriosclerotic involvement of the carotid arteries. He noted that at postmortem examination cerebral infarcts often went unexplained; the intracranial vessels being perfectly normal. After examining 20 cases of hemiplegia in older individuals and finding 4 among them with diminished carotid pulsations opposite to the hemiplegic side, he stressed the importance of examination of the arteries in the neck in cases of cerebrovascular accident. He then postulated that the occlusive process lay in the cervical portion of the carotid artery. Reviewing the literature including the cases of spontaneous thrombosis of the carotid artery, those due to injury to the vessels, and those as a result of embolic occlusions, he observed that the clinical picture produced by the resultant infarction was in all respects similar to that seen