During the past decade the clinical syndrome produced by aneurysms at the base of the brain has been the subject of several papers, with special reference to diagnosis during life. In a number of cases included in these reports a definite diagnosis of intracranial aneurysm was established during life and was subsequently verified at operation or necropsy. The earlier writers on the subject described rather uniform clinical symptoms as a result of their analyses of large series of cases, yet they felt that the clinical diagnosis was very uncertain.
In 1859, Sir William Gull1 called attention to the relative frequency of intracranial aneurysms and their clinical manifestations. After a survey of previously reported cases and 7 of his own, he concluded : "Although we may from the circumstances sometimes suspect the presence of an aneurysm within the cranium, we have at the best no symptoms on which to