The importance of the therapeutic time window for ischemic stroke has been widely accepted for a long time. Consequently, I have been thinking about the past, when the term "brain attack," which was reimported from the United States, began to spread by repetition. In the 1980s, I had made an enthusiastic study of acute-phase cerebral revascularization for ischemic stroke. At that time, we could cure only a quite lim ited number of patients, such as those who already were hospitalized or who, fortu nately, were brought to the hospital within a few hours from the onset of the stroke. RM...