Almost a hundred years passed from the time of the first description of an intracranial aneurysm by Morgagni in 1761 to the year 1859, when Sir William Withey Gull arrived at the conclusion that haemorrhage in the subarachnoid space is caused by ruptured aneurysms. The introduction of lumbar puncture by Quincke 1891 and cerebral angiography by Moniz 1927 made it possible to establish the diagnosis of haemorrhage and its source. In recent decades the problems of treatment have come into prominence, first of all because of the inadequacy of conservative methods of treatment in most of the...