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thumb|MRI of man with pituitary apoplexy Apoplexy () refers to the rupture of an internal organ and the associated symptoms. Informally or metaphorically, the term apoplexy is associated with being furious, especially as "apoplectic". Historically, it described what is now known as a hemorrhagic stroke, typically involving a ruptured blood vessel in the brain; modern medicine typically specifies the anatomical location of the bleeding, such as cerebral apoplexy, ovarian apoplexy, or pituitary apoplexy.

==Historical meaning== From the late 14th to the late 19th century, the diagnosis apoplexy referred to any sudden death that began with abrupt loss of consciousness, especially when the victim died within seconds after losing consciousness. The word apoplexy was sometimes used to refer to the symptom of sudden loss of consciousness immediately preceding death. Strokes, ruptured aortic aneurysms, and even heart attacks were referred to as apoplexy in the past, because before the advent of biomedical science, the ability to differentiate abnormal conditions and diseased states was limited. Although physiology, as a medical field, dates back at least to the time of Hippocrates, until the late 19th century, physicians often had inadequate or inaccurate understandings of many of the human body's normal functions and abnormal presentations. Hence, identifying a specific cause of a symptom or of death often proved difficult or impossible.