In Henry’s brain, the accumulation of multiple small strokes killed him. Each stroke insult might be unnoticed at first, but together there could be cognitive or physical decline that becomes more obvious. With each thrombotic attack on the vasculature of the brain, he became a bit weaker, a bit more confused, a bit less able to function. The nineteenth-century physician William Osler commented on such declines – he said, ‘These people take as long to die as they did to grow up.’
