A STATISTICAL analysis of consecutive routine autopsy reports was carried out in an attempt to clarify the epidemiological and clinical importance of coincident cerebral and cardiac infarction. Three thousand five hundred and thirty two autopsies fulfilled our basic criteria, being performed on subjects over 20 years of age and dying from natural causes. These were examined and only those in whom macroscopic recent infarcts of the brain and heart were found were accepted for the study. Therefore only infarctions which could produce unambiguous clinical symptoms were analysed. Out of a total 906 infarctions 282 were cerebral alone, 532 cardiac alone and 92 coexisted in both the heart and brain.