A History of Headaches

Headaches have always been part of the human condition. Here we look at how headaches have been regarded and treated down the years from the beginnings of civilization when people could first begin to record their headache experience.

Headache in Ancient History

Ancient human skulls dating from 5,000 to 10,000 years ago have been found to have holes or slits in them. It seems that this was done on purpose, and originally it was thought to be with the intention of freeing evil spiritis or demons -- this is called trepanning. However some African tribes still practise trepanning in order to relieve headaches, so perhaps that is why cave men did it.

Ancient Egyptians recorded prescriptions for headaches, and described migraines and shooting head pains. they attempted to treat it by binding a small clay crocodile to the head with linen -- and that may have helped by compression and by cooling the scalp.

Hippocrates in about 400 BC said that he did, at times, experience a bright light in his right eye and then terrific pain in his his temples that spread to his nexk and elsewhere around his head. He reckoned that headaches could be started by forms of exercise.

Arataeus of Cappodocia, around 270 AD, first described what we now recognise as being a migraine.

Headaches in Later Times

In 1783, Tissot described the differences between migraine and a common headache, and proposed that it was caused by muscular reflexes in the abdomen. At around the same time, Erasmus Darwin (the grandfather of Charles), thought that headaches were caused by too much blood in the head (caused by dilation of the blood vessels there), and suggested the use of a centrifue to force the blood from the head to the feet.

Visions and the aura associated with migraines had already been described as early as the twelfth century, and in in 1778 Fothergill used the term "fortification spectra" because of the resmblance of the vision to a typical town fortification of the time.

The first monograph on migraines appeared in 1873 by Liveing, and it was he who first began to discuss a neural theory of migraines, and he spoke of "nerve storms". William Gowers in 1888 wrote an important book on neurology which discussed headaches, proposing the "Gowers Mixture" -- nitroglycerine 1% in alcohol.

In fact, in "Alice in Wonderland" and "Alice's Adventures Through The Looking Glass", Lewis Carroll described several aspects of migraines, including tunnel vision, dizziness, visual distortions, and other hallucinations -- at one time these were thought to be the result of experiences with drugs, but it is now thought that he was merely describing his experiences with migraines.

In 1868 Woakes described the use of ergot (a parasitic fungus found on grains and grasses) for the treatment of headaches, and reports began to appear in medical literature in 1883 and afterwards; in 1907 it was described by Stevens as being useful to treat migraine, and in 1927 ergotamine tartrate was being injected to treat migraine.

Treating Headaches in Modern Times

The new anti-migraine drug sumatriptan was described by Humphrey -- this was based on the idea that seratonin can provide headache relief, and so they developed a medicine similar to seratoinin but with fewer side-effects (and more stable).

Following this work, even more "triptans" are being developed and investigated, along with drugs previously used to treat epilepsy. There is no doubt that the treatment of headaches and migraines will improve greatly over the next few years.