Description
Book SynopsisA cultural, social, and medical history of migraine. For centuries, people have talked of a powerful bodily disorder called migraine, which currently affects about a billion people around the world. Yet until now, the rich history of this condition has barely been told. In Migraine, award-winning historian Katherine Foxhall reveals the ideas and methods that ordinary people and medical professionals have used to describe, explain, and treat migraine since the Middle Ages. Touching on classical theories of humoral disturbance and medieval bloodletting, Foxhall also describes early modern herbal remedies, the emergence of neurology, and evolving practices of therapeutic experimentation. Throughout the book, Foxhall persuasively argues that our current knowledge of migraine's neurobiology is founded on a centuries-long social, cultural, and medical history. This history, she demonstrates, continues to profoundly shape our knowledge of this complicated disease, our attitudes toward peopl
Trade ReviewIn
Migraine, Katherine Foxhall delivers a thorough and illuminating history of migraine that traces our endeavors to understand, treat and eliminate this painful condition we still know little about . . . Foxhall's history of migraine, unlike the self-help books, accommodates human complexity without scanting medicine's contributions to a condition that affects roughly 1 in 7 people on our planet. A lively, scholarly book about migraine, Foxhall's history is also a treatise on the human condition.
—Sibbie O'Sullivan,
The Washington PostKatherine Foxhall's book,
Migraine: A History, is a remarkable volume on migraine and its history from the second to the 21st century . . . Written by a historian with an open mind to all aspects of migraine and medical history, the book stands alone as a current best historical work on the subject . . . For anyone with any interest in migraine, this is a must-read, and one that will be rewarded with compelling erudition, and the knowledge that the history of migraine matters a lot. I recommend it highly.
—R. Allan Purdy, MD, FRCPC, Division of Neurology, Dalhousie University,
Brain: A Journal of NeurologyI had not come across such a comprehensive and concise book written about [migraine] . . . This should be on the student nurse and doctor reading list and any clinician caring for patients as this is important to understand migraines and the journey along the way – we are still learning.
—Jane Brown, Urgent Care Division, Worcestershire Acute NHS Trust,
Nursing TimesTable of ContentsList of Figures
Acknowledgments
Note on Terminology and Names
Chapter 1. Introduction: Programmed In?
Chapter 2. The "Beating of Hammers": Classical and Medieval Approaches to Hemicrania
Chapter 3. "Take Housleeke, and Garden Wormes": Migraine Medicine in the Early Modern Household
Chapter 4. A "Deadly Tormenting Megrym": Expanding Markets and Changing Meanings
Chapter 5. "The Pain Was Very Much Relieved and She Slept": Gender and Patienthood in the Nineteenth Century
Chapter 6. "As Sharp as If Drawn with Compasses": Victorian Vision, Men of Science, and the Making of Modern Migraine
Chapter 7. "A Shower of Phosphenes": Twentieth-Century Stories and the Medical Uses of History
Chapter 8. "Happy Hunting Ground": Conceptual Fragmentation and Medication in the Twentieth Century
Chapter 9. "If I Could Harness Pain": The Migraine Art Competitions, 1980-1987
Chapter 10. Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
