Monday 9 December 2013

A Brief History Of Migraines



Conditions that have been linked to migraines were described in detail in Babylonian writings dating back to 3000 BC, & papyrus scrolls dated from around 1550 BC that were found buried alongside a mummy in Thebes contain even more detailed accounts that are remarkably similar to what modern migraine sufferers explain. Even the Sister of Medicine himself, Hippocrates, described what are clearly migraines in 460 BC, when they described a shining light that was usually seen in eye & followed by extreme pain that started in temples & worked its way to encompass the remainder of the head & down in to the neck. Hippocrates was also well ahead of his time by being the first to correlate head pain with exercise & seven sexual activity. Of coursework, Hippocrates also attributed migraines to vapors making their way up to the head from stomach & thought that the headache pain could be relieved by throwing up.

How long have migraines been around? Contrary to the beliefs of plenty of, migraines are not a new illness, only a newly-named. In fact, based on the signs, it seems that migraines are among the oldest diseases known to mankind.

Plato is thought about of the all-time great thinkers the world has ever produced, up there in the pantheon of great philosophers. & yet they seems to have been so wrong about so plenty of things, including migraines. As far as Plato was concerned, head pain was caused by people paying much attention to the body. In fact, Plato appears to be in that camp that thinks migraine sufferers are a bunch of whiners & that it is all in their heads, but not in their expanding & constricting blood vessels. It may be time to start second-guessing this whole idea of Plato being , smart.

The Ebers Papyrus, named after George Ebers who obtained it, dates back to at least 1200 BC is an encyclopedic compilation of various prescriptions & medical treatments, including for shooting pains in the head consistent with modern day migraine headaches. According to the instructions on the papyrus, Egyptians were to make use of a strip of linen to tie a clay crocodile holding grain in its mouth to the head of the patient. On the linen were written the names of those gods that the Egyptians believed could cure their illnesses. As in so plenty of things, the Egyptians may have been preternaturally aware of modern techniques because it is believed that this procedure could possibly have brought relief to the headache sufferer by compressing the scalp & collapsing the blood vessels that were causing the pain. At the least it made more sense than the earlier Egyptian cure for head pain, which was to basically rub a fried fish on stricken side of the head.

Hua T'o was a Chinese surgeon in the second century who is given credit for the invention of anaesthetic drugs among other things. They was also perhaps the first to take to acupuncture needles to cure migraines. In infamous &, hopefully, rare case, when Hua used a needle to carve a tumor out of patient suffering from pain between his eyes a canary flew out. The man not only lived, but was cured of his pain.

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