ETIOLOGY AND TREATMENT OF MIGRAINE.

Abstract

Of all the common and much-dreaded nervous diseases we recognize, none are less perfectly understood than migraine; nor is there any other nervous disorder which is so disastrous to the physician's ability for effectual treatment. Under the title I wish to be understood as excluding neuralgia, neuritis, headaches due, proximately, to improper alimentation, nervous exhaustion or brain fatigue. I would exclude the head pains as not migraine that are cured by merely correcting ocular or nasal abnormalities. The causes for headache seen through the speculum of the gynecologist and proctologist are not a few; and the many radical cures effected by their rational treatment are glowing tributes to medical progress; but these headaches are not true migraine. The uric acid diathesis is a step in the right direction, but even Haig, its foremost advocate, has not reported his own case of migraine as cured by using alkalithia. It is easy