HEADACHE. 321 



savage races. The subjects of this disorder have an instinctive feeling that it is 

 nervous, and can usually distinguish it from other kinds of headache. They recog- 

 nise its approach, and succumb to it almost without an effort, and then when it is 

 over they rebound as if nothing had happened. The duration varies : with most iv 

 continues till after a sound sleep, and in many, or in the same, person occasionally, 

 it will prevent sleep for one or two nights. It varies in degree : sometimes it is 

 dull and heavy, admitting the subject of it to pursue the usual avocations of the day. 

 though under discomfort, but more frequently it is so acute as to make any occupa- 

 tion an additional suffering. The seat varies in different persons, and in the same 

 persons at different times, according to the exciting cause. It may occupy the front 

 of the head, one temple, the crown, the back of the head, or one side. It belongs to 

 all temperaments and habits of body, but it occurs most frequently in persons of 

 nervous diathesis, and in those with frames weak by organisation or exhausted by 

 disease and other causes. The original constitution most prone to this form of 

 headache is that in which nervous susceptibility is well marked. Those of lively 

 emotions, delicate sensibility, and easily perturbed mind are frequent sufferers, and 

 it prevails largely amongst those who have the sesthetical and imaginative elements 

 highly developed. It is the frequent accompaniment and curse of great intellectual 

 endowment, and it would appear that the liability to it is most marked when the 

 functional activity of the brain, whether in perception, emotion, or intellect, is dis- 

 proportionate to the organic vigour of the rest of the body. The condition which, 

 irrespective of original constitution, is most favourable to the production of nervous 

 headache may be described as one of debility. In the studious, this predisposition 

 is the result of the consumption of nervous force in the brain, combined with neglect 

 of the ordinary laws of health ; and the same may be said of those who over-exert 

 themselves in professional work, in diplomacy, commercial speculation, or what not. 

 In the rich and well-to-do there is often loss of tone engendered by late hours, hot 

 rooms, want of exercise, emotional excitement, the increasing torment of jealousy 

 and ambition, and worse than all, the forced effort to appear gay in spite of ennui, 

 worry, and disappointment. The operative classes are not exempt from it, for their 

 social surroundings are often of the most unfavourable description, and their frames 

 are weakened by hardship and privation. Often enough it arises from debility, 

 ensuing on loss of blood or its deterioration, on excessive discharges, and on vicious 

 habits and indulgences. The pale anaemic girl, the mother worn out by repeated 

 pregnancies and prolonged suckling, the father blanched from piles, and the son ex- 

 hausted with vice all suffer from this headache. Many of the exciting causes clearly 

 show the nervous origin of the affection. In one it is produced by a prolonged fit 

 of study, or a difficult arithmetical calculation, in a second by a dazzling light, a loud 

 and grating noise, or a disagreeable odour, whilst in others it results from an attack 

 of indigestion, or from long abstinence from food. Curiously enough, it may some- 

 times be induced by certain atmospheric conditions, notably by that which precedes 

 and accompanies thunder, and by that which ushers in a fall of snow. Sometimes it 

 results from apparently the most trivial causes. The case is recorded of a lady who 

 could at any time induce a fit of headache by turning her head suddenly to the right 

 side, and in another instance it was always brought on by lying on the back. Of all 

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