MEGRIM, OR SICK-HEADACHE. 407 



on account of the poor. I seated myself and wrote the first two words, but in a 

 moment found that I was incapable of proceeding, for I could not recollect the 

 words which belonged to the ideas that were present in my mind. I strained 

 my attention as much as possible, and tried to write one letter slowly after the 

 others, always having an eye to the preceding one, in order to observe whether 

 they had the usual relationship to each other; but I remarked, and said to 

 myself at the time, that the characters I was writing were not those which I wished 

 to write, and yet I could not discover where the fault lay. I therefore desired, and 

 partly by broken words and syllables and partly by gestures, I made the person who 

 waited for the receipt understand that he should leave me. For about half an hour 

 there reigned a kind of tumultuary disorder in my senses, in which I was incapable 

 of remarking anything very particular, except that one series of ideas forced them- 

 selves involuntarily on my mind. The trifling nature of these thoughts I was 

 perfectly aware of, and was also conscious that I made several efforts to get rid of 

 them, and supply their place by better ones, which lay at the bottom of my soul. My 

 soul was as little master of the organs of speech as it had been before of my hand 

 in writing. Thank God, this state did not continue very long, for in about half an 

 hour my head began to grow clearer, the strange and tiresome ideas became less vivid 

 and less turbulent, and I could command my own thoughts with less interruption. 



" I now wished to ring for my servant, and desire him to inform my wife to 

 come to me ; but I found it still necessary to wait a little longer, to exercise myself 

 in the right pronunciation of the few words I had to say ; and the first half-hour's 

 conversation I had with her was, on my part, preserved with a slow and anxious 

 circumspection, until at last I gradually found myself as clear and serene as in the 

 beginning of the day. All that remained was now a slight headache. I recollected 

 the receipt I had begun to write, and in which I knew I had blundered ; and upon 

 examining it I observed to my great astonishment, that instead of the words < Fifty 

 dollars, being one half-year's rate/ which I ought to have written, the words were 

 4 Fifty dollars, through the salvation of Bra ,' with a break after it, for the word 

 ' Bra ' was at the end of the line." This case is so unlike the usual run of cases 

 of megrim, that it might readily be mistaken for something more serious. 



Let us now briefly discuss the position of megrim in the classification of 

 diseases. To what affections is it most closely allied ? Obviously its most intimate 

 relations are vith other paroxysmal nervous diseases, such as epilepsy, asthma, 

 angina pectoris, and neuralgia, and these together form a very natural group. They 

 are all affections which are more or less persistent, the principal phenomena by 

 which they are characterised being, however, discontinuous or intermittent, con- 

 sisting of paroxysms recurring at variable intervals. Moreover, the tendency to 

 these complaints appears in the great majority of cases to be innate and hereditary, 

 being handed down from parents to children, or from grandparents to grandchildren. 

 Not unfrequently the parent suffers from one member of this group, whilst his 

 offspring suffer from others. For example, a predisposition to epilepsy will some- 

 times appear in some individuals of a family, whilst their nearest relatives are 

 affected by other maladies of the same class. Another remarkable fact is that these 

 different varieties of nervous affection have each their own particular period of 



