HEADACHE, a pain referred to the front, side, or back of the head, varying, in inten sity and other characters according to its cause and pathological relations. The most common varieties of headache are those which are dependent on, or connected with, derangements of the digestion, and frequently occur after meals. Such headaches are common among young persons, and especially young women leading lives of unnatural confinement within doors amid vitiated air. The subjects of this form of headache are usually pale and feeble, or delicate and easily flushed; they arc often addicted either to sedentary occupations, or to balls, theaters, evening concerts, and other dissipations extending far into the night. The cure is so evident that it need not be insisted on as a matter of doctrine, but the practical application of the lesson is often difficult, owing to the blind devotion with which pleasure is oft:m followed to the obvious detriment of health. Very different is the form of headache caused in older persons, and mostly in men, by a " flow of blood to the head," in connection with threatened apoplexy. In this case the habit is usually full, the complexion florid: gid diness is apt to come on in stooping, and the pain and sense of fullness and throbbing characteristic of the complaint, increase; in sonic cases, there is an approach to insensi bility or double vision, as an additional warning. In these cases, gentle purgation
and restricted diet, with exercise, will usually bring about a cure, unless there is positive organic disease. The periodic headache, or megrim (Fr. migraine, from Gr. and Lat. hemicrania, i.e., half the head), otherwise called brow ague, is a curious variety 'a 111•1 is closely connected with malaria (see AGUE), and recurs at more or less regular intervals. affecting exactly half of the head up to the middle line. This kind is very acute, and is commonly under the control of quinine, which must, however, be given in consider able doses. The sick headache described by Fothergill is among the most distressing and intractable forms, inasmuch as it cannot usually be referred to any distinct remov able cause, and is but little under the control of remedies. It is to be met, however, like the other forms, chiefly by a regulation of the whole habits of life, especially as regards habitual exercise, which may, indeed, be regarded as the great specific for all kinds of headache.