Migraine
Introduction by Esther Lardreau-Cotelle Agrégée de
Philosophie Docteur en Philosophie de l'Université Paris I
Détachée à l'IHPST-UMR 8590 (CNRS/ENS/Paris 1) 13
rue du Four, 75006 Paris
esthercotelle@wanadoo.fr
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January 2008
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Translation by Karine
DEBBASCH
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La Migraine. - Album comique de pathologie pittoresque,
Recueil de vingt caricatures médicales, Paris : A.
Tardieu, 1823.
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Terminological remarks
The major nineteenth-century encyclopedias digitized on
Medica feature
articles on "cephalea", "cephalalgia",
"migraine", "hemicrania", "head pain" or
"carebaria" (literally, "head weightiness",
"head heaviness"). But the entries are sometimes separated,
or on the contrary joined together, and some articles are sometimes
altogether absent: the
Dictionnaire de médecine et de chirurgie
pratiques for instance (articles on "cephalalgia"
and "hemicrania"
) features, in 1833, an article on
"hemicrania", but has no entry for "migraine"; on
the other hand, in 1837, the
Dictionnaire ou répertoire général des
sciences médicales (articles on "cephalea, cephalalgia"
and "migraine"
) contains an entry on
"migraine", but no article is devoted to hemicrania. In
1876, the
Nouveau dictionnaire de médecine et de chirurgie
pratiques (articles entitled "cephalalgia, cephalea"
and "migraine or
hemicrania"
) presents no entry for
"hemicrania", but the article on "migraine" is
entitled: "migraine or hemicrania". At the beginning of the
century, "head pain" had its place, as can be seen in the
Encyclopédie
méthodique (articles "cephalalgia"
, "hemicrania"
, "migraine"
and "head pain"), but
the heading then disappeared from other encyclopedias. The same goes
for the notion of "carebaria"
, which became obsolete.
Migraine, hemicrania, cephalea, cephalalgia, head pain, head illness,
etc.: a large number of terms, whose different meanings are
not self-evident, refer to what is commonly called
"headache".
Etymology, in this particular case, is of little help.
Migraine and hemicrania are alterations from the Medieval Latin: via
the Late Latin word hemicrania, or hemicranium, which
apparently was more frequently used, hemigranea, hemigrania,
migranea and migrana were borrowed from the Greek hemicranion
and hemicrania, themselves composed of hemisus (half)
and cranion (cranium). These terms refer to half the head as
the locus of the migraine (hemicrania) and also to the pain felt in
this half of the head: the illness coincides with its anatomical
localization. In Greek or Latin Antiquity, it was indeed quite
frequent to name a disease after the affected locus, so that
analyzing the names of the diseases often amounts to defining them.
Although migraine and hemicrania are, from an etymological point of
view, perfect synonyms, the two words are not used with the same
meaning. As for any doublet, or any pair of words issued from the same
etymon, each word acquired one particular meaning. The common word
‘migraine’ appeared in the 12
th century with the
non-medical acception of "despite, boredom" (this meaning
survived until the late 19
th century, for instance through
the verb "migrainer" ("to
migraine") [1]: "to cause a migraine, aggravate
considerably, bore", which one can notably find in the Goncourt
brothers’ writings); it had a normal phonetic evolution and underwent
quite important modifications of its meaning in the course of two
centuries. The more learned "hemicrania", on the contrary,
seems to have appeared in the 16
th century (Ambroise Paré
used the word), at the time of the re-Latinization of the French
language; directly borrowed from the Latin and the Greek, it only
underwent minor transformations. Due to this phonetic evolution,
migraine is, in its form, further away from the etymon, and it also
presents a looser connection between signifier and signified than the
word hemicrania does.
These two terms should therefore not be considered as exact synonyms.
Between the 16th and the 20th centuries,
‘hemicrania’ was used to refer to unilateral headache, whereas the
word ‘migraine’, its etymology forgotten, was used – as early as the
end of the 18th century (by Tissot, for example), but
mostly during the 19th century – to refer to extremely
varied forms, from forms accompanied by bilateral pain to painless
ones.
Until a date that can be situated between 1829 (Prosper Martin) and
1831 (Pierre-Adolphe Piorry), the term ‘hemicrania’ was systematically
chosen over ‘migraine’ [2]. But afterwards, ‘migraine’ prevailed, and
hemicrania became used only to refer to a symptom. Migraine was no
longer a mere anatomic definition, and the tendency was, on the
contrary, to emphasize a series of symptoms and prodromes that so far
had not been neglected altogether, but considered as very secondary
when compared to the defining sensation of pain.
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Honoré Daumier. Le mal de tête (The Headache) Lithograph
published in Le Charivari, April 23, 1833 © Brandeis
University
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It is as if ancient texts and 19
th-century texts
described the same sensations, the same reality, but not the same
disease. Actually, the category "head pains" (
dolores
capitis) disappeared, whereas in previous centuries, it was
explicitly featured in nosographies as a genus of disease, of which
migraine was a species. In this category, one could find migraine,
vapors, insanity, epilepsy, paralysis, catarrh, but also ophthalmia,
otalgia, odontalgia and rheumatisms, according to the
classifications (see for example Jean Fernel,
La Pathologie, ou
discours des maladies (
Pathology, or On Diseases) in
1655
, or Boissier de Sauvages,
Nosologia methodica, in
1763
– translated in 1772 under the title
Nosologie méthodique
(
Methodical Nosology)
– or again Linné (Linnaeus) [3])
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Vapors. - Album comique de pathologie pittoresque,
Recueil de vingt caricatures médicales, (Picturesque
Pathology Album, Collection of Twenty Medical Caricatures)
Paris : A. Tardieu, 1823.
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Rejection of the concept of pain
Most of the texts that are digitized here date from the 19
th
century, which is particularly rich in academic publications on
migrainous diseases – medical students’ dissertations, monographs,
dictionary articles, articles from periodicals, chapters from
textbooks or courses – but also novels [4], vaudevilles [5], operettas
[6], lithographs [7],
etc.
The decision to digitize documents was not accidental. Some texts,
either because the Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire de Médecine does
not possess them or because there are beneficiaries, could not be
digitized – which is why some important references in the history of
migraine are not available for on-line consultation, although they
are featured in the bibliography.
But the corpus has also been deliberately restricted, at least in
part, to the late 18
th and the 19
th centuries,
insofar as the concept of migraine fully developed during that
particular period of time. It would be wrong and anachronistic to
believe that "migraine has always existed." A given medical
problem appears at a given time, in a given place, according to a
particular state of medicine and physiology or pharmacology.
Nevertheless, the sensations of migraine and the facts of the disease
probably are perennial.
Diseases are to be viewed in their cultural environments. Particular
time periods or regions tend to elect one disease as representative
of their history. Each period, each country, has its "own"
diseases. In the 18th
century, the French
often referred to the pox as "the Neapolitan
disease", which the English called "the French
sickness". England suffered from the spleen. Nineteenth-century
France had "migraine":
"one may say that France is the homeland of migraine" [8].
For nineteenth-century France, after the Revolution and the Terror,
migraine was a real problem, and was a grimacing image of the various
fractures in the country, be they social or sexual. It was the
disease of intellectuals, the disease of ill-married women, the
disease of the bourgeoisie.
It would nevertheless be wrong to believe that in ancient times
"head pain" was an unknown disease. It would also be
wrong to think that people in the 19
th century refused to
look back on previous centuries.
On the contrary, 19th-century medical dissertations were
all supposed to feature a summary of the knowledge acquired in the
course of Antiquity. The writings of Galen
, Pseudo-Galen
, Aretaeus
, Caelius Aurelianus
or Alexander of Tralles
were seldom read (the references often were second hand), but
they kept being repeated. As for the Hippocratic corpus, it was only
mentioned to provide authority; indeed, although it does contain
words such as "cephalalgia", "head pains",
"pains around the head", "heaviness in the
temples", "heaviness in the head", there is nothing in
it that portrays the migrainous disease – apart from a passage from Epidemics
, which seems to describe ophthalmic migraine, without
attributing it explicitly to migraine.
Independently of this academic tradition, and independently of the
translation choices that Littré and Daremberg made in their attempts
to make the ancient writers accessible, it is not obvious that the
condition described in Antiquity by the Greek terms hemicrania,
heterocrania (Aretaeus), or under the Latin terms hemicrania,
hemicranium, corresponds to what the 19
th century called
"migraine". The
Encyclopédie and the first 19
th-century
encyclopedias still presented definitions in which the concept of pain
was central, but the perspective radically changed after the first 25
years of the 19
th century.
For quite a few years, parallel traditions, namely veterinary
medicine and astronomy, had actually been shedding light on
"strange" ocular phenomena – hemiopsy [9], phosphenes [10],
etc. – followed by cephalalgia; the medical tradition,
starting with Hippocrates, had considered these as part of a specific
disease, scotodynia [11]. Medicine therefore considered it impossible
to separate these phenomena from migraine.
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Representation of a migrainous aura with
ophthalmic symptoms (hemianopsy or loss of part of the visual
field; positive scotoma with perception of a dark spot – bottom
right; amblyopia or dimness of vision), and osmophobia
(hypersensitivity, intolerance to odors). No pain.
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Jean-Jacques Grandville, Sans titre (No title), Old Nick
(Paul Emile Forgues), Petites misères de la vie humaine
(Little Miseries of Human Life) - Joco Seria, no location,
printed by H. Fournier & Cie, s.d. (1842), p. 313. ©
Private collection, E. Lardreau
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Fothergill’s is one of the first medical texts to mention
ophthalmic aura, that series of ophthalmic symptoms that are
generally experienced at the onset of or just prior to a migraine
headache; his work nevertheless was not known before Hubert Airy and
Liveing
read it in 1870 and 1873, respectively.
But the founding dissertation, thanks at once to its impact and to
its decisiveness, is that of Piorry, who invented the concept of
ophthalmic migraine [12] (see also Jules Pelletan de Kinkelin
): among the various sensations a patient is likely to
experience, ophthalmic symptoms (in particular scintillating scotoma
[13]), close to vertigo (Mémoire sur le vertige
; see also Ménière’s article
), or speech deficiencies, are no less decisive than the
pain itself. Piorry’s work was furthered by Liveing’s book and
Hubert Airy’s article, previously mentioned, and also by three
important medical dissertations: that of Dianoux
, who presented what physicians knew about the condition
in 1875; that of Robiolis
who, in 1884, investigated the hypothesis of the
ophthalmologist Nicati (who had envisaged "migraines" for
each special sense organ (i.e. ophthalmic, auditory,
olfactory and gustative migraines); and that of Fink
, in 1891, who presented what was known at the time on
hysterical migraine. The three decisive articles by Galezowski
, Féré
and Babinski
were also a continuation of Piorry’s work.
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Depiction of scotomas. - Hubert Airy, "On a distinct
form of transient hemiopsia", Philosophical
transactions of the Royal Society of London, February
1870, p. 247-264.
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The old definition of "migraine" then
appeared as inadequate: not only had the history of medicine shed
light on hemicranias that were not migraines, but there seemed to
be migraines that presented other types of symptoms than pain
(Labarraque
, for instance). There are a number of symptoms that
actually do not involve the "cranium": hands, arms,
tongue can be affected with tingling sensations.
The point nevertheless was not to replace the old definition
with another one, equally nominal, but to substitute clinical
descriptions for that definition.
For physicians as different
from one another as Trousseau and Liveing, the starting point was
no longer in a theoretical definition, but in what could be
observed, be it a) at the hospital or b) in the
laboratory (experimentation).
a) One cannot but notice that a number of cases reported in the
medical literature come from hospital or asylum populations [14].
Connections can therefore be made between patients who do not
belong to the same nosographic groups [15]. The family history of
the patient (his or her heredity), his or her personal history,
and the efficacy of a given antimigrainous treatment are essential
for the diagnosis: phenomena different from those that migraine
usually features are not a priori excluded, provided they
belong to a migrainous history, and can be treated with
antimigrainous drugs. Links might therefore be made between
diseases as seemingly different from one another as gout and
migraine (Trousseau, Chaumier
, Soula
), epilepsy and migraine (Liveing, all the texts by
Féré presented here, Gowers), or hysteria and migraine (Babinski,
Fink) – transformations, or similitudes. Room is made for
marginal, irregular forms, as well as for minimal and attenuated
forms of the disease which, were it not for the history of the
patient and the history of his/her family, would fail to be
recognizable: yawning, episodes of muteness, itching, congestion
of the face, vertigo, formation of bright images on the retina,
can all fall under a migraine diagnosis.
b) Another evolution of paramount importance when compared to
the previous centuries is the resort to laboratory experimentation.
Auzias-Turenne introduced in 1846 [16] and used again in 1849
a mechanistic vascular model, rejecting both the doctrine of
sympathy [17] and the finalistic conception of causality on which
it was based. From the second half of the 19
th century,
the truly "vasomotor" theories (Du Bois-Reymond
, Möllendorff
, Eulenburg
, Jaccoud [18], Latham
) were based on the recent development of physiology, as
well as on a major experimental discovery, attributed to both
Claude Bernard and
Brown-Séquard: vasomotor nerves regulate the arterial blood flow.
The sympathetic nerve could be cut, or on the contrary stimulated,
in animals in the laboratory. Due to an excitation of the
sympathetic nerve, vasoconstriction (the diminution in the caliber
of vessels caused by the contraction of its muscles) produces local
anemia (paleness, decrease in body temperature,
etc.). Due
to a paralysis of the sympathetic nerve, vasodilation (augmentation
in the caliber of vessels caused by relaxation of its muscles)
produces hyperemia (flush, local increase in temperature,
etc.).
There could therefore be:
- either two contradictory models of migraine (Du Bois-Reymond,
Möllendorff);
- or two types of migraine, vasoconstriction migraines on the
one hand (commonly called "white migraines", or
scientifically "sympatheticotonic migraines"), and
vasodilation migraines on the other ("red migraines",
or "neuroparalytical migraines") (Eulenburg);
- or else, two different moments in a migraine crisis: an
initial phase of vasoconstriction, followed with a phase of
vasodilation (Latham, Jaccoud).
Not only could one empirically observe the different symptoms
in support of one given model, but one could also use devices to
measure the vascularization of a given part of the human body.
Thus, after Romain Vigouroux’s pioneering work in 1879, Eulenburg
set out to measure the resistance of the migrainous body to
electricity, with a view to proving that it increases with the lack
of vascularization.
This change in perspectives did not deter researchers from working
on forms of migraine in which pain was prevalent. An extremely
rare form was thus isolated: ophthalmoplegic migraine [18] (also
referred to as "Möbius’ disease
", or as "Charcot-Möbius’ syndrome"), a
migraine accompanied by paralysis of some eye muscles (from the
Greek ophtalmos: eye, and plege: blow). Charcot
may not have been the first to describe it (in 1860,
Gubler
described a paralysis of the stem of the oculomotor nerve,
preceded by migraines, although it is not entirely clear that one
can consider it as a real "ophthalmoplegic migraine".
Nevertheless, in 1890 Charcot gave it the name under which it has
been known ever since.
At the end of the 19
th century, speaking of
"migraine" as if it represented a nosological unit did
not make sense any longer. Migraine was not seen as a mere disease
anymore, but as a multiple entity that could be divided into
various syndromes: ordinary migraine, ophthalmic migraine,
ophthalmoplegic migraine. In many respects, this classification is
what made today’s conception of migraine possible.
Other texts, some of them published in the first half of the 20th
century, are just as important as the ones mentioned above. Wolff
and his colleagues rekindled work on the vascular hypothesis [19].
As for the neurological hypothesis [20], it was considerably
enriched by a series of articles by Lashley [21], Leão [22], and
Milner [23].
Treatments
It is commonly thought that therapies in the past were inconsistent,
and were nothing but a mix of ill-conceived procedures, resulting more
from a vague "magical" thinking than from rational thinking.
But this opinion cannot be maintained in view of the documents we
have. The medications proposed during a given period were indeed
consistent with the theories of that period, even though one may
occasionally notice some discrepancies.
It is impossible to summarize in just a few lines the whole range of
pre-19
th-century therapies, as they varied both according
to the schools and according to the type of head pain one wished to
treat. The treatments usually promoted, as a general prevention, [24]
both a dieting and a healthy lifestyle: practicing gymnastics,
bathing, walking, traveling, playing games for the spirit and/or for
the body [25] were recommended to avoid feeling unhappy, bored, angry
or worried, but also to avoid an excess of feelings. The purpose of
the diet was to facilitate digestion and to avoid plethora, one of the
major causes of hemicrania.
A few categories of medications based on different principles can
nevertheless be listed.
- 1°) The "cephalic remedies" (verbena, ambergris,
camphor, orange flower water, etc.), the use of which was to
disappear, were recommended against "head pains", not only
against hemicrania. These remedies were supposed to play some
obscure role on the brain, the nerves and their diseases, improving
one’s understanding and memory, curing epilepsy, manias, paralysis,
pains, imbecility, etc.
- 2°) Other specifics, the "anodyne remedies" (mullein
flower, elder flower, poppy, linden, etc.), were taken to
anaesthetize pain.
- 3°) The purpose of some therapies was, on the contrary, either to
provoke a new, stronger pain in some other part of the body, or to
somehow stimulate a part of the body to create a diversion. This was
achieved by moxibustion, ustion, or by vesicatories (creating
blisters on the skin) – which, by causing a second, artificial point
of irritation, counterbalanced the pain felt in another area.
Cauteries were used to awaken the sensitivity. The technique of
frictions had the same purpose, as observed by Roselyne Rey [26].
- 4°) Based upon the humoral theories, purgation or emesis,
bloodletting, arteriotomy, suction cups or leeches, and sternutation
were used in order to evacuate humors. Some substances were also
administered in the treatment of head pains for their complementary
properties; it was the case of hellebore, which acts both as a
drastic purgative and as a narcotic.
- 5°) Physicians sometimes chose to promote maturation or
suppuration of the pain: these were among the roles of ointments and
plasters.
In the course of the 18
th century, other medications
appeared, while the use of some treatments (such as ustion,
arteriotomy, trepanation or cephalic remedies) was discontinued:
cinchona, which was already used against fevers, started being
administered to treat intermittent hemicrania. It became more and more
frequent to resort to electricity and animal magnetism, including:
electric baths, sparks, electric commotions from the Leyden Jar and
magnets. Ether and opium were used extensively.
In the 19th century, the specifics (cephalic and anodyne
remedies) disappeared. The violent criticism of polypharmacy
(pharmacy based on the massive and multiple prescriptions of
medicinal substances) was approximately contemporary with the
criticism of the concepts of "head disease" and "head
pain". The therapies varied along with the theoretical models of
migraine.
- 1°) The analogy with epilepsy made some prescribers use potassium
bromide [27]. In 1867, Barudel, a military doctor [28], was the
first one to use it in the treatment of migraine, while some ten
years earlier Charles Locock had used it against hystero-epilepsy
and in 1858-1859, Wilks and Radcliffe had used it in cases of
epilepsy. Charcot
systematized its recourse against migraine as – in his words
– an empirical and analogical, but successful treatment.
- 2°) Bromide was however ineffective against hysterical migraine,
and a hypnotic therapy was prescribed in such cases.
- 3°) Against migraine as a manifestation of gout or rheumatisms,
physicians used medications known to be efficacious against these
diseases: colchicum, sodium bicarbonate, hydrotherapeutic cures [29]
[30], salicylates
or pyrazolates
.
- 4°) And finally, against the vascular forms of migraine, either
vasoconstrictors or vasodilators were used, depending on the type of
migraine; in angio-paralytic forms, with vasodilation, rye ergot was
prescribed; in sympathetico-tonic forms, with vasoconstriction, amyl
nitrite and chloral (chloral hydrate) were favored.
Treatment with galvanic and faradaic currents developed during the
second half of the 19
th century [see illustrations].
Both currents were used to treat the two forms of migraine, but their
actions were quite different. In Brenner’s polarized method, one of
the electrodes of the galvanic cell was placed on the cervical portion
of the sympathetic, and the other one was put in the patient’s hand.
For sympathetico-tonic migraine, the anode was applied on the
sympathetic, and the chain of the cell, composed of 10 to 15 elements,
was suddenly closed: the anode, the positive pole, produced a sedative
effect. For angioparalytic migraine, the cathode was placed on the
sympathetic, and the chain was not suddenly closed but, on the
contrary, successively opened and closed; the direction of the current
was sometimes inversed to produce a stronger stimulation. The cathode,
the negative pole, increased excitability. The monopolar method, also
called Professor Chauveau’s method, was also used at the time: the
cathode or active electrode (the smaller electrode) was placed on the
sympathetic, while the bigger, indifferent electrode (so called
because of the low electric intensity it carried) was placed on the
nape of the neck. The daily sessions were very short: about 45 seconds
each, with a very low electric density.
The faradaic current, an alternative current obtained by induction
with a variable magnetic field (Ruhmkorff or Clarke coils), produced
discontinuous rhythmic muscular contractions (a significant interval
separated the end of one wave from the beginning of the next one)
that were used to increase blood flow and diminish muscle
inflammation.
Prior to 1870, small portable devices were manufactured, allowing
doctors to take to their patients’ homes a cell that was powerful
enough
to treat their crises.
More generally, the history of pharmacy underwent a second
transition at the end of the 19
th century: the appearance
of medication packaging implied a new relationship between migraine
sufferers on the one hand and physicians and pharmacists on the other.
Physicians themselves started advising their patients to keep powders
and tablets on their persons, even though they were aware that this
came down to delegating a part of their power. Medical advertising had
been forbidden in France until 1867 for fear of quackery; the near
monopoly of Bayer and the arrival of synthesized products issued from
German research (notably antipyrin) changed migraine into a commercial
object
of international dimensions.
Bibliographical elements
Summary indications.
Primary sources
AIRY (Hubert). On a distinct form of transient
hemiopsia, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of
London, février 1870, p. 247-264
|
ARAGO (François). Œuvres complètes,
Mémoires scientifiques (publiés sous la direction de J.-A.
Barral), Paris, Gide, J. Baudry, 1858, t. X, vol. 1, appendice
XXXVII « Sur des phénomènes de demi-cécité » [BIUM Call Number
59.376]
|
BARUDEL (M.). De l’hémicrânie causée par
l’anémie; de son traitement par le bromure de potassium, Recueil
de mémoires de médecine, de chirurgie et de pharmacie militaire,
1867, 35, XVIII, p. 371-390 [BIUM Call Number 90.149]
|
BASSER (L.S.). Benign paroxysmal vertigo of
childhood (a variety of vestibular neuronitis), Brain,
1964, vol. 87, p. 141-152 [BIUM Call Number 91.082]
|
BICKERSTAFF (Edwin Robert). Basilar artery
migraine, Lancet, 1961, vol. 1, p. 15-17
|
BICKERSTAFF (Edwin Robert). Impairment of
consciousness in migraine, Lancet, 1961, vol. 2, p.
1057-1059 [BIUM Call Number 90.503]
|
BREWSTER (David). On hemiopsy, or half-vision,
Philosophical magazine and Journal of science,
janvier-juin 1865, vol. XXIV, quatrième série, p. 503-507
|
BUCHANAN (Arthur). The abdominal crises of
migraine, Journal of nervous and mental disease, 1921, vol.
LIV, p. 406-412 [BIUM Call Number 91.110]
|
BURG (Robert). Étude expérimentale,
clinique et thérapeutique sur le pyramidon, thèse de médecine
et de pharmacie n° 124, Lyon, imprimerie A. – H. Storck, 1897
|
HERSCHEL (John). Familiar lectures on
scientific subjects, New York, G. Routledge and sons, London,
A. Strahan and Co, 1871
|
KOVALESKY (Pavel Ivanovich). L’épilepsie et la
migraine, Archives de neurologie, 1906, deuxième série,
vol. XXI, p. 365-379
|
OVERLACH (Martin). « Migränin », Ein erprobtes
Mittel bei den schwersten Fällen der Migräne, Deutsche
Medizinische Wochenschrift, 28 novembre 1893, t. XIX, p.
1245-1246 [BIUM Call Number 90.667]
|
OVERLACH (Martin). Migränin, seine Wirkung und
Bedeutung, Wiener Medizinische Blätter, 1894, t. XVII, p.
437-439
|
PARINAUD (Henri). Migraine ophtalmique au
début d’une paralysie générale, Archives de neurologie,
1883, vol. V, p. 57-59
|
RACHFORD (Benjamin Knox). Relationship of
migraine to epilepsy, American Journal of the Medical Sciences,
1898, n. s. t. CXV, p. 436-445 [BIUM Call Number 90.498]
|
SLATER (Robert). Benign recurrent vertigo, Journal
of neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, 1979, vol. 42, p.
363-367. [BIUM Call Number 92.838]
|
SNYDER (C. Harrison). Paroxysmal torticollis
in infancy, a possible form of labyrinthis, American Journal of
Diseases of Children, 1969, vol. 117, p. 458-460 [BIUM Call
Number 111.573]
|
WOLLASTON (William Hyde). On semi-decussation
of the optic nerves, Philosophical transactions of the Royal
Society of London, London, Royal Society, février 1824, p.
222-231 [BIUM Call Number 90.491]
|
Secondary sources
Headache Classification Subcommittee of the
International Headache Society. The International Classification of
Headache Disorders, 2nd edn. Cephalalgia 2004, vol. 24
(Suppl. 1) : p. 27–8.
|
BRUNE (Kay). The early history of non-opioid
analgesics, Acute Pain, décembre 1997, vol. 1, n° 1, p.
33-40
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Notes
1 |
The substantive form of this verb
only occasionally has this meaning : "Tous sont des migrainés,
comme ils disent, de profession" ("They are all
professional migraine sufferers") (See G. Sée, Du
traitement des maux de tête (céphalées, migraines, névralgies
faciales) par l’antipyrine (On the treatment of head pains
– headaches, migraines, facial neuralgias – by antipyrin,
Bulletin de l’Académie de Médecine, 1887, second series, t. XVIII,
p. 267
). The same can be said of the adjective
"migraineux", which Soudry used in 1864 (A. Soudry, Quelques
remarques sur la migraine (A Few Remarks on Migraine),
medical dissertation n° 26, Paris, printed by A. Parent, 1864, p.
15
), or of the substantive "migraineux",
used in 1866 by Michellet (J. Michellet, Considérations
pathologiques sur la migraine (Pathological
Considerations on Migraine), medical dissertation, Paris,
printed by A. Parent, 1866, p. 20
). But the adjectives "migrainé" and
"migrainant", frequently used at the end of the 19th
century, can still be found in the literature with the meaning of
"boredom" ("migrainé": E. Garrett Anderson, Sur
la migraine [On Migraine], Paris medical dissertation
n° 138, 1870, p. 4
; A. Thomas, Contribution à l'étude de la
migraine [Contribution to the study of Migraine],
Montpellier medical dissertation n° 63, 1889, p. 50
). ; "migrainant": E. Garrett Anderson,
1870, p. 18.
|
2 |
The previously mentioned article
on "hemicrania", featured in the 1833 Dictionnaire de
médecine et de chirurgie pratiques (Dictionary of Practical
Medicine and Surgery), is probably one of the last academic
occurrences of the term. |
3 |
K. Von Linné, Genera morborum, in
auditorum usum, Leiden, Upsaliie, C. E. Steinert, 1763, p. 40. |
4 |
For example: H. de Balzac, L’œuvre
de Balzac, Physiologie du mariage, Paris, Le Club français du
livre, 1966, t. 12, p. 1226 (méditation XXVI, § 1); E. Zola, Œuvres
complètes, Pot-Bouille, Paris, Fasquelle, 1967, t. 4. |
5 |
A. Joltrois, É. Abraham, Madame a
sa migraine (Madam has a migraine again), one-act
comedy-vaudeville, played in Paris at the Folies-dramatiques on
December 7, 1858, Paris, Librairie théâtrale, 1858. |
6 |
E. Audran, La mascotte (The
Mascot) (1880), comic opera, libretto by Alfred Duru and Henri
Chivot, Paris, Montgredien et Cie, [s.d.], acte III, air n° 20, p.
275 à 302. |
7 |
For example: H. Daumier, Le mal de
tête (The Headache), from the "Imagination" series n° 9,
published in the Charivari issued on April 23, 1833. |
8 |
A. Haig, Influence of salicylic
acid and its salts on the excretion of uric acid, Proceedings Royal
Medical and Chirurgical Society of London, New Series,
January-March 1888, n°8, 18, II, p. 326. Acknowledgements to Gill
Jackson and the Royal Society of London. |
9 |
Hemiopsy: from the Greek hemi
(half), and ops (eyesight): loss of half of the visual
field. The French term used today is "hémiopie".
|
10 |
Phosphenes: from the Greek phos
(light), and phainein (appear): sensation of light caused by something other than light.
|
11 |
Scotodynia: from the Greek
skotos (darkness), and dinos (vertigo): vertigo
accompanied with darkening of vision, illusion of objects spinning,
heart palpitations, buzzing in both ears. Synonym of
"scotomia" and "dark vertigo".
|
12 |
This particular form of migraine
has been given several different names: "iris migraine"
(Piorry), "ophthalmic migraine (Pelletan); "eye
migraine" (Allory, Tamin, Galezowski); "classic
migraine", as opposed to "common migraine". Today,
according to the International Headache Society (The International
Classification of Headache Disorders, second edition, Cephalalgia,
2004, vol. 24, Suppl. 1, p. 25), the expression "migraine with
aura", as opposed to "migraine without aura," is to
be preferred to the too restrictive expression "ophthalmic
migraine". |
13 |
Scotoma: from the Greek skotos
(obscurity, dark, shade): an area of diminished vision within the
visual field, situated either in the centre or in the periphery.
The patient may be aware of a dark spot (positive scotoma); or
he/she may not be aware of the blank spot, bump into objects, or
have the impression that objects disappear (negative scotoma).
Scintillation: mobile bright spot, generally in zigzags, that can
accompany scotoma.
|
14 |
Only few migraine sufferers were
hospitalized at the beginning of the century – although there were
patients in the services of Chomel, at the Charité hospital in
1822, and at the Hôtel-Dieu in 1838. But, during the second half of
the century, hospitalizations were far more numerous, especially
for ophthalmic migraine, and a fortiori for ophthalmoplegic
migraine (see below).
|
15 |
In 1870, in the Salpêtrière
Hospital, the Sainte-Laure building, which so far harbored
Delasiauve’s service, was so dilapidated that the administration
had it evacuated. Patients diagnosed with insanity, epilepsy and
hysteria had been indiscriminately hospitalized there. The
evacuation was taken as an opportunity to separate the insane from
the epileptic; and the hysterical patients, who also suffered from
seizures, were housed together in a specialized ward, the
"ward of simple epilepsy", placed under the supervision
of Charcot. In 1879, there were at the Salpêtrière 137 simple
epileptic patients, including hysterical patients (see Ludger Jules
Joseph Lunier, Etablissements d’aliénés. Des épileptiques : des
moyens de traitement et d’assistance qui leur sont applicables,
Annales médico-psychologiques (Lunatic Asylums. Of Epileptic
Patients: How to Treat and Assist Them), 1881, n° 5, p. 231,
tableau II
). This allowed Charcot to shed light on the
resemblances and differences between the two neuroses, and to
isolate hysteria; and also to reason, as Liveing had done, in terms
of neurotic equivalents, so that modes of thinking and therapeutics
might be imported from one disease to another. There was no ward
specific to migraine sufferers, but it was known that they had to
be treated as epileptic patients, with potassium bromide.
|
16 |
J.A. Auzias-Turenne, Théorie ou
mécanisme de la migraine (Theory or Mechanism of Migraine), Comptes
rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académie des Sciences /
Institut de France, Paris, Gauthier-Villars, juillet-décembre 1846,
t. XXIII. |
17 |
Sympathy: from the Greek sun
(with), and pathos (affection). There are two different
medical meanings; 1°) physiologically, sympathy is a non mechanical
interrelationship, a harmony between different organs of a body,
such that one organ participates in what happens to the other (the
phrase "sympathetic nerve" is derived from that first
meaning); 2°) pathologically, it refers to a relationship between
different organs such that a disease produces observable effects,
not in the initially affected locus (seat of the disease), but in
another locus that has no mechanical relationship with the first
one.
|
18 |
S. F. Jaccoud, Traité de
pathologie interne, Paris, A. Delahaye, 1870, t. 1, II, livre III,
chap. 1, « migraine – hémicrânie », p. 452-456.
|
19 |
The definition of ophthalmoplegic
migraine has not evolved much, but its classification as a form of
migraine has been abandoned: it is now considered as a kind of
neuralgia. The International Headache Society (The International
Classification of Headache Disorders, second edition (ICHD-II),
Cephalalgia, 2004, vol. 24, Suppl. 1, § 13.17 "Ophthalmoplegic
"migraine"", p. 131-132.) defines it as a series of
recurrent attacks of migrainous headache, associated with paresis
of one or several ocular cranial nerves, in the absence of
discernible intra-cranial lesion. |
20 |
H. G. Wolff, Personality features
and reactions of subjects with migraine, Archives of neurology and
psychiatry, 1937, vol. 37, p. 895-921; H. G. Wolff, J. R. Graham,
Mechanism of migraine headache and action of ergotamine tartrate,
Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, Chicago, 1938, n° 39, p.
737-763; Wolff’s headache and other head pain, (1948), edited by
Donald J. Dalessio, New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1980
(fourth edition). |
21 |
It may be summarized (and
simplified) in the following manner: the various neurological
phenomena that precede cephalalgia would depend on the outbreak of
a cortical wave called cortical spreading depression (CSD),
corresponding to cerebral excitation followed by a depression of
the membranous potential, gradually spreading at a speed of 3
mm/minute, via the neurons, without respecting vascular
territories. |
22 |
K. S. Lashley, Patterns of
cerebral integration indicated by scotomas of migraine, Archives of
Neurology and Psychiatry, 1941, vol. 46, p. 331-339. |
23 |
A. de A. P. Leão, Spreading
depression of activity in the cerebral cortex, Journal of
Neurophysiology, 1944, vol. 7, p. 359-390. |
24 |
P. M. Milner, Note on a possible
correspondence between the scotomas of migraine and spreading
depression of Leão, Electroencephalography and Clinical
Neurophysiology Supplement, 1958, vol. 10, n° 4, p 705. |
25 |
The opposition between treatment
of a crisis and general treatment of migraine is absolutely not
contemporary. It was already made in Antiquity. In the 19th
century it gave rise to systematic consideration.
|
26 |
See for instance Caelius
Aurelianus’s concept of laxatio animi, spiritual counterpart
to physical therapy through relaxation.
|
27 |
R. Rey, Histoire de la douleur (A
History of Pain), Paris, Editions La Découverte et Syros, 2000, p.
153. |
28 |
L. Fuchs, Du traitement de la
migraine par le bromure de potassium (On the Treatment of Migraine
with Potassium Bromide), Paris, G. Steinheil, 1896. |
29 |
M. Barudel, De l’hémicrânie causée
par l’anémie ; de son traitement par le bromure de potassium,
Recueil de mémoires de médecine, de chirurgie et de pharmacie
militaires (Of Hemicrania caused by Anemia; of its Treatment with
Potassium Bromide, Collection of Military Medicine, Surgery and
Pharmacy Dissertations), 1867, 35, XVIII, p. 371-390. |
30 |
J.M.A. Beni-Barde, Manuel médical
d'hydrothérapie (Medical Manual of Hydrotherapy), Paris,
Masson, 1883, p. 352-355.
|
31 |
L.-J.-D. Fleury, Traité
thérapeutique et clinique d’hydrothérapie : de l’application de
l’hydrothérapie au traitement des maladies chroniques dans les
établissements publics et au domicile des malades ; études de
philosophie médicale et de pathologie générale (Therapeutic and
Clinical Treatise of Hydrotherapy: on the Use of Hydrotherapy in
the Treatment of Chronic Diseases, both in Public Establishments
and in the Patients’ Homes), Paris, P. Asselin, 1866.
|