Sacks - Migraine

So erudite, so gracefully written, that even those people fortunate enough never to have had a migraine in their lives should find it equally compelling.

The New York Times

Superb.

The Observer, London

To Sacks a headache is a mine of treasures, a source of visions, a microcosm of human experience and suffering, the philosophers stone. A remarkable achievement.

Sunday Telegraph, London

Delves into the workings of the brain with brilliant complexity.

Cosmopolitan

Sufferers will take comfort in seeing their condition thought about with such clarity.

Independent, London

The most comprehensive and readable book on this subject.

Library Journal

A seminal work of great interest and importance.

Journal of the Institute of Health Education

Provides fascinating insights into the interrelationships of mind, brain, personality, and culture.

Psychology Today

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Migraine

From a MS of Hildegards Scivias, written at Bingen about 1180. This figure is a reconstruction from several visions of migrainous origin (see ).

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, SEPTEMBER 1999

Copyright 1992 by Oliver Sacks

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in the United States by the University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, in 1970 and subsequently revised in 1985 and 1992.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Basic Books and Tavistock Publications for permission to reproduce two diagrams from Higher Cortical Functions in Man by A. R. Luria; to Constable and Co. for permission to reproduce five diagrams from C. Singers From Magic to Science; and to the American Medical Association for permission to reproduce two diagrams from an article by K. Lashley published in the Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry of 1941. These, and other diagrams from original sources, have been redrawn and somewhat modified. The publisher is also grateful to the British Migraine Association and Boehringer Ingelheim Ltd. for permission to reproduce paintings from their collection of migraine art; and to Dr. Ronald K. Siegel for permission to reproduce .

Vintage Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sacks, Oliver W.
Migraine / Oliver Sacks. Rev. and expanded ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-37106-5
1. Migraine. I. Title.
RC392.S33 1999
616.857dc21 99-33021

www.vintagebooks.com

v3.1

To my parents

Socrates, in Plato, would prescribe no Physick for Charmides headache till first he had eased his troublesome mind; body and soul must be cured together, as head and eyes.

Robert Burton

Whoever sees in illness a vital expression of the organism, will no longer see it as an enemy. In the moment that I realise that the disease is a creation of the patient, it becomes for me the same sort of thing as his manner of walking, his mode of speech, his facial expression, the movements of his hands, the drawings he has made, the house he has built, the business he has settled, or the way his thoughts go: a significant symbol of the powers that rule him, and that I try to influence when I deem it right.

George Groddeck