Migraine and Literature

Patrick Burgel

Patrick Burgel, Anagramme "imaginer donne la migraine", 1999. © 1999 Patrick Burgel (see here)

Ramsey Campbell

"Oddly, I never got them [migraines] before training in magick and found a book by Ramsey Campbell (The Parasite) [1980] that seemed to link migraines to OOBEs [out-of-body experiences]."

(David Cantu, Newsgroups: alt.magick.tyagi, alt.magick, Subject: Usenet 'Zen Teaching' Battery (was Gnome: An Answer ...), October 3, 2001; additions in square brackets by Klaus Podoll)

Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

"Did you know that the scene where Alice (in Wonderland) drinks the potions and gets bigger and smaller is supposed to be because the author suffered from migraines and was just describing his own sensations?"

(Starbug, Newsgroups: alt.support.headaches.migraine, Subject: cool aura page, February 3, 2000)

"Heh, I was always fascinated by that story. Dunno, somehow makes me feel better that a famous writer suffered from migraine but used his experiences for literary inspiration!" [more]

(Infrazone, Newsgroups: alt.support.headaches.migraine, Subject: cool aura page, February 8, 2000)

Dian Caouette

Migraine Rewritten is a compelling story of one person’' struggle with, and triumph over, migraine headaches. Dian's journey through pain and suffering can teach all of us the value of hope, perseverance, family support and being true to one's own sense of health. [more]

madhuleema chaliha

"The bad part of a migraine is, without any doubt, the migraine itself. The good, and the most beautiful, part of it, however, is what happens to me after it has passed away. Unlike a medicine that leaves a bad taste in the mouth, a migraine almost always goes away leaving a strange feeling of wholeness inside my mind. It is the most destructive poison that I know of that contains within itself the seeds of regeneration." [more]

(madhuleema chaliha, The beauty of having a migraine..., June 28, 2003)

Margaret Cho

Korean American comedian, actress and political activist Margaret Cho, who made television history by being the first Asian American to have a television series (All American Girl) based around her, has published an account of her experiences as a migraine sufferer ("Migraine") in her daily weblog from June 16, 2004. [more]

Jayne d'Arcy

"I suppose I do see everything within my field of vision, but it just doesn't seem, or feel, that cut and dried. I try NOT to look at stuff during a migraine. It's disconcerting and has a nasty tendency to bring on the vertiginous sensation. My visions, I do see, but while my eyes are closed. Since I had a really tough time explaining this, I wrote a short story that illustrates it... PS - the silly title is Migraine, Yourgrain" (2005). [more]

(Jayne d'Arcy, Email to Klaus Podoll, June 7, 2005)

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

"Emily Dickinson also wrote a poem about migraine which used as its metaphor coffin nails (very appropriate if you ask me)..... I am looking for it now..... Great Scot -- that Belle of Amherst wrote lots of poems!"

(Sharon Amabile, Newsgroups: alt.support.headaches.migraine, Subject: migraine rant, September 3, 2002)

did

"Me to [refers to a quote from the previous post (now deleted) to ASHM: "I also think that my mind is at its most clearest, most focused when I have a migraine. Yeah I am in pain, but the clarity is unreal."]. It depends on the side, I think though. Sometimes I can barely speak and having to make decisions or answer questions makes the head throb more. If I have to answer, concentrating to get the words out is difficult and takes a lot. If I don't consciously think (you probably know what I mean but 'normal' people wouldn't have a clue), I can ramble on and make brilliant sense about things I normally wouldn't even know anything about or comment on. I can see how migraines may have helped some of the great writers. They just let the words flow from the subconscious.

Sometimes I read things I have written during a migraine and wonder who wrote it. It amazes even me. My handwriting also changes dramatically depending on how I feel. I should have it analyzed maybe. Do you think maybe there is another personality submerged who uses the migraine to gain control?

I do understand what you mean but most people would think it strange."

(did, Newsgroups: alt.support.headaches.migraine, Subject: What form do auras take?, June 25, 2005; additions in square brackets by Klaus Podoll)

Joan Didion, The White Album, 1979. © 1979 Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, NewYork (see here)

Joan Didion

"Anyone ever read the essay 'In Bed' [1979] by Joan Didion, on migraine? I found it six or seven years ago, and in it she pretty much characterizes her migraine as her enemy, which essentially attacks her, and about which she can do nothing."

(Jennifer K. Matesa, Newsgroups: alt.support.headaches.migraine, Subject: Migraine as villain, September 7, 1994)

"Years ago I read an essay by Joan Didion called 'In Bed' which was about her migraines, and she ended up by saying she'd come to accept them as something like 'a friend.' I thought that was ridiculous (though I very much liked the rest of the essay)." [more]

(Eva D. Struction, Newsgroups: alt.support.menopause, Subject: Hormone(s), June 17, 1999)

Karla J. Dorman

In her poem "migraine" (2003), part time cashier/full time poet Karla J. Dorman from Burleson, Texas describes her visual migraine aura as "a jagged f l a s h of lightning", "zig zags", "shooting stars", "confetti in the air" - "has / the circus / come / to town"? [more]

Isidore Ducasse a.k.a. Lautréamont (1846-1870)

"My gentle master, if you will permit your slave, I shall go in my room for a phial of turpentine spirit which I habitually use when migraine invades my temples after I have returned from the theatre or when reading a stirring chronicle of British chivalric history throws my dream-laden mind into the bogs of drowsiness."

(Lautréamont, Maldoror, Sixth Book, 1869) [more]

Eileen Tiger Lily

"Aloft in the distance of / exquisite pain there's a / kaleidoscope of beauty..." (from Eileen Tiger Lily's poem A thing of beauty, 2004) - "another migraine write? certainly another poem that provokes thought in me"

(Review by Dawn Richerson, September 21, 2004). [more]

Robert Elliott

Robert Elliott's poem Door Metaphors (1987) conceives the spiritual effects produced by the migraine scintillating scotoma as a "Surrealistic Door", reminiscent of Giorgio de Chirico's notion of revelation as something that suddenly appears to the artist, "as if a curtain has been drawn aside, or a door opened". [more]

Robert Flach

In his idea file entitled Migraine (2003), a fleshed out paragraph describing an idea for a poem or story, Robert Flach recorded a continuing dream that began with a false awakening and extended over several sleeping periods, which he recognized "as one of the most severe premonitions or auras of an approaching migraine" [more].

George Gissing

"George Gissing [1903] wondered why, if the human mind is such a sublime creation infused with divine fire, it can be put almost totally out of action by a migraine headache."

(John Derbyshire, National Review Online, July 2, 2003; additions in square brackets by Klaus Podoll)

Jane Gwaltney

"It's a bunch of weird symptoms at the beginning of a migraine attack, also called an 'aura'. People have been known to experience vivid auditory and visual hallucinations just before it hits full force." "Hmmm..." Hank twirled a toothpick with his tongue. "Y'mean folks hear an' see things that ain't there?" [more]

(Jane Gwaltney, The Long and the Winding, 2002)

Marilyn Hacker

The October 2002 issue of the Poetry Magazine features poetry by Marilyn Hacker, including her MIGRAINE SONNETS [more].

Jean Hanson

"In Hanson's essay, the reader is immediately pulled into the surreal world of a migraine headache sufferer."

(Stephanie Susnjara, About the Author - MIGRAINE - Jean Hanson author of "The Lightning in My Eyes", in: Lee Gutkind (ed.), A View from the Divide - Creative Nonfiction on Health and Science, Creative Nonfiction, issue 11, 2001)

Siri Hustvedt, The Blindfold, 1992. © 1992 W.W. Norton & Company, New York-London (see here)

Siri Hustvedt

"But Hustvedt was an unusually sensitive child, who suffered from migraine, visual spots and lights, and even hallucinations, what she calls, 'my nerves and strangenesses'. She describes experiencing a Lilliputian hallucination [...] and has on occasion experienced euphoria just before a migraine attack. 'It gives the feeling of such fantastic wellbeing,' she whispers, 'that you can't believe it. It is wonderful, but this is a sort of brain trick. And I do think again that the whole idea of visual instability is very strong [...] and it's philosophical, but certainly someone who suffers from this might be more inclined to have that kind of view of the world - that we don't always know what we're looking at. How do we read the world? How do we interpret it?'"

(Cited from Article Darkness and Light © 2003 Telegraph Group Limited, November 10, 2003)

Teresa Jay

Enjoy Teresa Jay's essay Air-speed velocity of an unladen Migraine Fairy? (2004) – it's absolutely on-target & magnificent!

"Thanks for your comment on the 'Migraine Fairy' post... Hopefully the language in it isn't too harsh - I was not in a good mood when I wrote, that's for sure! TJ - mistress of The Teejmahal."

(Teresa Jay, Email to Klaus Podoll, August 13, 2004) [more]

Elna Gabriella Jönsson, Self-portrait with Migraine, 2004. © 2004 Elna Gabriella Jönsson (see here)

Elna Gabriella Jönsson

"Super powers are usually both good or bad, right? So the fact that my migraine makes me suffer so means that it should also give me powers."

(Artist's blog, August 16, 2004)

Read Swedish writer's Elna Gabriella Jönsson's powerful migraine poems (2004) here! [more]

Erich Kästner (1899-1974)

His children book "Anna Louise and Anton" (1931) includes a definition of migraine which became a famous saying in Germany: "Migraine are headaches, even if you don't have any". Unfortunately, the aphorism is quoted more often to stigmatize migraine sufferers rather than to characterize the clinical type of migraine which is in fact characterized by a lack of cephalalgia, i.e., migraine aura without headache! [more]

Andrei Khrapavitski aka e-ndrus

"a migraine aura woke me up today / and the pain of fatigue lulled me" (from the artist's poem DELIRIUM SUPREME, 2005). [more]

Gyps Kindra

A 30-year-old female sufferer from definite persistent aura without infarction wrote a poem entitled "A billion stars" (2006) to describe her experience of enduring visual snow (vs). In her post to the Ezboard forum for those with visual snow and static, she recorded: "Someone here once asked if anyone has ever written poetry about our vs.... well I gave it a try" [more]

Jukka Lehmus

"MIGRAINE DREAMS... shedding bitter crimson into wintry city... luminous bodies... towering dawn... February decay... manifold mosaics... malaise, nausea, diarrhoea, angled open... move... the open furnace... ... ... angels shedding their shell-marble, shining material... comet... seminal similarity... Christliness, throbbing chromosomes... spiralling splinters... white wings approaching." (Jukka Lehmus, Cancer in Zenith) [more]

Jonas Lauritz Edemil Lie (1833-1908)

"I discovered the text of 'The Visionary' by Jonas Lauritz Edemil Lie (1833-1908) as available on the internet at the 'Gutenberg Project' website… Published in 1870 in Norway, it was an instant sensation, and has been subsequently republished on many occasions. It is a fictional story based upon the experiences of a young man in Norway in the 1800's. Many of the experiences related by the young man are identical to, or equivalent to, migraine. In particular, his 'confusion' episodes, his reactions to stressful situations, and so on. The author equivocates the aura to 'second sight', or the ability to see outside the moment (clairvoyance). Still more interesting, if we follow the line of thought of Dr. Oliver Sacks, there are obvious connections between the 'visions' of the various religious orders and the aura of migraine. Jonas Lie published some eleven years after the amazing events in Lourdes, France, and had probably read about them in the Norwegian newspapers. His interpretation of 'second sight' was probably influenced by the reports made in Lourdes."

(MEM, Email to Klaus Podoll, January 4, 2007)

Jack London (1876-1916)

"Read Jack London's short story, 'The Shadow and the Flash' [1906; also here]. Then read the descriptions of Wolf Larsen's headaches in 'The Sea Wolf.' [1904] I'll bet London had 'em [migraines] and the visual help suggest 'The Shadow and the Flash.'"

(Daniel P.B. Smith, Newsgroups: sci.med.vision, Subject: Distinguishing btw. Ret. Detachment & Ocular Migraines, December 3, 1994; additions in square brackets by Klaus Podoll)

"Also, Wolf Larsen in Jack London's 'The Sea-Wolf' (1904) suffers from 'blinding' headaches:

'At dinner he asked the hunters for a remedy for headache, and by evening, strong man that he was, he was half-blind and reeling about the cabin.'

'For three days this blinding headache lasted, and he suffered as wild animals suffer, as it seemed the way on ship to suffer, without plaint, without sympathy, utterly alone.'

In the narrative the headache, accompanied by occasional 'blindness,' get worse and Larsen eventually dies. There are no doctors in the narrative and no diagnosis but Wolf says 'Something's gone wrong with my brain. A cancer, a tumour, or something of that nature.' In some letters, London says that his descriptions of Larsen's sickness and death were based on what a doctor told him about symptoms of brain tumors. Nevertheless... I strongly suspect that Charmian London, Jack's wife, had migraines and that this informed his writing."

(Daniel P.B. Smith, Email to Klaus Podoll, July 2, 2005)

Nikolaus Maack

"Before my first migraine took place, I spoke aloud, for no reason, saying, 'Show me the crystal.' I don't know why I said it, but immediately after those words, the migraine took place… Part of me was convinced that the migraines would make me a great writer and artist, that I had chosen to 'see the crystal' for this reason…" [more]

Jennifer K. Matesa

"I'm a writer, and I've found the opposite to be true for me. I often have my best story ideas while in bed in pain. My migraine seems to occupy, or preoccupy, a part of my mind that is usually taken up with self-criticism, self-censorship, stress, etc., allowing this other authoritative voice to speak. In effect, the migraine behaves as a circuit-breaker: when all that pressure gets too heavy, it interrupts the action so that authoritative part of me can function again, uninhibited. My goal recently has been to focus on letting that authority in me come out gradually, so there will be decreased need for the migraine to intervene." [more]

(Jennifer K. Matesa, Newsgroups: alt.support.headaches.migraine, Subject: migraine as villain, September 7, 1994)

Marvin Minsky

In a contribution to a Usenet Newsgroups discussion from 1992, Marvin Minsky, the former director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence lab and considered to be one of the fathers of AI, recalled two episodes of autoscopy and scintillating scotoma experienced at the age of 17 and in his 20s, respectively. His previous reading of William James' Varieties of Religious Experience and Duke-Elder's Text-Book of Ophthalmology provided him with rational explanations of his weird hallucinations which can occur as visual migraine aura phenomena, so that he recommended to "make sure that your children learn about the 7 most common forms of mystical experience and whatever is known about their neurological mechanisms". "Of course", he added, "this is good advice only for those who like their minds the way they are." [more]

missagouti

The short story Premonition, submitted by missagouti as a message to the Yahoo! Group "The Prophecy Trilogy", a service devoted to fan-fiction about The Prophecy movies, is remarkable for its psychologically strikingly realistic portrait of "Yase", an artist who uses the revelations from her migraines as a secret source of her artistic inspiration – and her art as a means to cope with the visions and premonitions from her migraines (see here and here, July 13 and 23, 2001).

"... When she had told her lover that she had already suffered from migraine attacks during her childhood, she had told him only one half of the truth.

Actually she had been seized with some sort of visions as long as she could remember. Those had regularly given her insight into other spheres that were at first incomprehensible and terrifying to her: Heaven. Images of violent battles and crucified winged beings had appeared to her, when she was but a small girl. With horror she had seen heaps of corpses of slaughtered angels, whose lovely white wings were spilled with blood. Heaven resembled a sole battlefield, that echoed with the screams of the dying warriors, who had fallen victim to a 'civil war' of envy and hatred, that had been raging for an inconceivably long time and would maybe last for eternity.

The only way to digest that shocking knowledge had been painting. From those quite confusing, mostly unexpectedly occuring visions she took the theme of her abstract paintings, which, however, did not come up to the intensity of the experienced, concerning their colouredness and luminosity. But hardly one art critic or only relatively few gallery owners showed themselves impressed by her art, nor were they able to interprete the depicted things correctly. But the artist, who worked under the strange pseudonym 'Yase', had not been surprised by the hesitant reactions of her clients. Even if those people would have known what her sources of inspiration were like, they probably still wouldn't have understood it, however. After all, it had taken her lots of years until she had finally understood what had been revealed to her that way...

I gotta do something, before that thing's driving me insane.

At that thought she rose from her seat and despite her still aching head she went up the spiral staircase that led up to her workplace, after having 'armed' herself with enough candles and a lighter. Her headache-creating inspiration had to be turned into a proper piece of art..."

(missagouti, Yahoo! Group "The Prophecy Trology", July 13 and 23, 2001)

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"The perfect brightness and cheerfulness, even exuberance of spirit, that is reflected in the said work ['The Dawn'], is in my case compatible not only with the most profound physiological weakness, but also with an excess of pain. In the midst of the torments brought on by an uninterrupted three-day headache accompanied by the laborious vomiting of phlegm, - I possessed a dialectician's clarity par excellence, and in utter cold blood I then thought out things, for which when I am in better health I am not enough of a climber, not refined, not cold enough." [more]

(Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo - How one becomes what one is, Why I am So Wise, 1888)

Linda Pastan

Linda Pastan's poem "Migraine" (1995) from her volume "An Early Afterlife" is a descriptive portrait of what a migraineur suffers ("Ambushed by / pins and needles of light ...") and would give for an attack to end ("every blessing -- these shooting / stars ... the future ..."). [more]

Sadie Plant, Writing on drugs, 1999

Sadie Plant

"There are points in _Writing On Drugs_ where Sadie Plant flirts with the idea that drugs can access certain 'revelations.' The twist is that it's not a transcendent reality 'out there,' but one deep within the hard wiring of the brain itself. She subscribes to Henri Michaux's mescaline-inspired conviction that there's a kind of pre-cultural commonality underlying all the many forms of psychedelic experience through history and across the globe. The deranged geometry of lattices, honeycombs, lacework, and spiderwebbing, the baroquely infolding spirals and proliferating ornamentation, and the mosaic vision and kaleidoscopic turbulence, seen by users of LSD, peyote, DMT, psilocybin, and other hallucinogens, find a visual echo in such cultural forms as the 'coptic light' patterns of Arabian carpets and the paisley fabric of the Indian subcontinent. Michaux speculated that all this drug-induced eye candy constitutes an amplification of brain wave activity, especially that of the visual cortex. The fact that some migraine sufferers see similar patterns -- known as the migraine aura -- suggests that in certain extreme states, the MS/DOS and subroutines of the brain can be apprehended by consciousness. 'Some people can get the aura effects without the pain of migraine,' says Plant. 'It's happened to me about three times in my life, at times of extreme exhaustion. This almost kaleidoscopic stuff kind of creeps across your visual field from one side to the other. It's really quite stunning, and not at all scary. The fact that there are 'natural' equivalents to drug-induced experiences suggests the possibility you are in some sense observing what's going on in the brain.' Noting the similarity between these psychedelic hallucinations and the self-similar patterns of Mandelbrot's fractals, Plant characterizes the drugged or migrained brain as a cranked-up biochemical computer capable of picturing the self-organizing behavior and nonlinear dynamism at play within normally staid reality."

(Atomjack, fUSIONAnomaly, December 17, 2004)

Jenny Povey

Jenny Povey's Gryphon #1 (1996), posted as her first venture into the field of comic writing at a fanfiction newsgroup, refers to the characters and settings of the SteelWolfe® universe. The story exploits the ambiguities between the symptoms of visual migraine aura and the allegedly paranormal phenomenon of "seeing auras" - which may be, at least in some cases, one and the same? [more]

Daniel Rounds

According to Simon DeDeo's review, Daniel Rounds' poem [migraine like a roach] (2003) addresses the disturbing question, "How much is a migraine a separate phenomenon from the consciousness itself?" Moreover, the poem describes "a bodily estrangement where the eyes have their sockets, and live now separately from the speaker himself... [migraine like a roach] has a conciousness of the body as having a life and domain of action separate from the mind." [more]

Oliver Sacks

"So I think one must infer, and there are few direct observations to suggest that in this creative unconscious, which is not the Freudian unconscious, nor is it the sort of physiological unconscious, but it's a special form of cognitive or creative unconscious, there must be innumerable fragments, ideas, impressions, feelings which are playing together, dancing, colliding, meeting, separating. But, I think sometimes in a delirium - I'm sure all of you have had a delirium once in while. I often have, I rather like them actually. Sometimes with migraine you have a delirium, or in fever; and then I think again sometimes you can feel this crowd of ideas and thoughts and images, rising up and coupling, but not getting anywhere. Whereas in a dream, or in a creative reverie, or in the creative unconscious, there is always some organising principle which is emerging and sort of, coagulating the ideas." [more]

(Cited from Oliver Sacks, Creativity, Imagination and Perception, Inaugural lecture given at the Centre for the Mind, Australian Academy of Science, Canberra, 1998)

Rudy Schmidt

"I'm researching a novel in which one of the characters suffers from migraines... It will be about a medieval (about a century after Hildegard von Bingen's time) knight who happens to have migraines. I am working on the assumption that a medieval migraineur would be likely to interpret his auras as supernatural phenomena..." [more]

Bob Shaw, The Two-Timers, 1968. © 1968 Ace Books, New York (see here)

Bob Shaw (1931-1996)

"The migraine-induced visual disturbances which I'd found so fascinating in The Two-Timers were part of routine existence for Bob, who went through this subjective light-show (hemicrania sine dolore) about twice a year. I've never been so grateful to Bob Shaw and to sf in general as when in the late 80s I started getting it myself, and was saved from abject panic by realizing this was the harmless phenomenon about which he'd been writing."

(Dave Langford, Wreath of Stars, September 10, 2003)

Sickan

"When the darkness comes" (2002) - a migraine sufferer's piece of prose describing the symptoms of an attack of basilar-type migraine. [more]

Helen Simmons

A sympathetic cat's "sh*t" on bedroom carpet and wall as pieces of "delightful modern art" induced by her owner's "horrendous migraine"? Read the amazing story: Waffles – aromatherapy saves the day. [more]

Eve A. Smith

"I too can get some pretty strange dreams. Sometimes they trigger a migraine... Once or twice I've used one as a base for a poem, but most of them are rubbish. Oh well."

(Eve A. Smith, Newsgroups: alt.support.headaches.migraine, Subject: Nightmares triggering migraine, February 2, 1997)

Aland Sondheim

"I went on yesterday and found myself with a migraine and wrote a piece about not being able to look at the screen … I also like the idea of anthropomorphizing the screen itself - it ceased to be flat - there were patterns on it as a result of migraine flashes - the patterns extended off it, bending the outlines as well of course." [more]

(Alan Sondheim, Interview by Gary Sullivan, 1999)

Liz Spikol

To read Liz Spikol's Trouble With Spikol column Head Flames - Fire shooting from skull - Game over (2006) click here.

Michel Terry

In his daily weblog entry The World is Too Much With Us (2002), Michel Terry recorded emotional changes experienced during the prodromal stage of a migraine attack: "It was like somebody reached inside of me, pulled out my soul, and replaced it with a 2 year old who missed his nap... It's like I've been replaced by my own evil twin. Now I know how Dr. Jekyll felt. Or, more accurately I guess, Mr. Hyde." [more]

Lodewijk van Deyssel, Een liefde, 2nd edition, 1887 (Collectie Nieuwe Kunst UB Leiden; see here)

Lodewijk van Deyssel (1864-1952)

Christine Hermann analyses the impact of synaesthesia and migraine on van Deyssel's novel "Een Liefde" (1887) [more].

H.G. Wells (1866-1946)

"I have a tendency to read things in books and say 'ah! that writer must be describing a migraine.' ... Anyway, there are a couple of passages in H.G. Wells that I've always thought were descriptions of migraine prodromes. In 'The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes', a man whose vision has somehow been warped by a strong magnetic field sees scenes that take place in a remote location. 'From that time Davidson began to mend. Over patches of his vision, the phantom would grew fainter, grew transparent as it were, and through these translucent gaps he began to see dimly the real world about him. The patches grew in size and number, ran together spread until only here and there were blind spots left upon his eyes...' Anyway, the passage that your posting called to mind is in 'The Late Mr. Elvesham,' in which, under the influence of a drug, 'My brain was chaos. Then my perception grew clear and minute as though I saw things in a concave mirror... In another minute I was wishing him goodbye, over the apron of a cab, and still with an absurd feeling of minute distinctness, as though -- how can I express it? I not only saw but 'felt' through an inverted opera-glass.'"

(Daniel P.B. Smith, Newsgroups: sci.med.vision, Subject: vision during migraines, July 6, 1995)

References

Adler CS, Adler SM, Friedman AP. A historical perspective on psychiatric thinking about headache. In: Adler CS, Adler SM, Packard RC (eds) Psychiatric aspects of headache. Williams and Wilkins, Baltimore 1987, p. 3-21.
Alvarez WC. Notes on the history of migraine. Headache 1963; 11: 209-213.
Critchley M. Migraine: From Cappadocia to Queen Square. In: Smith R (ed) Background to Migraine. First Migraine Symposium 8th - 9th November 1966. William Heinemann Medical Books Ltd, London 1967, p. 28-38.
Deyssel L van, Een liefde. C.L. Brinkman, Amsterdam 1887.
Engelhardt D v. Migräne in Medizin- und Kulturgeschichte. Pharmazie in unserer Zeit 2002; 31: 444-451.
Friedman AP. The headache in history, literature and legend. Bull NY Acad Med 1972; 48: 661-681.
Gissing G. The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (Paperback) [Originally published 1903.] IndyPublish.com, 2002
Patterson SM, Silberstein SD. Sometimes Jello helps: Perceptions of headache etiology, triggers and treatment in literature. Headache 1993; 33: 76-81.
Plant S. Writing on drugs. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 1999.
Sacks O. Creativity, Imagination and Perception. [Excerpts from a lecture by the same title, given at the Centre for the Mind, Australian Academy of Science, Canberra.]. In: Wilson S (ed) The Bloomsbury Book of the Mind. Bloomsbury, London 2003, pp. 29-32.
Wenzel M. Migräne. Die kleine Hölle. Zur Symptomatik und Therapie der Migräne in der Medizingeschichte. Insel, Frankfurt a.M. 1995.
Zayas V, Mainardi F, Maggioni F, Zanchin G. Sympathy for Pontius Pilate. Hemicrania in M. A. Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. Cephalalgia 2007; 27: 63-67.

top