John Fothergill (1712-1780)

John Fothergill (1712-1780). Image from the Clendening Library Portrait Collection (see here)

"Having had some little experience of this complaint myself, and having met with numerous occasions of seeing it in others, in a variety of degrees of force and continuance; and having likewise attended to the different ideas and modes of treatment, in regard to this distemper, I thought it might be useful to suggest what had occurred to me on this subject, and the more so, as it may lead to some explanations respecting diet, which it is of some consequence, to the sick especially, to be made to comprehend."

(Fothergill, 1784, p. 107)

"... surrounded with luminous angles, like those of a fortification" – 120 maps of fortifications from Hartwig Neumann, Festungsbau-Kunst und -Technik, 1988. © 2005 Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Bonn [more]

"Many people, apparently robust, and whose organs of digestion are strong, often find themselves much disordered by large quantities of butter. Nothing more speedily and effectually gives the sick head-ach, and sometimes within a very few hours. After breakfast, if much toast and butter has been used, it begins with a singular kind of glimmering in the sight; objects swiftly changing their apparent position, surrounded with luminous angles, like those of a fortification. Giddiness comes on, head-ach, and sickness. An emetic, and warm water, soon wash off the offending matter, and remove these disorders."

(Fothergill, 1784, p. 120-121)

References

Fothergill J. Remarks on that complaint commonly known under the name of sick-headach. Med Observ Inquir 1784; 6: 103-137.
Neumann H. Festungsbau-Kunst und -Technik. Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Bonn 1988.
Plant GT. The fortification spectra of migraine. Br Med J 1986; 293: 1613-1617 [published erratum appears in Br Med J 1987; 294: 90]

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