Migrainesare more than just carve up headaches . Migraine symptoms , which involve about one in seven people worldwide , can includethrobbing pain on one side of the head , nausea , sensitivity to light and profound , and visual disturbances called aura . Today , several social class ofdrugsare order to either prevent migraine worry from chance or stem them once they ’ve started . Butin previous centuries , migrainetreatmentsweren’t so commodious — or effective .
1. Bloodletting
Even as late as the 18th C , bloodletting was still believed to aid migraines . Swiss physician Samuel Auguste Tissot , who was the first to describe migraines as a distinct aesculapian condition in the 1770s , recommendedbleeding , honest hygiene and diet , and drugs including infusion of orangish leaves and valerian .
2. Garlic
The 11th - century physician Abu al - Qasim suggested sticking a Eugenia caryophyllatum of garlic into the migraine headache sufferer’stemple . He extend ahandy formula :
Once the wound started ooze out — which was turn over a unspoiled sign of the zodiac — the MD would cauterise the slit with a hot Fe . cautery was have in mind to prevent infection , although forward-looking research hasshownthat it in reality lour the threshold for bacterial infection .
3. Cupping
Cupping — inverting spicy glass vessels on the patients ’ body — was thought to perform the same role as bloodletting . Prominent Dutch physician Nicolaes Tulp , depicted in Rembrandt ’s 1632 paintingThe Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp , treated a migraine sufferer by cup . She presently recovered .
A substance call cantharidin , a potent blistering federal agent secreted by theMeloidaefamily of beetle , was also use as part of the cupping and blistery process to get out out bad humors . unluckily , if the cantharidin was leave on too long , it could be absorbed into the body and cause painful micturition , GI and renal disfunction , and organ failure . ( Perhaps unrelatedly , cantharidin was also used as anaphrodisiac . )
4. Trepanation
One of the one-time types of OR , trepanationis the practice of switch off away part of the cranium and debunk brain tissue to treat injuries or chronic condition like megrim headaches . The 16th - century Dutch physician Petrus Forestus , who meticulously recorded the ailments and treatments of his affected role , performed trepanation on a person with incurable migraines . In the mental capacity tissue paper he found something he call a “ black dirt ball . ” harmonize to a 2010studyby neurologist Peter J. Koehler , the mass may have been a continuing subdural hematoma — a collection of blood between the open of the brain and its outmost covering — and a potential cause of the patient ’s agony .
5. Dead Moles
Ali ibn Isa al - Kahhal , the leading ophthalmologist of the mediaeval Muslim world , described more than 130 heart diseases and treatments in his groundbreaking monographTadhkirat al - kaḥḥālīn(The Notebook of the Oculists ) . While his description of optic anatomy were sound , he also tinct on remedies for cephalalgia , and here his prescriptions seem more suspect . To process migraines , he suggested tying a dead mole to one ’s forefront .
6. Electric Fish
Long before scientists amply understand the principle of electricity , ancient doctors advocate it as a redress for migraines . Scribonius Largus , the court doctor for the Roman emperor Claudius , saw that thetorpedo fish — also know as the electric ray , native to the Mediterranean Sea among other country — had the big businessman to scandalise anyone who touched it . Largus and other doctors prescribed the shocks as cures for headache , gout , andprolapsed anus .
In the mid-18th one C , a Dutch daybook reported that theelectric eel , found in South America , emitted even stronger jolt than the Mediterranean fish and were used for forefront painfulness . One observerwrotethat headache sufferers “ put one of their workforce on their head and the other on the fish , and thereby will be helped directly , without exception . ”
7. Mud Foot-Baths
Compared to expired rodents , warm foot - baths must have sounded positively decadent to those afflicted with uttermost pain . 19th - century physicians propose that migraine sufferer take the waters at Marienbad ( now Mariánské Lázně ) and Karlsbad ( now Karlovy Vary ) , two spa Town in what is now the Czech Republic . While the mineral waters were useful for alleviate congestive headache , clay foot - bathing tub were believed to draw blood toward the invertebrate foot and away from the head , calming the anxious organization . “ The animal foot - bath ought not to be lead too spicy , and the feet should be rubbed one over the other while washing the mud off , and afterwards with a coarse towel . A rattling walk may be used to keep up the circulation,”suggestedPrussian Army doc Apollinaris Victor Jagielski , M.D. in 1873 .
