Megrim, or Migraine by P. A. DE FOREST

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 12, 1913

Megrim, or Migraine

By P. A. DE FOREST

P. A. DE FOREST

MEGRIM is a special neuralgia of the head, affecting principally the forehead, summit of the head, behind the eyes, and radiating down the back of the head toward the neck. The pain is of a dull, aching kind, and gets gradually worse until it would seem as if the brain were on fire. There is often nausea and vomiting. Then again the patient goes to bed feeling well and wakes up in the middle of the night with a severe pain in the head and a cold skin. If the sufferer keeps awake, the pain will probably be gone by morning; but if he dozes, he will be awakened by a most agonizing pain accompanied by a feeling of want of air, just as if one had been poisoned by coal-gas. At times only one side of the head is affected. This is known as hemicrania. Heredity plays a subtle part in the disease, and one which has an important bearing on the result of treatment.

A prominent symptom is constipation, but it is not present in every case. There is no doubt, however, that retention of fecal matter, with subsequent autointoxication, is the most potent cause. There is a slowing up of the mechanical movements of the intestinal muscles, and ingested food that should pass from the stomach to the rectum from twenty-five to thirty hours takes double that time. The colon may also be displaced, dilated, contracted, or muscularly weak, and its vermicular movements correspondingly enfeebled.

There is another class of cases in which constipation is absent, but where there is prominence of the abdomen due to descent of the abdominal organs. This produces reflex neuralgias of the head because the nerves of the mesentery, or membrane, that binds the organs to the spinal column are inordinately stretched.

Those who lead sedentary lives, who live well, whose digestion is imperfectly performed, who consume too much albumin, fats, and sugars, and who use habitually tea, coffee, chocolate, meat, fried foods, old cheese, and other indigestible dishes and highly seasoned foods, are especially prone to this disease. Such a dietary provokes biliousness, fills the body with uric acid and other tissue poisons, which irritate the nervous system, and call forth paroxysms of pain corresponding to waves of blood- and

tissue-poisoning which pass through the system. Excessive dilatation of the stomach coupled with a weak intestinal digestion will eventually lead to the extension of fermentative processes from the stomach along the whole alimentary canal.

The treatment indicated is to change the dietary, and this we believe to be the most necessary of all treatments. We have seen a vegetarian dietary alone reduce the number of attacks of megrim to one or two a year. The use of even vegetarian foods containing much protein or albumin must be avoided. Oatmeal, peas, beans, lentils, milk, and eggs, if taken at all, must be used sparingly, and great care must be taken to masticate thoroughly.

If enteroptosis, or prolapsus of the abdominal organs, is present, one of the first things to do is to restore the organs to their normal position and to keep them there by an abdominal bandage. In the mean time other helps to this end may be employed; such as, abdominal Swedish exercises, massage, dry dietary, with water-drinking when in the recumbent position.

Megrim, in reality, is only the symptom of a chronic poisoning process, and so one of the most necessary remedies is to cure the constipation. Once this feat is accomplished, in the majority of cases the vegetarian dietary and a good abdominal girdle will effect a cure.

To get rid of constipation, one must suppress the causes, which are quite numerous: too concentrated food; neglect to answer nature's call; dyspepsia; spasm, dilatation, or atony of the colon; displacement, inflammation of the pelvic organs; hemorrhoids, fissures, or fistula of the rectum; sedentary habits; too warm clothing on the abdomen and around the hips; sluggish liver; abuse of purgatives; too little fruit and vegetables and not enough water-drinking; the use of tea and coffee; and nervous debility. The most of these causes indicate the remedy.

As a rule, it is best to secure free movement of the bowels without too much local, internal treatment, relying mainly on hygiene, abdominal massage, electricity, and wet girdle, and only fall back on cold clysters, graduated enemata, cold rubbing sitz, fomentations to the liver and bowels, and cold abdominal and anal douches as a last resort.

Once this difficulty is surmounted, general-eliminative treatment may be given: electric-light baths, sweat-baths, and free water-drinking to dissolve impurities in the system, with general massage, constitute a good tonic-eliminative régime.

To cut short an attack, a hot colon clyster, a dose of castor-oil, or fomentations to the liver may have to be taken. Drug medication will sometimes cut short the attack, but it is at the expense of the general health, and it is usually best to suffer and try to cure the disease by removing the causes.

We do not profess that this treatment will entirely cure every case of megrim, but natural remedies will lessen the number and the severity of the attacks in, we might say, every case, and in many cases will make them disappear altogether. We have seen cases of inveterate megrim yield only after six months of treatment. So one must not be discouraged in the use of natural remedies.

Gland, Switzerland.