Migraine is more than just a headache. Symptoms of migraine, which affect approximately every seventh person around the world, may include pulsing pain on one side of the head, nausea, sensitivity to light and sound and impairment. Today there are several drugs that prescribe or prevent headaches from migraine or stop it as soon as it started. But in the past century, migraine treatment was not so convenient and efficient.
1. Blooding
Before the appearance of modern medicine, bloodletting (no matter, with the help of a scalpel or leech) was the most common means of migraine (and many other diseases). For most of the history, Western doctors adhered to a humoral theory, according to which human health is regulated by four liquids (gumors), which should be maintained in equilibrium. The cause of the disease was considered imbalance of gumors, and the bloodletting allegedly restored the balance in the body.Even in the XVIII century, bloodletting was still considered useful in migraine. Swiss doctor Samuel Auguste Tesso, who was the first to describe migraine as a separate disease in the 1770s, recommended bleeding, personal hygiene and diet, as well as medicines, including infusion from orange leaves and Valerians.
2. Garlic
The doctor of the XI century Abu Al-Qasim believed that the clove of garlic was needed in ... the patient's temple suffering from migraine. He suggested that this next recipe:
"Take garlic; Clear and cut down both tips. Make a big scalpel on the skin on the skin, pushing the skin and introduce a clove of garlic under it. Attach the compress and reconstate the head for 15 hours, then remove the compress, remove garlic, leave the wound for two or three days, then attach to her wool moistened in oil.
As soon as the wound begins to cook, what was considered a good sign, the doctor grew a cutting iron cut. The ignition should have prevented an infection, although modern studies have shown that it actually reduced the threshold of bacterial infections.
3. Banks
Banks are the practice of applying heated glass vessels to the patient's body. It was believed that this performs the same function as bloodletting. The outstanding Dutch doctor Nicholas Tulp, depicted in the picture of Rembrandt 1632, "The lesson of the anatomy of Dr. Nicholas Tulp", he treated with migraine with the help of cans.When setting the cans also used a substance by the name of Centaridine, secreted by the family of beetles-breaks. Unfortunately, if Kentaridine was left too long on the skin, he could absorb the body and cause painful urination, gastrointestinal and renal dysfunction and failure of the organs. By the way, Kentaridine was also used as aphrodisiac.
4. Trepanation
One of the oldest types of surgical operations, trepanation is the removal of the part of the skull and the effect on the brain tissue for the treatment of injuries or chronic conditions, such as migraine. The Dutch of the XVI century Peter Wang Forest, who carefully recorded the disease and the treatment of his patients, performed treason from a person with an incurable migraine. In the brain tissue, he found something that he called "Black Worm". According to the study conducted in 2010 by the neurologist Peter J. Keler, the mass could be a chronic subdural hematoma - blood cluster between the brain surface and its outer part.
5. Dead Mole
Ali Ibn Isa Al-Kakhhal, a leading ophthalmologist of the medieval Muslim world, described more than 130 eye diseases and methods of their treatment in his revolutionary monograph "Tahkirat Al-Canalin" ("Notebook of the Okulists"). Although his descriptions of the eye anatomy were correct, he also mentioned the means of headaches, and these recipes seem much more extravagant. For the treatment of migraine, he offered to tie a dead clock to the head.6. Electric Fish
Long before scientists fully understood the principles of electricity, the ancient doctors recommended him as a means of migraine. Skribonium Larg, a court doctor of the Roman emperor Claudia, saw that the fish-torpedo, also known as an electric slope, which lives in the Mediterranean Sea, has the ability to shock anyone who will touch him. Larg and other doctors prescribed shock as a cure for headaches, gout and hemorrhoids.
In the middle of the XVIII century, the Dutch magazine reported that the electric eel, found in South America, is able to generate even stronger electricity impulses than the Mediterranean fish, and therefore it can be used when headaches. One observer wrote that they suffering from headache "lay one hand on the head, and the other - on electric fish, and treat headache in this way."
7. Mud Baths for Foot
Compared to dead rodents, warm feet baths should sound like a "children's powder". The doctors of the nineteenth century suggested that the migraine suffering need to be able to drink a drink in Marienbad (now Mariana Lazni) and Karlsbad (now Karlovy Vary), two resort cities in the current Czech Republic. While mineral waters were useful to facilitate protracted headaches, mud baths for the legs, as they believed, contributed to the outflow of blood to the legs from the head, soothing the nervous system. "Bath for the legs should not be too hot, and the feet during the washout of the dirt should be rubbed one about another, and then a rough towel," offered in 1873 a doctor of the Prussian army Apollinaria Victor Yagelsky.