Migraine

If you are looking for a book that defines migraine in an almost textbook like manner, citing case studies, historical data, and the like, this very comprehensive tome does that and more. This is an extremely thorough covering of migraine in all of its forms, severity and duration.

Published in

1970 with revisions in 1985 and 1992, due to the updates in medications and other techniques in recent years (I'm thinking particularly of a heart surgery that has been utilized and also botox), it is definitely time for another update to be more complete.

Despite this, I found it to be extremely helpful personally as someone who has suffered from migraines for over 25 years to see not only the type of migraines I was experiencing, but also why I had such difficulty pinpointing the cause.

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LibraryThing member wester

This is Sacks' first book, and it shows. He still has to find his style.

There are two problems with this book. The first one is a profusion of medical terminology (brachycardia, ptosis, myoclonus...). This is also a problem in Awakenings (his next book), but Awakenings doesn't suffer from the

second problem: case histories instead of persons. In Awakenings and all later books, the person always shines through the case history. His other books are about how persons deal with (medical) afflictions, this book is about the migraine itself in the first place, and the persons who have the migraine are almost inconsequential.

Only read this if you are very interested in migraine, or extremely interested in Oliver Sacks.

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LibraryThing member WildMaggie

Published in 1971, revised in 1991, in 2014 this technical in-depth treatment of the state of knowledge on migraines is terribly out of date. Perhaps it would be interesting as history of medicine or in a "Look what they thought in 1971!" kind of way.

LibraryThing member Steve_Walker

The first,and best, book I have read on the matter of Migraine headaches.

LibraryThing member ladycato

There is something amusing about getting my first full-assault migraine in two months as I read Sacks's book Migraine. I suppose my brain wanted to sadistically illustrate the text--if so, grand job! This book is not an easy read, even when one can read with both eyes. There is heavy medical

jargon. Even so, it proved to still be an informative work to skim, and I did pick up a few new terms to employ. Though the book is certainly out of date in relation to new medical interventions, it is still powerful because it presents a sort of literary history of the migraine going back to writers of ancient Greece. I was amazed to see how much I had in common with other sufferers--and how much worse my plight could be. (I was horrified that some people, when seeing visual distortions, in truth believed that chunks of their reality were gone.)

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