*Migraine (Revised and expanded), Oliver Sacks, 1992
This is the 18th volume in the “Essays Project.” While the Essays Project has focused mainly on essays, we became intrigued with Oliver Sacks and are taking something of a detour to read his complete work, essays or not.
[[More to come…]]
Front Matter
There are prefaces to the original edition, and, to this, the 1992 edition. There is also a forward by William Gooddy, a migraine specialist whom Sacks praises in his prefaces. There is also a historical introduction, which summarizes over 2,000 years of medical writing on migraine; I will pass on summarizing this.
The following, from the ’92 Preface, is Sacks’ comment on the aims of the book; I think his thoughts on why humans may need to be ill, for a brief time, will be very interesting.
Migraine, of course, is not just a description, but a meditation on the nature of health and illness, and how, occasionally, human beings may need, for a brief time, to be ill; a meditation on the unity of mind and body, on migraine as an exemplar of our psychophysical transparency; and a meditation, finally, on migraine as a biological reaction, analogous to that which many animals show.
–Oliver Sacks, Migraine, xv
I. The Experience of Migraine
C1. The Common Migraine
As I read through this chapter, the vast range of symptoms and manifestations attributed to Migraine would seem to defy any sort of classification. However, Sacks grapples with this by describing constellations of symptoms, and also sequences of symptoms/constellations, and leaves me with the sense that Migraine really is a distinct and identifiable entity.
One thing which I think, perhaps, he does not emphasize enough is that migraine recurs over the course of months and years, and I think that it is this pattern of recurrence (even though the symptoms may change completely) that I find most convincing.
Sacks’ high level description is that there is a prodomal phase (when the first hints of what is coming occur), the attack proper, resolution, and finally rebound. I’m particularly struck by the fact that both prodomal and rebound phases may often (but not invariably) include feelings of great well-being.
II. The Occurrence of Migraine
Cx: xxx
III. The Basis of Migraine
Cx: xxx
IV: Therapeutic Approaches to Migraine
Cx: xxx
V: Migraine as a Universal
Cx. xxx
Views: 0