The first description of headache are thought to date back in a Sumerian poem written in approximately 3000 BC and through the centuries the descriptions of migraine have been similar with historical writings referring to the severe pain, nauseam visual symptoms, and physical prostration brought on by a migraine.
During ancient times appropriate treatment by the priest physicians of the day was aimed at appeasing the responsible spirit by offering prayers to it or applying valued items to the head.
Early Greek and Roman medical authors who recognized migraines and the accompanying nauseam vomiting and visual disturbances include Hippocrates, Aretaeus, Celsus and Galen.
Hippocrates was one of the first to describe the visual auras accompanying headache as early as 300 BC. He was probably the frost to describe the role of triggers in precipitating migraine attacks.
Hippocrates thought that headache came from ‘humors’ - fluid or vapors circulating in the body and rising from liver to the head.
Aretaeus of Cappodocia is credited with first describing the syndrome of migraine calling the headache ‘heterocrania’.
Ancient history of migraines
