A treatise on headachs [sic], their various causes, prevention, and cure / By G. Hume Weatherhead.

  • George Weatherhead
Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on headachs [sic], their various causes, prevention, and cure / By G. Hume Weatherhead. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    44/118 page 36
    of an antispasmodic will occasionally produce the same effect. A tendency to headach not uncommonly ori¬ ginates in some latent source of irritation, which by the sympathy of the nerves, is transmitted tc the head. One of the most usual seats of this irritation is the alimentary canal; and there are three principal sources of it: firstly, acrid secre¬ tions working on the sensibility of the innei membrane of the intestines; secondly, accumu¬ lation of indurated faeces from habitual consti¬ pation ; and lastly, worms. The last is more especially to be suspected as the cause of headach when it happens and frequently recurs in child¬ ren. Worms act on the head in a manner ana¬ logous to acrid sordes in the first passages, that is, by sympathetic irritation; and when the worm is a taenia, the disease is often accompanied with convulsions. Hoffman (tom. iii. p. 42) gives a case of this kind where the patient suffered foi four years from this cause, without its true nature having been suspected; and I have in my own practice met with more than one case of a similar character. But, taken generally, habitual consti¬ pation is by far the most common cause. Hence headach from a sluggish state of the bowels is the prevailing disorder of the sedentary, and is very
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