The relief of headaches by the correction of errors of refraction / by Duncan Matheson Mackay.
- Mackay, Duncan Matheson.
- Date:
- 1909
Licence: In copyright
Credit: The relief of headaches by the correction of errors of refraction / by Duncan Matheson Mackay. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![From fcURG*( Practitioner ” for December, 1909. m 5 jaw u' M: THE RELIEF OF HEADACHES BY THE CORRECTION OF ERROR'S OF REFRACTION. ■in- ' Bv DUNCAN MATHESON MACKAY, M.D., Honorary Assistant Ophthalmic Surgeon, Hull Royal Infirmary; Late Clinical Assistant, Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital; and Refraction Assistant, Royal Eye Hospital, Southwark. [With Plates XIII.—XVIII.] “to ... . end “The” head-“ache .... “That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation “ Devoutly .... wish’d ” 1 by thousands of our patients, and aimed at even by those medical men, who most firmly hold that it is the treatment of disease which is their function—not the relief of symptoms. But that the consummation too often is not attained is obvious; and we do not wonder, therefore, when we see our patients hurry from one doctor to another, and, finally, having tried us all in vain, betake themselves to their own treatment by means of advertised remedies. “ Treatment,” they call it, but, in reality, they do not expect to be cured; they are content if their attacks of headache can be relieved temporarily by the taking of “ headache powders ” ; and they often succeed in attaining that, though occasionally their powders are so active that their heads are for ever put out of the reach of aches altogether. Headaches are, admittedly, even by ourselves, often beyond our power of removal. But many of the headaches which years ago patients would have been told to put up with can, now that the science and art of medicine and surgery have more advanced, be got rid of, and that without the aid of drugs, which too frequently simply give the sufferer ease by narcotising him. Of late years it has come to be recognised that a large number of the headaches for which no disease seems to be answerable—functional headaches, that is, as distinguished from organic—have been relieved by the discovery and treatment of strain on the part of the eyes. Of all the causes of eyestrain the most frequent is the presence of an error of refraction, and it is to the headaches which are relieved by the correction of such errors that I P 1919.—3. A](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22425779_0005.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
