Attention Headaches.—Professor Oppenheim, in his "Letters to Nervous Patients," has a paragraph with regard to headache that is worth recalling for the benefit of patients who suffer from low-grade headaches. Doubtless these were at the beginning real aches due to some local condition. They are now due merely to exaggeration of more or less normal feelings within the head which have come into the realm of the conscious because of the attention attracted to them when the intracranial affection was first noted. Professor Oppenheim says:
Your headache also I ascribe to this source. Originally it may have been a real headache, the result of your nervous shock. There is no one who has not at some time had a transient feeling of pain in the head or in some other part of the body, quite apart from those caused by injuries or painful diseases. Out of a thousand various kinds of causes I will mention only an extremely common one: the pains which result from straining muscles or nerves. Every sudden awkward movement may in this way cause pain in different parts of the body, but very specially so in nervous persons, in whom the mechanical excitability of the nerves—that is, their sensitiveness to pressure and strain—is usually exaggerated. As a rule, however, this pain is quite transient. But here again the law of which I have been already speaking comes into force: under the stimulating influence of introspection the tiny, perishable seed-grain of pain grows into the firm, strong, enduring tree of neuralgia or psychalgia.
The first condition for the successful treatment of headache, then, must include the recognition of the possibility of some rather simple pathological condition being exaggerated by over-attention to a disturbing affection, or of some affection, now past, having produced a suggestion that, in a mind given to introspection, continues to have influence even to the inveteration of sensations for which there is no longer a physical cause.
These patients insist that their medical status is that of real pain. Hysterical patients describe a sensation as if a nail were being driven into the forehead—the so-called clavus hystericus. In nervous people the sense of pressure increases from one of mere discomfort to a positive pain, as a consequence of attention to it. In most cases of headache, however, what is most needed is a distraction of the attention from the ailment. Over and over [{548}] again I have found that when all remedies failed the deliberate search for an occupation of mind that would interest the patient during many hours of the day was the only thing that promised relief and in many cases the relief afforded was so complete that patients were effusive in their gratitude.
Power of Distraction.—The proof that these so-called headaches are really not aches is found in the comparative ease with which many of them may be suppressed. Almost any interesting occupation will make the sufferer forget them entirely and they will not return immediately after the occupation ceases, but usually only when the patient is alone and attention is once more directed to this symptom. These queer feelings about the head that are often raised to the dignity of headaches by attention and auto-suggestion may be distracted away completely. That they are not pain is shown by the fact that the ordinary remedies which ease pain so promptly often fail to relieve these or soon cease to have any effect on them.
Lack of Distractions.—The apartment hotel system has multiplied the victims of headaches. When a woman has nothing in the world to do except get her clothes fitted and attend to what she calls her "social duties," it is no wonder that her head bothers her. Blood is constantly going to the brain and interchange of nutritive elements is taking place, yet there is no real function of cells and no consumption of material, or at least function is so slight that consumption of material must be trivial. There is no reason why these women should get up in the morning. Their breakfast is brought to their rooms, and some of them do not get around until eleven o'clock. Women used to have a morning occupation in going out to market or else in planning the household day with housekeepers, but of course there is no more of that. In olden times, too, many of them had religious practices. Now women are likely to be unemployed until the afternoon, which must be occupied at most with so-called social duties that may be done if one wishes to do them, but that may be put off for many reasons and there are constantly recurring reasons for not making any special exertion. Also, the rooms these women live in must be kept at a high temperature because the poorer the air that we breathe the higher must be its temperature for comfort, while stimulating fresh air may be quite low in temperature and yet produce only a brisk reaction instead of chilly feelings.
Children used to be the best possible remedy for these non-occupation headaches, but either there are no children any more or there are but one or two and these are largely cared for by bonnes at home and by various schools once they have reached the age of three. The old idea that children should not leave home until six put upon the mother the burden of their early education, but since the coming of the kindergarten she is relieved of responsibility of this and the mother of one or two children might now almost as well be childless as far as any serious occupation from care of her children is concerned.
If patients are told all this bluntly there will be a vigorous protest from most of them, for to them their pains are very real. It must not be forgotten that a pain in the mind is often worse than in the body. Some of these women save themselves from having their unused mental faculties disturb them from very lack of something to do, by becoming interested in charities, in clubs, in social movements of various kinds, in art and in literature. It is [{549}] not to these that I refer. On the contrary, if women have nothing else to do I would insist that they find some cause or movement in which they may become deeply interested. Their interest will save them from self-annoyance, though it may not exactly add to the gayety of nations in its effect upon other people. As a physician, however, I am only interested for the moment in the good of particular patients.
Source of Pain.—I would not be understood as saying that all headaches are not real aches nor pains in the most literal sense of the word, for some of them are agonizing tortures. With regard to all headaches, however, even the most genuine variety, there are certain considerations that are of value from the standpoint of psychotherapeutics. The most important of these is assurance as to the source or location of the pain. Most people think that it is the brain itself that is suffering pain and not a little of their suffering is due to the fact that they dread the effect of such pain upon the cerebral tissues and its possible consequences upon their mental state. These people will be much relieved to be told at once that the brain tissue itself is not sensitive, that when exposed it may be touched with impunity without causing any pain. It is the structures surrounding the brain that are sensitive. As a rule the lesion that causes pain is not progressive and all dreads with regard to serious after effects may be put aside.
Pressure Headaches.—It is important to insist on the fact that, as a rule, headaches and pains in the head are not due to the brain, but to extraneous structures within the skull. It is true that brain tumors, gliomatous and cystic and, above all, the overgrowth of the pituitary body in acromegaly give rise to agonizing pains. The cause of these headaches is undoubtedly pressure. It is not the pressure upon the brain tissue itself, however, that is the underlying cause of the pain, but pressure upon the sensitive structures connected with the brain. The same thing is true with regard to congestive headaches. Pain is produced not because vascular congestion presses on sensitive brain tissues, for we have no reason to think that any such exist, but because the congested brain exerts pressure upon sensitive filaments in its integuments. Neuralgia may be unbearable and yet it is borne with more equanimity, and less dread of results, because it is felt to be in a comparatively unimportant structure. One of the most serious elements in severe headache is the fear of lasting results in the brain tissues, that may lead to disturbance of mentality or to injury affecting mental processes. Patients find their pain much more bearable as soon as they are assured that headaches do not lead to mental disturbances and that, as a rule, even the growth of a tumor does not disturb mentality.