After you have taken nature's wise advice, and obeyed her orders, and put yourself at rest, then there are a number of mild sedatives, with which every physician is familiar, one of which, according to the special circumstances of your case, it may be perfectly legitimate to take in moderate doses, with the approval of a physician, as a means of relieving the pain and helping to get that sleep which will complete the cure.
One other measure of relief, which, like rest, is also indicated by instinct, is worth mentioning, and that is gentle friction of the head. One of the most instinctive tendencies of most of us when suffering from a severe headache is to put the hands to the head, either for the purpose of frantically clutching at it, rubbing as if our lives depended upon it, or pressing hard over the aching region. The mere picture of a man with his head in his hands instantly suggests the idea of headache. Part of this is, of course, little more than a blind impulse to do something to or with the offending member. We would sometimes like to throw it away if we could, or at others to bang it against the wall. But part of it is due to the discovery, ages ago, that pressure and friction would give a certain amount of relief.
For some curious reason the nerves most frequently involved are those which are most readily accessible for this kind of treatment, namely, the long nerve-threads which run from the inner third of the eyebrow up the forehead and over the crown of the head (the so-called supraorbital or frontal branches). A corresponding pair run up the back of the neck, about half-way between the back of the ear and the spinal column, supplying the back of the head and the crown (these form the cervical plexus); and a smaller pair run up just in front of the ear into the temple, and from there on upward to join the other two pairs at the top of the head.
Broadly speaking, the position of the pain depends upon which pair of these nerves is lifting up its voice most vigorously in protest. If it be the front pair (supraorbitals) then we get the well-known frontal or forehead headache; if the back pair (known as the occipitals) then we have the deadly, constricting, band-around-the-head pain which clutches us across the back of the neck and base of the brain. If the lateral pair are chiefly affected then we get the classic throbbing temples. Practically all of these aches, however, are of the "fire-alarm" character; and while certain of these nerve-gongs show some tendency to respond more readily to calls coming in from certain regions of the body, as, for instance, the forehead nerves to eye-strain, the back-of-the-head nerves (occipital) to grave toxic states of the system, the tips of any of the nerves in the crown of the head to pelvic disturbances and anæmic conditions, the lateral branches in the temples to diseases of the teeth and throat, yet there is little fixed uniformity in these relations. Eye-strain, for instance, may cause either frontal or occipital headache; and, as every one knows from experience, the pain may be felt in all parts of the head at once.
Gentle and intelligent massage over the course of these nerves of the scalp, according to the location of the pain, will often do much to relieve the severity of the suffering.
Treat headache as a danger signal, by rest and the removal of its cause, and it will prevent at least ten times as much suffering and disability as it causes.
CHAPTER XVIII
NERVES AND NERVOUSNESS
Nerves are real things. In spite of their connection with imaginary diseases and mental disturbances, there is nothing imaginary or unsubstantial about them. There is no more genuine and obstinate malady on earth than a nervous disease. Because nerves lie in that twilight borderland between mind and matter, body and soul, the real and the ideal, the impression has got abroad that they are little better than figures of speech. Though their disturbances give rise to visions of all sorts there is nothing visionary about them; they are just as genuine and substantial a part of our bodily structure as our bones, muscles, and blood-vessels. In fact, it was this very substantiality that at the beginning prevented their proper recognition, and handicapped them with their present absurd and inappropriate name.