It is Galen of Pergamon (AD 131–201) who is said to have first used the term ‘hemicrania’; ‘crania’ referring to the skull, and ‘hemi’, meaning half, referring to the pain on the one side of the head.[Pearce, 2005] A rival word, reflecting this similar focus on unilateral pain, was ‘heterocrania’, which was favoured by Aretaeus of Cappadocia.[Pearce, 2005] Over many centuries, the word hemicrania became abstracted through Latin to become ‘hemigrainea’, then ‘migranea’, and finally ‘migraine’ in French in the late 14th century.[Pearce, 2005]
Confusingly, within the current International Classification of Headache Disorders, 3rd edition, hemicrania is a type of headache.[IHS, 2018] Paroxysmal hemicrania describes attacks of severe, strictly unilateral pain, which is orbital, supraorbital, temporal or in any combination of these sites, lasting 2–30 minutes and occurring several or many times a day.[IHS, 2018]
Pearce JM. Migraine. Eur Neurol 2005; 53 (2): 109–110.
Other references used on slide:
Koehler PJ, Boes CJ. A history of non-drug treatment in headache, particularly migraine. Brain 2010; 133 (Pt 8): 2489–2500.
Pearce JM. Historical aspects of migraine. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 1986; 49 (10): 1097–1103.