HISTAMINIC CEPHALALGIA AND MIGRAINE* By Louis E. LIEDER, Lieutenant Colonel, Medical Corps,

HEADACHE is a common symptom in all branches of medicine. Spriggs * studied the records of 4,796 consecutive patients and found that 500 (10 per cent) complained of headache as a major symptom. Despite this frequency in incidence, little is done in the way of specific treatment for these patients. Before adequate therapy can be instituted, it is essential that proper classifi-cation of the type of headache be made and that organic lesions, if present, be discovered. It is the purpose of this paper to limit my discussion of headache to that of histaminic cephalalgia and migraine, and to point out the benefits obtained from proper classification and treatment in these patients. HISTAMINIC CEPHALALGIA In April, 1939, Horton, MacLean and McK. Craig 2 reported a new syndrome of vascular headache which they found amenable to treatment with histamine. They suggested the term "erythromelalgia of the head " as a name for this type of headache because of the prominent feature of vaso