Migraine: A History

By: Katherine Foxhall

Narrated by: Robin J Sitten

Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's Summary

For centuries, people have talked of a powerful bodily disorder called migraine, which currently affects about a billion people around the world. Yet until now, the rich history of this condition has barely been told. 

In Migraine, award-winning historian Katherine Foxhall reveals the ideas and methods that ordinary people and medical professionals have used to describe, explain, and treat migraine since the Middle Ages. Touching on classical theories of humoral disturbance and medieval bloodletting, Foxhall also describes early modern herbal remedies, the emergence of neurology, and evolving practices of therapeutic experimentation.

Throughout the audiobook, Foxhall persuasively argues that our current knowledge of migraine's neurobiology is founded on a centuries-long social, cultural, and medical history. This history, she demonstrates, continues to profoundly shape our knowledge of this complicated disease, our attitudes toward people who have migraine, and the sometimes drastic measures that we take to address pain.

Deeply researched and beautifully written, this fascinating and accessible study of one of our most common, disabling, and yet often dismissed disorders will appeal to physicians, historians, scholars in medical humanities, and people living with migraine alike.

The book is published by Johns Hopkins University Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

©2019 Johns Hopkins University Press (P)2019 Redwood Audiobooks

Critic Reviews

"A thorough and illuminating history of migraine...lively, scholarly..." (The Washington Post)

"The most comprehensive, well-researched, and in-depth history of migraine in existence." (Joanna Kempner, author of Not Tonight: Migraine and the Politics of Gender and Health) 

"A fascinating and very well-written book." (Matthew Smith, author of Another Person's Poison: A History of Food Allergy)