Migraine

By Oliver Sacks

'A mine of treasures, a source of visions, a microcosm of human experience and suffering, the philosopher's stone: Migraine is a remarkable achievement' - Sunday Telegraph.

Migraine is an age-old – the first recorded instances date back over two thousand years – and often debilitating condition, affecting a 'substantial minority' of the population across the globe. In Migraine, Oliver Sacks offers at once a medical account of its occurrence and management; an exploration of its physical, physiological, and psychological underpinnings and consequences; and a meditation on the nature and experience of health and illness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Jun 16, 2011
• ISBN: 9781447204930

Oliver Sacks

Oliver Sacks was born in 1933 in London and was educated at the Queen's College, Oxford. He completed his medical training at San Francisco's Mount Zion Hospital and at UCLA before moving to New York, where he soon encountered the patients whom he would write about in his book Awakenings. Dr Sacks spent almost fifty years working as a neurologist and wrote many books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, and Hallucinations, about the strange neurological predicaments and conditions of his patients. The New York Times referred to him as 'the poet laureate of medicine', and over the years he received many awards, including honours from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Royal College of Physicians. In 2008, he was appointed Commander of the British Empire. His memoir, On the Move, was published shortly before his death in August 2015.

Reviews for Migraine

[steve_walker-348810 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The first,and best, book I have read on the matter of Migraine headaches.

[wester_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is Sacks' first book, and it shows. He still has to find his style. There are two problems with this book. The first one is a profusion of medical terminology (brachycardia, ptosis, myoclonus...). This is also a problem in Awakenings (his next book), but Awakenings doesn't suffer from the second problem: case histories instead of persons. In Awakenings and all later books, the person always shines through the case history. His other books are about how persons deal with (medical) afflictions, this book is about the migraine itself in the first place, and the persons who have the migraine are almost inconsequential.Only read this if you are very interested in migraine, or extremely interested in Oliver Sacks.

[kinnicchick · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

If you are looking for a book that defines migraine in an almost textbook like manner, citing case studies, historical data, and the like, this very comprehensive tome does that and more. This is an extremely thorough covering of migraine in all of its forms, severity and duration. Published in 1970 with revisions in 1985 and 1992, due to the updates in medications and other techniques in recent years (I'm thinking particularly of a heart surgery that has been utilized and also botox), it is definitely time for another update to be more complete. Despite this, I found it to be extremely helpful personally as someone who has suffered from migraines for over 25 years to see not only the type of migraines I was experiencing, but also why I had such difficulty pinpointing the cause.