Migraine

Jane Brody, 9 January 1977 New York Times Service

The Union Army Camp, several miles from Appomattox Court House, April 8, 1865: "I was suffering very severely with a sick headache," Ulysses S. Grant wrote in his memoirs. "I spent the night bathing my feet in hot water and mustard and putting mustard plasters on my wrists and the back part of my neck, hoping to be cured by morning."

Ulysses S. Grant had migraine. And not unlike many of the 25 million Americans who currently suffer from this affliction, emotional tension helped to precipitate his attacks of "sick headache.' The history books are replete with famous migraine sufferers - Freud, Darwin, Thomas Jefferson, George Bernard Shaw. Lewis Carroll is said to have created the bizarre sensations and distorted characters in Alice in Wonderland during the "auras" that preceded his migraine attacks.