Why People have Headache.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 850, 15 June 1888, Page 5

Why People have Headache.

Probably one of the most common headaches, if not the most common, is that called nervous. The class of people who are most subject to it are certainly not your outdoor workers. If ever my old friend the gardener bad bad a headache it would not have been one of this description. Nor does Darby, the ploughman, nor Jarvey, the busman, nor Greatfoot, the ganger, suffer from nervous headache, nor any one else who leads an outdoor 4ife, or who takes plenty of. exercise in the open air. But poor Mattie, who slaves away her days in a stuffy drapers’ shop, and Jeannie, in her lonesome attic, bending over her white seam—stitch, stitchtill far into the night;, and thousands of others of the indoor working-class are martyrs- to this form of headache. Are they alone'm their misery ? No; for my Lady Bonhomme, who comes to have her ball dress fitted on, has often a "fellow feeling with Jeannie and Mattie. Her, however, we cannot afford to pity quite so much, because she has the power to change her modus vivendi whenever she chooses.

What are the symptoms of this complaint that makes your-head ache so? You will always know it ia coming from a dull, perhaps sleepy, feeling. Yon have no heart and little hope, and yon are reßtless at night. Still more restleiß, though, when it comes on in full force, as then, for nights perhaps, however mneh yon may wish it, scarcely can you sleep at all. 4 How my poor head does ache !’ This yon will say often enough ; sadly to yourself and hopelessly to those near you, from whom you expect ho sympathy and get none. And yet the pain is bad to bear, although it is generally confined to only one part of the head.

The worst of this form of headache lie 3 in the fact that it is periodic. Well, as it arises from unnatural habits of life or peculiarities of constitution, this periodicity is no more than we might expect. If I might note down some of the most ordinary causes of nervous headache people who suffer therefrom will know what to do and what to avoid. I will then speak of the treatment. Overwork indoors.

Overstudy. Work or study indoors, carried on in an unnatural or cramped position of the body. Literary men and women ought to do most of their work at a standing desk, lying down now and then to ease brain and heart and permit ideas to flow. They should work out of doors in fine weather—with their feet resting on a board, not on the earth—and under canvas in wet weather. It is surprising the good this Bimple advice, if followed, can effect. Neglect of the ordinary rules that conduce to health. Want of fresh air in bedrooms. Want of abundant skin-exciting exercise. Neglect of the bath. Orer-indnlgence in food, especially of a stimulating character. Weakness or debility of body, however produced. This can only be remedied by proper nutriment. , . Nervousness, however induced. The excitement inseparable from a fashionable life.—Cassell’s Magazine.