HEAD-ACH.

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other eruptive diseases. What is called a hemicrania generallyproceeds from crudities or indigestion. Inanition, or emptiness.will also occasion head-achs. I have often seen instances of thisin nurses who gave suck too long, or who did not take a sufficientquantity of solid food.

There is likewise a most violent, fixed, constant, and almost in-tolerable head-ach, which occasions great debility both of body andmind, prevents sleep, destroys the appetite, causes a vertigo, dim-ness of sig-ht, a noise in the ears, convulsions, epileptic fits, andsometimes vomiting, costiveness, coldness of the extremities, &c.

The head-ach is often symptomatic in continual and intermittingfevers, especially quartans. It is likewise a very common symp-tom in hysteric and hypochondriac complaints.

When a head-ach attends an acute fever, with pale urine, it is anunfavourable symptom. In excessive head-achs, coldness of theextremities is a bad sign.

When the disease continues long, and is very violent, it oftenterminates in blindness, apoplexy, deafness, vertigo, palsy, or epi-lepsy.

In this disease the cool regimen in general is to be observed.The diet ought to consist of such emollient substances as will cor-rect the acrimony of the humours, and keep the body open ; asapples boiled in milk, spinnage, turnips, and such like. The drinkought to be diluting ; as barley-water, infusions of mild mu-cilaginous vegetables, decoctions of the sudorific woods, «fcc. Tiicfeet and legs ought to be kept warm, and frequently bathed inlukewarm water ; tiie head should be shaved, and bathed with wa-ter and vinegar. The patient ought, as much as possible, to keepin an erect posture, and not to lie with his head too low.

When the head-ach is owing to excess of blood, or a hot bil-ious constitution, bleeding is necessary. The patient may be bledin the jugular vein, and the operation repeated if there be occa-sion. Cupping also, or the application of leeches to the temples,and behind the ears, will be of service ; afterwards a blistering-plaster may be applied to the neck, behind the ears, or to anypart of the head that is most affected. In some cases it will beproper to blister the whole head. In persons of a gross habit,issues, or perpetual blisters, will be of service. The body oughtlikewise to be kept open by gentle laxatives.

But when the head-ach proceeds from a copious vitiated serum,stagnating in the membranes, either within or without the skull,with a dull, heavy, continual pain, which will neither yield tobleeding nor gentle laxatives, then more powerful purgatives arenecessary, as pills made of aloes, resin of jalap, or the like. Itwill also be necessary in this case to blister the whole head, and tokeep the back-part of the neck open for a considerable time by aperpetual blister.

When the head-ach is occasioned by the stoppage of a runningat the nose, the patient should frequently smell to a bottle of vola-tile salts ; he may likewise take snuff, or any thing that will irri-tate the nose, so as to promote a discharge from it ; as the herbmasticii. ground ivy, &c.

A hemicrania, especially a periodical one, is generally owing to