Headache and Other Head Pain.

Abstract

The first edition of Harold Wolff's book on headache, now a medical classic, heralded a new era in the study and treatment of the symptom. Basic facts furnished by the author and his co-workers allowed a rational explanation for what was transpiring in the patient. With Wolff's work we were assisted to an understanding of what the headache sufferer was trying to describe. The patient benefitted directly since it became possible to pass on to him a reasonable explanation of the phenomena underlying his symptom, undoubtedly a useful therapeutic maneuver with an understanding patient. As Wolff noted in the preface to the second edition, both professional and lay attitudes about headache gradually but radically altered since the appearance of his volume in 1948. The general arrangement of the second edition remains the same as the first. The volume begins with a consideration of pain, and there follows a chapter on