linguistic:translation, linguistic:paraphrasing
History

An early description consistent with migraine is contained in the Ebers Papyrus, written around 1500 BCE in ancient Egypt.

The word migraine is from the Greek ἡμικρᾱνίᾱ (hēmikrāníā), 'pain in half of the head', from ἡμι- (hēmi-), 'half' and κρᾱνίον (krāníon), 'skull'.

In 200 BCE, writings from the Hippocratic school of medicine described the visual aura that can precede the headache and a partial relief occurring through vomiting.

A second-century description by Aretaeus of Cappadocia divided headaches into three types: cephalalgia, cephalea, and heterocrania. Galen of Pergamon used the term hemicrania (half-head), from which the word migraine was eventually derived. He also proposed that the pain arose from the meninges and blood vessels of the head. Migraine was first divided into the two now used types – migraine with aura (migraine ophthalmique) and migraine without aura (migraine vulgaire) in 1887 by Louis Hyacinthe Thomas, a French Librarian. The mystical visions of Hildegard von Bingen, which she described as "reflections of the living light", are consistent with the visual aura experienced during migraines.

Trepanation, the deliberate drilling of holes into a skull, was practiced as early as 7,000 BCE. While sometimes people survived, many would have died from the procedure due to infection. It was believed to work via "letting evil spirits escape". William Harvey recommended trepanation as a treatment for migraines in the 17th century. The association between trepanation and headaches in ancient history may simply be a myth or unfounded speculation that originated several centuries later. In 1913, the world-famous American physician William Osler misinterpreted the French anthropologist and physician Paul Broca's words about a set of children's skulls from the Neolithic age that he found during the 1870s. These skulls presented no evident signs of fractures that could justify this complex surgery for mere medical reasons. Trepanation was probably born of superstitions, to remove "confined demons" inside the head, or to create healing or fortune talismans with the bone fragments removed from the skulls of the patients. However, Osler wanted to make Broca's theory more palatable to his modern audiences, and explained that trepanation procedures were used for mild conditions such as "infantile convulsions headache and various cerebral diseases believed to be caused by confined demons."

While many treatments for migraine have been attempted, it was not until 1868 that use of a substance which eventually turned out to be effective began. This substance was the fungus ergot from which ergotamine was isolated in 1918 and first used to treat migraines in 1925. Methysergide was developed in 1959 and the first triptan, sumatriptan, was developed in 1988. During the 20th century with better study-design, effective preventive measures were found and confirmed.