John Symonds’s 1848 lecture about the relationship between migraine and nervous temperament shared these gender and class assumptions. But he added a new dimension: “Such persons may also feel pains which have taken their origin from mere ideas.” And, thus, Symonds became the first—but certainly not the last—headache doctor to suggest in print that head pain might be caused entirely by suggestion. Or to phrase his contribution more accurately, suggestion could only bring on disease in a person whose body had already been weakened by “nervous temperament.”
Migraine is your fault, or fuck John Symonds and all the doctors who believed him.