Headache in Ancient Greek Medicine from Hippocrates to Galen

Ancient Greek culture – albeit dominated by cardiocentrism that attributed all vital and mental functions to the heart – recognized early the prominent role played by head and brain in individual identity and its preservation, as Homeric poems and Greek mythology show. Ancient Greek medicine, too, focused on the head as a relevant part of the body and dealt thoroughly with head pain. The present article provides the first review of ancient medical sources concerning headaches, from Hippocrates (5th century BC) to Galen (2nd century AD), passing through Aretaeus, the Anonymus Parisinus, Caelius Aurelianus and Scribonius Largus. It also reconstructs the evolution of the vocabulary, from the earliest attestations of the term indicating headache as a disease (κεφαλαλγίη) in the most advanced texts of the Hippocratic Corpus, to the introduction of new and more specialized terms (κεφαλαία and ἡμικρανία) in the Imperial age, up to the most complete exposition on the head, brain and nervous system by Galen, who possessed impressive anatomical knowledge.