our control. In short, your nervous system has to struggle with all the
poisons that were present before, with another one added to them!

After you have taken nature's wise advice, and obeyed her orders, and
put yourself at rest, then there are a number of mild sedatives, with
which every physician is familiar, one of which, according to the
special circumstances of your case, it may be perfectly legitimate to
take in moderate doses, with the approval of a physician, as a means of
relieving the pain and helping to get that sleep which will complete the
cure.

One other measure of relief, which, like rest, is also indicated by
instinct, is worth mentioning, and that is gentle friction of the head.
One of the most instinctive tendencies of most of us when suffering from
a severe headache is to put the hands to the head, either for the
purpose of frantically clutching at it, rubbing as if our lives depended
upon it, or pressing hard over the aching region. The mere picture of a
man with his head in his hands instantly suggests the idea of headache.
Part of this is, of course, little more than a blind impulse to do
something to or with the offending member. We would sometimes like to
throw it away if we could, or at others to bang it against the wall. But
part of it is due to the discovery, ages ago, that pressure and friction
would give a certain amount of relief.

For some curious reason the nerves most frequently involved are those
which are most readily accessible for this kind of treatment, namely,
the long nerve-threads which run from the inner third of the eyebrow up
the forehead and over the crown of the head (the so-called supraorbital
or frontal branches). A corresponding pair run up the back of the neck,
about half-way between the back of the ear and the spinal column,
supplying the back of the head and the crown (these form the cervical
plexus); and a smaller pair run up just in front of the ear into the
temple, and from there on upward to join the other two pairs at the top
of the head.

Broadly speaking, the position of the pain depends upon which pair of
these nerves is lifting up its voice most vigorously in protest. If it
be the front pair (supraorbitals) then we get the well-known frontal or
forehead headache; if the back pair (known as the occipitals) then we
have the deadly, constricting, band-around-the-head pain which clutches
us across the back of the neck and base of the brain. If the lateral
pa